Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

All of this, plus it's also important to keep in mind that Trump may try to sow doubt about the election results. Perpetuating the idea that polling is broken or that the election is a tossup that will inevitability end up in the Supreme Court helps him to facilitate that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's weird to live through an experience—that we were sort of waving our arms around and saying "he's got a shot!" when very few people were doing that—and have a lot of people remember it exactly the opposite way. Especially in the internet era when you can look all of this up. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

We actually worried toward the end that we were overdoing it to some degree—not with the model itself, but that we tended to focus a lot more on Trump 30% chance than Clinton's 70%. And I think we probably would have gotten some crap for it if Clinton had won. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One thing about 2016 is it wasn't just that our model gave Trump a better chance than other models/conventional wisdom, but also that we really tried to lean into that with our headlines, on social media, etc. We were quite adamant about pointing out that Trump had a decent shot. https://t.co/GS3gC15WEp — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Doesn't mean he can't win. There are several examples here where the polls were *almost* wrong enough. Also, our model uses data dating all the way back to 1936, when there were far fewer polls but the ones we had did poorly in some years. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The largest error in here is 5.9 points (1996), which is smaller than Trump's current deficit in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping-point state. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

What's also interesting about Trafalgar is that they're always biased toward Trump by about the same amount, unlike Quinnipiac where they do have a handful of polls that are better than the average for Trump. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The media seems pretty eager for a new twist in the race after this disastrous period for Trump involving the debate and his COVID diagnosis, but that doesn't really correspond to what voters care about or are thinking about. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Or to be more precise: you *can* find signs (polls) that show a tightening race, but just as many polls showing Biden gaining. If anything, state polls over the past few days—which hadn't been quite as strong for Biden—have been catching up with his good national numbers. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I kind of expect the race to tighten just because a 10.5-point lead is quite gargantuan in this day and age of high polarization, but I don't think there's any sign that it's tightening yet. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is not a subtweet of anyone in particular and it's going to annoy some people since I have a lot of PhD followers/friends and also I'm a stubborn guy myself but...one thing I'm noticed is that once someone gets a PhD, it become 10x harder to convince them they're wrong. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is obvious I guess but the see-saw patterns in COVID cases in the US and other countries make me think that the overall degree of conscientiousness matters a lot. Cases go down, people relax. Cases go up, people take more precautions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @NAChristakis: But we find that the voting that took place in the primaries in the Spring of 2020 had no discernible impact on the cours… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Georgia? Blue? https://t.co/NdLCgGITFu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

These multi-party primaries create some weird incentives but Collins and especially Loeffler have been running to their right in a way that risks making them unelectelable in the runoff. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Whoa, didn't see that Quinnipiac also polled the runoff and had Warnock well ahead of both Loeffler and Collins head to head. Entering in those runoff polls, our model now has the GA special as a toss-up. https://t.co/zXL7CImi74 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @IChotiner: BREAKING: A bunch of people who have given completely contradictory advice to social media giants for the last four years ar… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Meanwhile, in the Georgia Senate special election, we have Loeffler (R) with a ~40% chance of winning after the runoff, Warnock (D) with a ~30% chance, and Collins (R) with a ~30% chance. Ossoff (D) with a ~30% chance of winning the regular Georgia seat. https://t.co/bZtICEpRsN — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

By the slimmest possible margin, I might caution. Biden has a 51% chance of winning Georgia and Trump 49%, per our forecast. Our model's priors favor Trump in Georgia but there's been enough good polling for Biden there to counteract them. https://t.co/q6CWk5tCMh https://t.co/Fjc1buWHaK — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Look which state just turned blue in the snake. https://t.co/ajG88SznSA https://t.co/sHnroFJKtS — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Yeah, I respect pollsters that are willing to publish results that deviate significantly from polling averages. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Seems like a bit of a gap emerging between the live caller state polls, which have mostly been very good for Biden (consistent enough with a 10-point national lead), and online/IVR state polls, which still largely resemble pre-debate. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Finally someone breaks out of the rut of every pollster showing Georgia within 3 points. It's Quinnipiac, which has Biden up 7. Note though that Quinnipaic has shown very very good numbers for Biden in lots of states lately. https://t.co/qr34A0IVy8 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @tinybaby: each state should have an allocation of 100 years of age for their senators. you can send two 50 year olds but if you want di… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Big new undertaking for 538: We've started a 3-weeks long (!) liveblog on issues related to election administration and voting mechanics. Please go check it out! https://t.co/9cYrZxVPqh — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Biden doesn't particularly benefit from his town hall, either. He's trying to run out the clock. The main reason he booked the town hall was probably to ensure that Trump and the CPD wouldn't try to call the debate back on. He doesn't care if fewer people watch. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A town hall, in particular, doesn't offer Trump much upside. He's not good in those formats, he's been especially wacky lately, and they generally get pretty mediocre ratings so to the extent people hear from him, it's probably from some clip of a bad answer that went viral. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah, some people seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that more airtime is better for Trump. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If a polling firm never surprises you, you generally shouldn't trust it. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: How President Trump could still win reelection: https://t.co/GMIivANx8x — PolitiTweet.org