Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @galendruke: This ... is ... MODEL TALK It's been a minute since we last recorded a Model Talk episode, but @NateSilver538 and I tried… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Calling something "tone deaf" is an extremely negative signal for argumentative quality. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MileHighBrendan My intuition is that yeah it's probably unusual but I haven't looked at historical data. What's sort of weird about this year is that races are pretty bifurcated between competitive and non-competitive, there aren't a lot of races on the fringe (maybe like CO and FL?). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias One of my weird takeaways from the pandemic is that it really exposed the real-world consequences from the lack of interest in moral philosophy. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Another race where Republican voters chose a candidate who's never been elected to any office. These candidates tend to underperform (see also e.g. Oz, Masters) and will need the overall political environment to improve for the GOP back to where it was pre-Dobbs. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Checks out, I think. My Yelp strategy is to sort by the number of reviews, then read the 1* reviews to see if they're legit complaints about the food or are just whiny annoying people who didn't like the waiter's facial expression when he poured their chardonnay. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

To be honest I didn't realize that I could already get an Omicron-updated booster until I checked somewhat at random today, so FYI there are plenty of appointments available, at least in NYC. https://t.co/IcfnJ2HLH0 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@billscher Ahh didn't realize the race had tightened that much, Hobbs had a pretty decent lead for most of the summer. Still think she'd for sure debate if she thought it would improve her chances of winning. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The real grounds are that she's winning and doesn't want to take a risk, of course she'd debate if she were 5 points down instead of 5 points ahead. But the media is probably gullible enough to buy the "don't platform Kari Lake" BS. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Far too much political analysis is people extrapolating from tiny sample sizes and taking them to be Iron Laws of Politics or Lessons We Must Heed. Although political analysis has gotten more rigorous since I started doing this ~15 years ago, that part hasn't really changed. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@helaineolen @sdbaral @schmangee I agree it ultimately comes down to bad faith but it seems like this platform gives some asymmetric advantages to people arguing in bad faith. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@helaineolen @sdbaral @schmangee I agree in theory, but an individual post from a thread can still be clipped out of context. On several occasions, I've even seen replies of mine to other people's posts blow up that completely omit the context. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@helaineolen @sdbaral @schmangee I think it's also just the parameters of Twitter in particular. 280 characters is more than enough to make an emotionally-satisfying dunk. It's not necessarily enough to make a considered, nuanced argument. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DavidNir Not that you're regularly publishing for all major races for public consumption, which is a lot more demanding than doing sonon a one-off basis once where you can wing it. I really don't understand what your argument is and I'm done engaging with you. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DavidNir When the signal to noise ratio is so poor I have better ways to spend my time. But FWIW ~100% of the 5% are from people who have never built a polling aveage on their own and haven't thought carefully about how to apply a consistent set of standards to 1000s of polls every cycle. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DavidNir 95% of the complaints are inspired by ad-hoc partisan reactions because people don't like the poll toplines. Not any deeper argument about methodology. But honestly start your own polling averages based on your own standards and we'll see how they do. Not as easy as it seems. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DavidNir The whole point is that we have a systematic, rigorous process (hence "trust the process" in the original post) instead of debating about pollsters or polls on an ad-hoc, one-off basis. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DavidNir Yeah maybe I'm tired of arguments I was having 12 years ago, especially if my experience since then is that they tend to be wastes of time at best, and usually also opportunities to engage in confirmation bias. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@tbonier @FiveThirtyEight My goal is to have an accurate election forecast and polling average. Excluding Rasmussen based on their political views would be just as dumb as excluding Aaron Rodgers from our NFL forecasts because I don't like his views on vaccines. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@tbonier @FiveThirtyEight We have standards for pollsters and Rasmussen meets them. It would be dumb to have a standard be based on whether I agree w/a pollster's political commentary. If you don't understand the importance of a consistent process I'm not sure I can really trust your data analysis chops. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@tbonier @FiveThirtyEight I'm trying to make an accurate polling average here, and the idea of screening pollsters based on their political commentary is completely antithetical to that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'd rather gouge my eyes out than debate the merits of individual election polls or pollsters. Take the average and trust the process. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MileHighBrendan I think this sort of proves my point though? This guy isn't predicting that strict NPIs will be in place forever. He's saying there's a group of unelected technocrats who would implement them if they could, with the implication that it's important to resist them. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Maybe some folks predicted this but I don't think many (would be good to see receipts). A better & more common argument was that some NPI strategies had no endgame or limiting principle, therefore it was important to rebut the technocrats and say "enough is enough" at some point. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Given current coalitions, you need something like a D+3 or D+4 *popular vote* for each party to win *elections* half the time. So I propose that a D+3 or D+4 popular vote is what a *default" or "neutral" year looks like; NOT the generic ballot being tied (D+0). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Basically I'm trying to think about the Nash equilibrium (!) when some votes are more valuable than others, e.g. when rural votes are disproportionately important in the Senate. I propose each party still wins elections ~50% of the time but rural preferences are more catered to. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So, this week's column is pretty weird. https://t.co/4XGUEredAN — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Yeah, citing the backlash to Roe as *refuting* popularism is perhaps literally the single worst example the author could have chosen, but some critics of yours are just high on their own vibes I guess. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's just weird that this publication has a beat devoted to "you must perpetually be anxious or you're doing it wrong". https://t.co/vi3nYy7ejF https://t.co/l4vq7lqCE9 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DKThomp Yeah, the number of people interested in a well-rounded liberal arts education has always been fairly small. People mostly go to college as a way to enhance their employment prospects, or for higher-SES students, because their peers are going and it's just sort of expected. — PolitiTweet.org