8 ms·

How I Acted Like a Pundit and Screwed Up on Donald Trump

• dnautics 10y ago
  "we were basically acting like pundits" So, basically a giant Bayesian prior fail. edit: got to the part where nate talks about the bayesian failure in more detail. It's good.
• WalterBright 10y ago
  I've watched Trump years ago on The Apprentice. What he brought to politics was business sense and marketing know-how, which has been surprisingly absent from political campaigns before.
  • joshgel 10y ago
    and also racism, sexism and xenophobia, with an authoritarian bent.
    • kelukelugames 10y ago
      To be fair, that is not new. It just hasn't been this overt since the 60s on the national stage.
    • pessimizer 10y ago
      So was everyone else in the Republican Primary lineup. The only reason Kasich came off as a moderate is because he smiled and didn't directly attack the other candidates.
    • omonra 10y ago
      I think it's actually quite interesting - as a non-insignificant number of people are probably supporting Trump because they are tired of being told that holding a particular belief is 'racist' or 'xenophobic' (something they clearly would disagree with).
      • mcphage 10y ago
        So a bunch of racist, xenophobic people are tired of being told that they're racist and xenophobic? I can believe that. Of course, I thought they also want a "straight shooter" who "isn't afraid to tell it like it is"... well, I guess something's gotta give.
        • omonra 10y ago
          Is there a benchmark for measuring racism or xenophobia? Ie the terms are so vague and subject to personal interpretation that I think they pretty much mean 'Someone's whose views I disagree with'.
    • imron 10y ago
      I think that's something that someone who doesn't really understand Trump and Trump supporters would say. As far as I can tell, most Trump supporters want someone who is outside the system to go in and shake it up, because they see the system is failing them, and the other candidates are just extensions of the status quo (see also why Bernie Sanders is popular). This is why it doesn't matter what Trump says or does, because people don't care about single sound bites of the current news cycle. Note, also that many (but not all) of the 'racist, sexist and xenophobic' comments attributed to Trump are things taken out of context, and then blown up via the media and various social networks. If you go back to the source and look at what Trump actually said, it's often quite different from what the anti-trump headlines and tweets imply. He also has an entire career full of actions that refute many of the accusations of sexism, racism, xenophobia and whatever else. Note: I am not a Trump supporter, and not even eligible to vote in US elections. This is just what I have gathered from following more than once source of news and trying to get a balanced understanding of what's happening in US politics at the moment.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    Neither business sense nor marketing know-how have been absent from political campaigns before; plenty of politicians (and many of their close advisors, as well) have been quite successful in business before or between political campaigns, and the people running campaigns are generally experts in marketing (many of them quite successful in that in the commercial realm before and between political campaigns as well.)
    • WalterBright 10y ago
      Consider this - Trump took every opportunity for media interviews, while other candidates would avoid them. Trump's bombastic statements made for constant headlines. I read somewhere that he garnered billions in free publicity, and would often be the lead news story of the day. This is marketing know-how. Consider also his labeling of opponents with nicknames that had just enough truth to stick. Very effective. Scott Adams' blog has a lot more interesting commentary on this.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
• goodcanadian 10y ago
  Trump's (presumptive) nomination was a big surprise to me. However, in retrospect, it looks less surprising. Trump was always going to attract a sizable minority, and there were really no other compelling candidates in the race. While I'm sure that the majority of Republican voters would prefer "not Trump," who that "not Trump" candidate could be was never clear. At the end, well, I am not certain that I wouldn't pick Trump over Cruz, for example.
  • PantaloonFlames 10y ago
    > I am not certain that I wouldn't pick Trump over Cruz, for example. The negatives sprinkled throughout that sentence don't make it clearer. isn't it just: "I would pick Trump over Cruz"?
    • thebooktocome 10y ago
      No; the evidential "I am not certain" is not logically exclusive with its negation, "I am certain". So the principle of double negation does not apply. Brought to you by a partially wasted youth as a philosophy major.
  • sverige 10y ago
    > While I'm sure that the majority of Republican voters would prefer "not Trump," who that "not Trump" candidate could be was never clear. Why are you sure of that? He's gotten a record number of votes for a Republican primary. It's very clear that, in fact, the majority of Republican voters want Trump, along with a sizable percentage of independents who voted in some of the primaries. It's this kind of wishful thinking by non-Republicans that leads to all the laughable errors of the pundit and pollster class.
    • robotresearcher 10y ago
      > in fact, the majority of Republican voters want Trump He does not have a majority of the primary vote.
  • Animats 10y ago
• throwaway_xx9 10y ago
  I don't think 538 gets it even now. Trump is a celebrity who gets free media coverage and people aspire to. So of course he was a serious contender from Day One. The fact that he is not polished for the media is a plus to most people. As one woman said to a news reporter earlier in the campaign, "Well, I could vote for the other candidate. But he's a politician."
  • PantaloonFlames 10y ago
    > The fact that he is not polished for the media is a plus to most people. He is EXTREMELY polished. He's a professional personality. He's been doing it for a decade, wooing audiences. He knows how to do it. What he is not, is a politician. > Well, I could vote for the other candidate. But he's a politician. exactly. People aren't happy, and they'll vote for anyone that isn't "more of the same". eg Trump and Sanders.
  • caf 10y ago
    Identifying the Reasons in hindsight is not the point. There are always Reasons but if you can't reliably identify them before the event rather than after then it's not of any predictive interest.
• mc32 10y ago
  >"...our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model. Instead, they were what we “subjective odds” — which is to say, educated guesses" People of al stripes do this in all kinds of situations. We have a hypothesis and find data to support that. In this case both Trump and Bernie were hard to gauge. Trump just had no prior history (I said to myself) and Bernie was never notable in national politics outside a small core constituency so the default was to discount both because on both sides they were more to the extremes (left and right ends) of their parties. Also, both Bernie and Trump are the animus the personification of the feelings of large swaths of the electorate --so it goes beyond what they represent as isolated individuals ("movement"). most of these analysts will find it hard to discount their "instinct" even if they want to be data-driven (in a sphere where data can only reveal so much.
• isidoreSeville 10y ago
  Worth noting that pundit Carl Diggler has not had any trouble predicting results even without a fancy statistical model
  • Jtsummers 10y ago
    > In any race where Silver didn't make a pick — again, he isn't playing the pick-every-contest game — Diggler's numbers treat the non-prediction as a wrong prediction. So Silver's accuracy rate through May 7, according to Diggler, was just 55 percent, while his own was 89 percent. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/12/sorry-but-that-fake-pundit-isnt-more-accurate-than-nate-silver/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/12/so... So the comparison counts non-predictions by Silver makes your statement correct. > even without a fancy statistical model Remarkably anti-intellectual statement.
    • isidoreSeville 10y ago
      I think that you would agree that null is not a correct prediction, so clearly the Silver model has failed for those votes.
      • Jtsummers 10y ago
        Null is neither correct nor incorrect. If I don't play a game of chess today and you do, I haven't lost anything. I simply haven't played. The world is not binary. This claim is tantamount to a schoolyard taunt like, "If you don't fight me, you're a coward." And claiming victory when your opponent wasn't even at school that day to hear the taunt.
        • isidoreSeville 10y ago
          Right, but if you play chess against a lot of children and crush them 100% of the time and I play against moderately experienced players and win 90% of the time, I'm probably better at chess
• Animats 10y ago
  There are no good data sources for politics now. Gallup admits that well over 90% of the people they call for polls won't talk to them. They can't call cell phones for polls. They can try focus groups, but that gets you people who have time to waste.
  • deweerdt 10y ago
    The newyorker ran an interesting piece along those lines: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-the-new-machine http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-th...
• calibraxis 10y ago
  > These fundamentals usually consist of economic indicators and various measures of incumbency. I looked at a couple links, and couldn't quickly find the exact "fundamentals" he refers to. For instance, do they include campaign financing (corrected by peculiar things lke Trump's free media coverage, and perhaps whatever unpaid labor of Sanders' supporters)? Given that politicians spend enormous time on financing, this is an obvious indicator. But it may be politically incorrect to use models that imply money drives the US. (Chomsky mentioned, "At the moment, the polls indicate an even race. Usually, US elections can be predicted pretty well by the level of funding, overwhelmingly from the very wealthy and corporations. In the early stages, Bush was far in the lead, not a surprise in the light of the enormous gifts his administration has lavished on a very small wealthy minority and on corporate power. However, that funding gap has reduced considerably in the past months, apparently reflecting concern among elite sectors over the extraordinary incompetence of the Bush planners and the harm they are doing to core elite interests." https://chomsky.info/20041011/ https://chomsky.info/20041011/)
• douche 10y ago
  Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) called it months ago[1] [1] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/131749156346/the-case-for-a-trump-landslide-part-1 http://blog.dilbert.com/post/131749156346/the-case-for-a-tru...
  • thedevil 10y ago
    Not only did he call it, he explained and predicted in detail. For example, he predicted the Megyn Kelly interview. Edit: He predicted the interview and that it would mark a turning point where Trump softens his image, destroys Clinton's image, and coasts towards a landslide victory. The interview happened and the polls are turning now, on cue. He also predicted Trump would use the word love and possibly be seen hugging minorities. Anyone see Trump's Cinco de Mayo tweet? Unfortunately, Trump is our next president. Second edit: I highly recommend Scott Adam's blog. He and Trump are both psychology geniuses and the blog explains it.
    • newjersey 10y ago
      Say whatever you will but I will take solace in the fact that no matter how badly Trump does, it would be worse under Cruz.
      • EdSharkey 10y ago
        How do you figure?
        • mc32 10y ago
          Not the OP but Cruz was an ideologue (would apparently not compromise) engaged in risky tactics (shut down government) , was disliked by colleagues and religion was above all else. The country does not need a priest or pastor in chief.
          • EdSharkey 10y ago
            I get all that. I will note that what you say is phrased like talking points from Cruz' enemies designed to make him 1-dimensional, but at least you provided some simple examples to back up some of your statements. Back to my original question: how does the GP figure that a Cruz presidency would be worse than a Trump one? Does Trump have any negatives for you? Can you weigh Trump's policy statements, demeanor, and history against Cruz'?
• panarky 10y ago
  Here's why this post-mortem is so important: The distinguishing feature of the scientific method is not that it always gets the answer right, but that it fails forward by learning from its mistakes... I want to think through his nomination while trying to avoid the seduction of hindsight bias. Kudos to Nate Silver for meticulously examining how he got it wrong, and publicly showing his work so we can all get better.
• Mendenhall 10y ago
  Maxim 20 from the Art of wordly wisdom (A must read book) "The rarest individuals depend on their age. It is not every one that finds the age he deserves, and even when he finds it he does not always know how to utilise it. Some men have been worthy of a better century, for every species of good does not always triumph. Things have their period; even excellences are subject to fashion. The sage has one advantage: he is immortal. If this is not his century many others will be." This is the age of of the Troll and the response they elicit, Trump read it and understood it, ahead of most and definately ahead of his competitors. He understands the age and is taking full advantage of it. Some saw it coming, and others did not, many who even called themselves experts.