Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@adamdavidson @davidshor Journalists naturally focus on edge cases but for every edge case there are 100s of relatively noncontroversial policies, e.g. traffic laws and recycling ordinances and consumer safety regulations, and they broadly follow "common sense" public opinion in their communities. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@adamdavidson @davidshor In the US you have bias toward conservative positions because red voters are over-represented in the Senate, and therefore also in federal courts. And of course you have bias toward what wealthy and/or influential elites like. But overall the correlation is quite strong. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@adamdavidson @davidshor And honestly: You can certainly study how influential groups and people affect public opinion. But *of course* public opinion (I'm not going to put it in scare quotes) is a core force in politics. At least in anything vaguely resembling a democracy. That's almost a tautology. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@adamdavidson @davidshor No because 1) high-information partisans almost always vote anyway; 2) switching a vote (turning a -1 to a +1) counts twice as much as turning out a vote (0 to 1); 3) actions that motivate your side's partisans often motivate the other side's partisans as much or more. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jaycaspiankang @mattyglesias Ignoring *election* polling done by partisan groups is often also a good rule of them, but at least there, there is some accountability since polls can be tested against actual results and since there aren't as many degrees of freedom to screw around with question wording, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jaycaspiankang @mattyglesias Issue polling is hard but most of the nonpartisan polling organizations do a reasonably good job with it. Without wading into the wider debate, "ignore issue polling done by partisan groups" is very often a good rule of thumb. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jayrosen_nyu In what sense is it useless? As terms go it seems more useful and well-defined than a lot of things. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@lxeagle17 Granted there's a lot of competition but "Voters will get mad if you give them $10,000 instead of $0 because you didn't give them *more* money" is in the Hall of Fame of Galaxy Brain bad takes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is probably right too: forgiving all student loan debt is more easily demagoguable. Although, since most studies suggest that forgiving all student loan debt is regressive (lots of law/business/med students) the critics wouldn't be entirely wrong. https://t.co/tUrA6WCJtX — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Forgiving some student loan debt is reasonably popular. Forgiving all student loan debt is quite unpopular. Polls aren't perfect but they show a consistent divide on this Q that's probably a better starting point than a vague theory about messaging. https://t.co/D5QC4vaD73 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@daveweigel I spent a lot of the 2018 midterm on a computer with a busted '8' key which was somewhat less than ideal given my job. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@domluszczyszyn Is the conventional wisdom in hockey analytics that elite talent is more important in the playoffs? It's a widely held (and I think mostly correct) view in NBA analytics, of course. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP Honestly would not have guessed that he ever made that list! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes @mattyglesias I do kind of wonder what would happen in today's political environment if smoking prevelance were as high as it was a generation ago (and likely divided a lot along red/blue class lines). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Without endorsing this specific claim about gun control polling, I think this captures something about US public opinion. People don't want to give the other side "wins" even when they support the change at the margin because of the heuristic of "they won't stop there". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Liveblog tonight with primaries all over the South. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

DeSantis and Trump now basically tied at PredictIt in likelihood of being the 2024 nominee. Not crazy IMO. Trump isn't *that* far ahead of DeSantis in polls and it's pretty even once you account for name recognition, which you probably need to do when looking at polls this soon. https://t.co/a3rn6MMMSM — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @jaycaspiankang I think I had some vague knowledge of the 2-0 thing but it's truly kind of weird. Like, score effects in a blowout game are one thing and teams are probably rational to play with a lower effort level. But, any playoff G3 is super high leverage. Or maybe it's the officiating? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @jaycaspiankang How much of that is motivation vs. 3 games being enough to reveal something about the matchups? (e.g. that GSW is a bad matchup for DAL.) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jaycaspiankang The Suns one was truly inexplicable. Like I can see teams mentally checking out from a blowout and saving their energy for future games but that shouldn't happen in G7! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jaycaspiankang Probably mostly variance, but there are a lot of stingy, high-effort defenses this year that won't take possessions off even when they have a pretty big lead. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Thinking about running for president on a platform of requiring teams to be named after the city where their stadium/arena is actually located then taking in some hot NFC East action between the East Rutherford Giants and the Dumfries Commanders. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@adamdavidson There are a lot of lines, but the line between "narrative" and bullshit is much more adjacent than the line between statistics and bullshit. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a fine line between "narrative" and bullshit. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@angrybklynmom I think it's sort of interesting how little certain people care about being hypocritical. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin Well, good on them; that's a lot of acknowledgement! Maybe I should have stuck to my prior. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin I'm often on team "academics don't really understand journalism" but I think they're right here. Print is one thing, but without space constraints online there's no reason you couldn't have a "acknowledgments and further reading" graf following certain types of articles. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are exceptions, but for the most part parties *trade in* political capital for policy accomplishments, rather than accumulate more of it. Voters are suspicious of change, which is one reason the "midterm curse" exists. So, use that capital wisely. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There was never any spike in Biden's approval rating. It's fairly typical for presidents to start out with strong approval ratings and then for them to decline after ~6 months; for Biden, there were the additional complications of Afghanistan, inflation and the Delta variant. https://t.co/dwWrEvalZz — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@nataliemj10 Look forward to reading it! — PolitiTweet.org