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538 is the classic "fighting the last war" problem. In 2012 the issue was that polling was unreliable, it was difficult to figure out what was actually going on

538 is the classic "fighting the last war" problem. In 2012 the issue was that polling was unreliable, it was difficult to figure out what was actually going on with the electorate. FiveThirtyEight figured out how to crack that problem, by applying number crunching. This cycle, the problem is that the electorate hasn't actually decided what it wants yet, and there statistical methods aren't helpful at all. There being many examples of 538 "predicting" a 99% probability of a certain victory due to a large margin from polling and then on election day things going completely differently because the electorate changed its mind.

santoshalper 10y ago
Other than mind reading, what would you propose to solve that problem? It sounds like an intrinsic limit to polling predictions to me.
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  It's not soluble, even with mind reading, because people change their minds. The correct solution is just to move on. Too much of the media coverage of elections is about the horse race aspect, almost none of which is actually of positive benefit. Rather than spending so much time trying to guess winners, the media could spend more time and effort actually covering the actual issues of the election in a mature fashion, but it's been decades since they even tried.
alberto_ol 10y ago
> There being many examples of 538 "predicting" a 99% probability of a certain victory I think there is only one example of this kind: democratic Michigan primary
ssharp 10y ago
Was 538 that good at predicting outcomes of the 2012 primaries? I know it's well established that they did a good job on the 2008 and 2012 general elections. Primaries have to be harder because there is far less polling information compared to the general election. Yes, they were unable to predict the Trump victory, but if the get 90-100% of states correct in the general election, then I doubt that much has changed with how polling reflects the electorate.
- freehunter 10y ago
  They were able to predict Trump winning. All of their data showed it. The polls showed Trump winning everywhere. What they failed to do was trust the statistics. The polls show Trump as favorable, and they say "yeah but he won't make it past the first state." The polls show Trump beating other candidates and they say "he has a ceiling of 30%". Other candidates start to drop out and polls still show voters rallying behind Trump, and they say "the polls are wrong, the voters will go to Cruz". I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but 538 went way out of their way to ignore every poll that was put in front of them in favor of punditry.

santoshalper 10y ago

Other than mind reading, what would you propose to solve that problem? It sounds like an intrinsic limit to polling predictions to me.

InclinedPlane 10y ago
It's not soluble, even with mind reading, because people change their minds. The correct solution is just to move on. Too much of the media coverage of elections is about the horse race aspect, almost none of which is actually of positive benefit. Rather than spending so much time trying to guess winners, the media could spend more time and effort actually covering the actual issues of the election in a mature fashion, but it's been decades since they even tried.

alberto_ol 10y ago

> There being many examples of 538 "predicting" a 99% probability of a certain victory I think there is only one example of this kind: democratic Michigan primary

ssharp 10y ago

Was 538 that good at predicting outcomes of the 2012 primaries? I know it's well established that they did a good job on the 2008 and 2012 general elections. Primaries have to be harder because there is far less polling information compared to the general election. Yes, they were unable to predict the Trump victory, but if the get 90-100% of states correct in the general election, then I doubt that much has changed with how polling reflects the electorate.

freehunter 10y ago
They were able to predict Trump winning. All of their data showed it. The polls showed Trump winning everywhere. What they failed to do was trust the statistics. The polls show Trump as favorable, and they say "yeah but he won't make it past the first state." The polls show Trump beating other candidates and they say "he has a ceiling of 30%". Other candidates start to drop out and polls still show voters rallying behind Trump, and they say "the polls are wrong, the voters will go to Cruz". I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but 538 went way out of their way to ignore every poll that was put in front of them in favor of punditry.