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FiveThirtyEight did not dismiss Trump, in fact it kept saying that Trump had a very real chance of winning. The last prediction was a 29%, and a 29% chance is q

by airesQ 10y ago

FiveThirtyEight did not dismiss Trump, in fact it kept saying that Trump had a very real chance of winning. The last prediction was a 29%, and a 29% chance is quite a lot. If you interpret a 29% chance as 'dismissing' then you are misreading the numbers, and besides the numbers, they never said/wrote that Clinton was anywhere close to a sure thing. Regarding election day coverage, 538 did report that some districts in Florida were doing very well for Clinton, compared with 2012. But they quickly reminded people that this could just mean that the votes were distributed differently.

crispyambulance 10y ago
Yes, you're right. Probabilities of ~1/3 are quite hefty, but that didn't keep talking heads from blabbering as though a Clinton victory was a sure thing. Some people are going to say we need better models, but perhaps the best thing to do is to quit relying so much on polls and counting. Predicting the future is a dangerous business even if you're "right" most of the time.
empath75 10y ago
He also caught a lot of crap from the media for giving trump that high of a chance including a fucking embarrassingly stupid and uninformed attack from Ryan Grim at Huffington Post.
- dictum 10y ago
  It's the downvoting your comment because I disagree with an opinion you don't hold, but recognize as being held by some people of media commentary.
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
Ya, I find this article annoying because it wasn't "factiness" that the polls showed Clinton leading. It was a fact. It's also a fact that we now know that the polls themselves had some kind of measurement or sample error, and that whatever this error was, it or something like it also happened in the Brexit and Canadian election. I'll take facts over punditry any day, even if they have errors, because errors can be corrected more easily than opinions.
jerf 10y ago
"The last prediction was a 29%, and a 29% chance is quite a lot." A more relevant point the article made is that the continuous daily updates of the probability didn't mean much to real people. They may have represented real facts about the world in some sense, but they still weren't that useful to people in terms of keeping them updated. It's not very useful for a polling site to predict <10% chances right up until the very end, where it raises to 29%, and the 29% chance comes through. Again, please very carefully note my distinction between useful and true. Noise wiggles and twitches months before the main event being continuously interpreted in the press aren't facts; they're just that "factiness" that feels like you're being informed, but you really aren't. I did it too; it's not like I'm immune. I can't even promise I won't do it again. But it's not useful to the vast bulk of people.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  But none of the continuous updates ever really changed the 538 numbers. The trump probabilities hovered right around that 30% mark ever since he clinched the Republican primary.
  - quesera 10y ago
    That's not at all true. 538's numbers were very bouncy between 10% and 50%, and they took some heat for that. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#odds http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#...
    - bryanlarsen 10y ago
      you linked to the polls only forecast which they described as both more volatile and less accurate.

by airesQ 10y ago

crispyambulance 10y ago

Yes, you're right. Probabilities of ~1/3 are quite hefty, but that didn't keep talking heads from blabbering as though a Clinton victory was a sure thing. Some people are going to say we need better models, but perhaps the best thing to do is to quit relying so much on polls and counting. Predicting the future is a dangerous business even if you're "right" most of the time.

empath75 10y ago

He also caught a lot of crap from the media for giving trump that high of a chance including a fucking embarrassingly stupid and uninformed attack from Ryan Grim at Huffington Post.

dictum 10y ago
It's the downvoting your comment because I disagree with an opinion you don't hold, but recognize as being held by some people of media commentary.

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

Ya, I find this article annoying because it wasn't "factiness" that the polls showed Clinton leading. It was a fact. It's also a fact that we now know that the polls themselves had some kind of measurement or sample error, and that whatever this error was, it or something like it also happened in the Brexit and Canadian election. I'll take facts over punditry any day, even if they have errors, because errors can be corrected more easily than opinions.

jerf 10y ago

"The last prediction was a 29%, and a 29% chance is quite a lot." A more relevant point the article made is that the continuous daily updates of the probability didn't mean much to real people. They may have represented real facts about the world in some sense, but they still weren't that useful to people in terms of keeping them updated. It's not very useful for a polling site to predict <10% chances right up until the very end, where it raises to 29%, and the 29% chance comes through. Again, please very carefully note my distinction between useful and true. Noise wiggles and twitches months before the main event being continuously interpreted in the press aren't facts; they're just that "factiness" that feels like you're being informed, but you really aren't. I did it too; it's not like I'm immune. I can't even promise I won't do it again. But it's not useful to the vast bulk of people.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
But none of the continuous updates ever really changed the 538 numbers. The trump probabilities hovered right around that 30% mark ever since he clinched the Republican primary.
- quesera 10y ago
  That's not at all true. 538's numbers were very bouncy between 10% and 50%, and they took some heat for that. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#odds http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#...
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    you linked to the polls only forecast which they described as both more volatile and less accurate.