Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Trump doubling down on a series of extremely unpopular messages about COVID—after having caught COVID, and at a time when COVID cases are rising again nationally—is about the worst possible closing pitch, and one has to wonder about how downballot GOP candidates feel about it. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The base case is that the big Democratic surge in early/absentee voting is already priced into the polls and will be counteracted by a huge GOP turnout on Election Day. But sometimes the base case is wrong. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @michaelmina_lab: So important in this pandemic to NOT let RARE events make the headlines & grab our attention @NPR - this should NOT b… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't know what the experts on here think of the methods, but this study from Qatar seemed interesting in trying to measure the rate of re-infections in a more systematic way, finding they were possible but rare at several months out. https://t.co/ilXloKZVzZ https://t.co/sWQcMO0yXD — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

By extreme priors I mean e.g. "everybody is 100% protected for life" or "there is virtually no immune protection". The presence of some re-infections (but the absence of *common* ones) is enough to rule those out. Those don't seem like they were good priors to begin with, though! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I suppose I find most of the conversations about COVID re-infections or lack thereof to not be very illuminating, because unless your priors were pretty extreme I'm not sure how much they should be moved by seemingly credible but sporadic cases. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @aedwardslevy: This also matters from a public opinion perspective: at a certain point this year in our coronavirus polling, we went fro… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki @OsitaNwanevu @EricLevitz @jbenmenachem @JakeAnbinder I think he would have lost anyway given that it ultimately was not such a close race, but Sanders's strategy to go all-in on his base even after winning NH/NV rather than trying to expand his coalition was pretty consequential. Not clear who was responsible for that, though. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Like maybe just say (in some degree of detail since there are lots of gradations) what your position on restaurants and schools is, if you know those two you can usually infer the rest of what someone is arguing for. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's an increasing amount of "nobody's arguing for a lockdown" from all sides of the spectrum but I'm also totally unsure what people mean by "lockdown" anymore. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Cunningham is losing ground with women and seniors since the sexting scandal but *gaining* ground with men and young voters, per this poll. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But if Trump starts to delegitimize the election when it seems *very likely* that Biden will win (that, for instance, he's won FL and NC/PA/MI/WI all seem highly likely to vote for him but are not callable yet) that puts the networks in a tricky spot, I think. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'd say no, because you can't assume the late-arriving mail ballots will have the same partisan composition as the ones you got so far. Maybe (especially given mixed messages from Trump) GOP voters were more likely to procrastinate before sending ballots in, for instance. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are also questions like: let's say Biden is ahead by 100K votes in Michigan as of midnight, and there are also an estimated 500K late-arriving mail ballots, and the mail ballots so far heavily favored Biden. Can you call the state for Biden? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One fairly likely scenario is that it's readily apparent that Biden has won by Election Night but the networks won't call the race per se because they're being conservative about states that have outstanding mail ballots. https://t.co/5R5RVsfqs6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Notably, the campaigns are also a bit over-indexed on states that could provide a quick call on Election Night, such as FL, NC, AZ and OH, while underspending on states like MI, WI and NV that probably won't be callable right away. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But instead of spending a bit there as a hedge or deterrent, the Trump campaign is invested quite heavily in those states and underspending in some of the more likely tipping points. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's also an element of game theory here. It can be dangerous you aren't spending resources on a state and the other campaign is on offense there, e.g. maybe GA or OH wouldn't be the tipping-point state ordinarily, but it could be if only Biden spent on them. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Ad spending here, especially for Trump, is tilted toward the *closest* states rather than the *tipping-point* states, which is generally a mistake if your goal is maximizing 270+ EV although might make sense if you think that margin of victory matters. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@dhopkins1776 Good catch! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In the Michigan Senate race, we have Peters projected to win by 5-6, which translates into a 75-80% chance of victory. On the one hand, it's premature to call the race a toss-up. But a 20-25% chance of James winning counts as a real headache for Dems. (reposted to fix typos) https://t.co/QVaex5m4tB — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In the Michigan Senate race, we have Peters projected to win by 5-6, which translates into 75-80% chance of victory. On the one hand, it's premature to call the race a toss-up. But a 20-25% chance of Jones winning counts as a real headache for Dems. https://t.co/hzZw7KyqyB — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One other thing too: The fact that Biden's lead seems to stem from persuasion rather than turnout might make it a bit more robust to polling error. You're not a shy Trump voter if you tell a pollster that you voted for Trump in 2016 but are voting Biden this time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@espiers You generate a fair amount of body heat, so it is not that bad once you get going. The hard part is getting going. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Great work here BTW showing that Biden is winning largely on the basis of persuasion rather than turnout. Flipping even a small number of Trump 2016 voters and Johnson 2016 voters makes a big difference. https://t.co/wtTfvdlCrL https://t.co/4bbYJeDunl — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So these new Times/Siena polls (Biden +8 in MI and +10 in WI) are more line with what you'd expect from national polls. And in general, the higher-quality state polls have been worse for Trump lately. https://t.co/62ftGY0rb3 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @jtlevy: On the one hand, Trump is down by 10.6, more than the polls have ever changed this late. On the other hand, they've twice swu… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Still, this presents challenges for likely voter models with early/mail voting being highly D-leaning this year. I can imagine various strategies that pollsters would adopt that could lead them to either underestimate or overestimate Democratic margins. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In practice, few pollsters use probabilistic turnout weights. And even if they did, you might not want to weight "already voted" voters at 100%. There's some rate of ballot spoilage in mail voting (also in person, though less). And people could lie about already having voted. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

How polls handle people who have already voted is interesting. In theory, one could argue along these lines: people who say they've already voted should get weighted at 100%, while people who are merely "likely voters" should be 90% or whatever since some won't wind up voting. — PolitiTweet.org