Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Biden is +6.8 in our Wisconsin polling average... the CNN poll didn't move things too much because there have been a LOT of Wisconsin polls lately. https://t.co/C8GYebMykJ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Polling by partisan groups (whether liberal or conservative) needs to be taken with a grain of salt anyway, but it's particularly bad when the group declares what results it wants before even conducting the poll. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There *are* some people who are just following the science, but it has approximately zero correlation (perhaps slightly negative, if anything) if people who say stuff like "I'm just following the science". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @galendruke: The moment we realized -- almost an hour into recording -- that Nate hadn't pressed record on his mic. https://t.co/Y5OsVL… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm sure there are plenty of false positives and false negatives in self-reported results but this is interestingly close to the @youyanggu estimate that 15.5% of Americans have gotten COVID-19 at some point. https://t.co/whOIR9XtfV — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @micahcohen: Super psyched to have @NeilLewisJr on @FiveThirtyEight Also, "meta scientist" is an amazing title! https://t.co/tE9YVA6Laf — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Since we officially launched our forecast on Aug. 12 (numbers before that reflect backfill), Arizona is the state where Biden's winning odds have improved the most, from 55% to 67%. Next after that are MN (↑ from 72 to 83) and WI (↑ from 70 to 78). https://t.co/TdCOi1WkWL https://t.co/ZbAic3GFyu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's not *that* uncommon for someone to run for the Senate in back-to-back elections (i.e. 2 years apart) but if McSally loses again…is there any other person who's been responsible for *both of a state's seats flipping to the other party* within 2 years? https://t.co/vhl0hY5zEj — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not sure it can be emphasized enough how different the map would look if FL had gone the way of VA (i.e. being reliably blue in close elections). Wouldn't have saved Clinton in 16, but would make Biden's map a lot more safe/robust this year, plus Dems likely have 2 more senators. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @micahcohen: One more, just for fun: https://t.co/erO05l14bb — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @micahcohen: We did it!!!! 🤗🤗🤗 (Also, @realDonaldTrump, @FiveThirtyEight is the number of votes in the Electoral College — it’s a prett… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @micahcohen: Also also, it hardly seems worth correcting, but @FiveThirtyEight gave Trump about a 1-in-3 chance of winning in 2016 — we… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Even so, Trump needs the race to tighten more quickly than that. A candidate with a 7-8 point deficit post-conventions is a heavier underdog than one with a 8-9 point deficit pre-conventions, because the reduction in uncertainty from the passage of time outweighs the small gain. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A slight complication is that we're coming out of the period where you could attribute Trump gains to a convention bounce, though we're not completely out of it yet. So if Trump has "permanently" chopped a point or so off Biden's lead (from 8/9 to 7/8) that's something for him. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Second, it's mid-September, which means the point where polls start to hone in on a more accurate result. So the mere passage of time helps Biden. This is especially so in our model since it expects the race to (slightly) tighten; so any day of non-tightening is good for Biden. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

First, we've had very abundant polling over the past two weeks, both on the national level and also in many states. That makes any one poll less influential. If the race is tightening—or Biden's lead is expanding—the model will need to see that consistently over several polls. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A Fox News national poll showing Trump down 5 is one of his better results lately; keep in mind that Fox News polls hasn't had particularly good news for Trump so far this cycle. But a couple of things to keep in mind. https://t.co/OZoTPs2Jh5 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom No problem, Carl. It's a tough time out there and having fresh air to breathe feels more necessary than ever and I can't imagine what it's like without that. Talk to you soon. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom But I'm not saying like 14.713961%! I'm using round percentages. There are far better examples of false precision, and so it does indeed seem kind of petty or like you're spoiling for a fight for some reason. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom This is such a weird and petty argument at this point. Should I have said "about 15%" instead of "14%"? Is that really the thrust of your critique? You don't seem to disagree with the substantive point. We both have better things to do. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom I don't really get the sarcasm here. I'm not playing down anything. I'm saying it's a fairly meaningless number unless we know how many students are being tested, and there are some reasons to think a lot of students are being tested. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And from what I understand, lots of students are living in their college towns, even if their classes are online. Presumably they're able to use university facilities to get tested, too. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Do you have better data on this, Carl, including on the number of students who are being tested? Because when I look around at university websites, the positive test rates are often pretty low and/or similar to the states where the college is based. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Sorry, the original tweet I was linking to got deleted. But the same numbers appear in this tweet. https://t.co/4mV9U5jdrQ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But many colleges have extensive testing programs. Pick some random colleges, Google their COVID data...you'll find some with very low rates of positive tests, along with others with fairly high ones. Looks a lot like the US population overall (i.e. maybe ~5% positivity overall). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are about 20M college students + 4 million staff, which works out to 7% of the US population. And 36,000 cases is about 14% of the ~250K US cases detected in the past week. So nominally, colleges are recording cases at ~2X the rate in the general population. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

For context: I have no doubt conditions are conducive to COVID spread at many colleges. But this isn't necessarily all that high a number relative to college students' share of the US population and the likelihood they're getting tested more frequently. https://t.co/YXp48pPzFd — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TrackerDebate Pretty good, LOL. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The in-progress version of our Senate model has *11* Republican-held seats where Democrats have >10% chance of a pickup, along with 3 others where they're in the 5-10% range. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Since the view in 2019 was that Democrats simply didn't have enough Senate targets, what's actually striking about the map we've wound up with is how many targets they have, although none of them are sure things. — PolitiTweet.org