Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ABCPolitics: Which party has the edge in the 2020 battle for Senate majority? “Democrats are favored to win the Senate, but just barel… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You don't need a fancy algorithm to know that Trump is losing, pretty badly at the moment. The Supreme Court pick doesn't seem to be helping him. The COVID situation may be getting worse again. Maybe the debates will help. But the clock is ticking: people are already voting. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Overall, there's plenty of good news in here for Biden. But his lead slipping quite a bit in Florida, and also by a point or two in Pennsylvania, makes his path more treacherous than it otherwise would be. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

We'll likely get some more national polls in advance of Tuesday's debate, though perhaps not a lot more state polls. Here's a before-and-after comparison; what polls look like now vs. ~6 weeks ago before the conventions. https://t.co/wKbW02AGO5 https://t.co/fJpe8Yulyu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: How Amy Coney Barrett could change the Supreme Court: https://t.co/SZSiqj0I1k — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The exception is some Midwestern and Great Plains/Rocky Mountain states, where cases are clearly increasing too quickly to be explained by testing alone. https://t.co/oAQ2y08bJ5 https://t.co/L0lrT6xBmH — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are lots of reasons why one might expect an increase (stuff moving indoors, schools/colleges starting, people not "focusing" on COVID as much and/or getting fatigued with social distancing, Europe is having a 2nd wave) I'm just not sure if the data is showing one ... yet. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's not clear whether COVID cases are actually on the rise again in the US or whether this reflects increased testing, especially with there being several different types of tests now that are becoming harder to track. Positivity rates have remained level at ~5% for a few weeks. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It might also help to clarify exactly what scenarios people are talking about. Some of the items on the list below are quite likely to happen, IMO. Some are unlikely but hugely consequential. And this isn't a comprehensive list, by any means. https://t.co/eIczwkcp57 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Politics Twitter can be polemical, prone toward overstatement, not inclined to think probabilistically, etc, plus it tends to lean left. So yeah I think some people here are going too far. But the mainstream media in general, I think, is not taking these threats seriously enough. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I've gotten into some meta-debates on here about whether people are overrating or underrating the chance that Trump could successfully steal the election. I think I've been a bit guilty of mistaking "people I follow on Twitter" for people in general. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One way to look at the problem with Facebook's News Feed is it's trying to optimize for the same qualities you'd want when reading content from friends/family, i.e. content that triggers reflexive emotional responses, when that isn't necessarily what you want from news coverage. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is shoddy logic from the Facebook executive. Humans design the Facebook algorithm, and "engagement" isn't some intrisic quality but one defined by Facebook engineers. https://t.co/CI4lk0po8V https://t.co/xDyPnKuW3c — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins And again, there *are* risks on both sides (i.e. to either underestimating or overestimating the threat). For instance, if Biden's strategy is something other than maximizing the possibility of 270 EV, that's a pretty big sacrifice, potentially. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins I've tweeted & podcasted a lot about this subject. We just had an emergency podcast about it the other day. People can take from the totality of that whether I'm taking it seriously. But I'm also going to push back on analysis that I don't find persuasive; that's part of my job. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins And who's not taking it seriously? Everybody agrees that it should be taken seriously. There are also a lot of harms though that could result from being too imprecise about the claims or confusing a probability for a likelihood. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins @rickhasen I'm not sure the pre-election rulings this year are particularly a cause for alarm. On the contrary a lot of them have favored Democrats and they seem to have been adjudicated fairly. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins @rickhasen That's not an answer to my question, though. And I agree that court (and legislative/executive) decisions in advance about voting rights can matter a lot. But I'm talking about counting the vote. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Susan_Hennessey Sure, I'd be interested in those examples too. Anything where a court decision wound up overturning what would otherwise have been a reasonably clear election result. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Genuine (although slightly leading) question: What are examples of court intervention overturning the result of US elections in races that weren't *extremely* close? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @TheStalwart: This chart really says it all, IMO https://t.co/UJsomG67UU — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins Right, what I'm skeptical about is that a court would undertake some sort of pro-Trump ruling if the stakes were clear that "well, we're basically not a democracy anymore". So a high chance of success if the result is very close/ambiguous, maybe not so much otherwise. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins But some of this is a bit underwear gnomes-ish. On what basis is he suing? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kwcollins To me, the story needs to be covered differently if it's mostly about harm Trump does by undermining trust in the democratic process, as opposed to an actual, coherent plan to steal the election. Obviously there is some of both, but we need some assessment of the probabilities. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's not persuasive to cite 2000 because 2000 involved an extraordinarily close vote (within 0.009%) in which it was genuinely ambiguous who won. The odds of having that close a result in a tipping-point state are very low. The Q is what Trump could do in a less-close race. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

No. 3: The perception that Trump will steal the election could lower turnout No. 4: The perception that Trump will steal the election could cause strategic blunders by Democrats No. 5: Either side could have trouble accepting the result even if the election ends up being fair — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Issue No. 1: There's also an election to cover, with a pandemic, SCOTUS pick, racial protests, etc. No. 2: Instilling fear or ambiguity is a classic authoritarian tactic, and there is some risk of amplifying Trump's message in a way that undermines trust in the electoral process — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

No one is debating that. In fact, I have said explicitly that it's important to pay attention to. But there are some issues that can arise from treating it as a high-probability event instead of a low-to-medium probability one. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias That is true. However, I think most countries are doing a version of mitigation, not suppression, whether they come right out and say that or not. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Sweep the world basically unimpeded may not be far from the truth once we've gone through a full year of this. — PolitiTweet.org