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Interesting that the tool above makes it appear that Trump has a much longer journey to win, and this tool shows that if he wins FL and PA, he's 92% likely to w

Interesting that the tool above makes it appear that Trump has a much longer journey to win, and this tool shows that if he wins FL and PA, he's 92% likely to win the election. Guess, as always, the lens you're using affects your interpretation of the data.

mmarvick 6y ago
The difference is that the FiveThirtyEight tool is taking into account the coupling between the outcomes. They project Trump's odds of winning PA at 13%, so if he does win PA it's likely he's doing better than expected in other competitive races. The originally linked tool is just showing all the combinations of outcomes for these 12 competitive races. Sure, Biden would win the election if Trump won PA and FL but then lost Ohio and Georgia. But what are the odds that Trump wins PA and then loses Georgia? Unlikely.
newacct583 6y ago
Winning both FL and PA when the polls show you down by 3 and 5.7 points respectively is pretty much the definition of a "long journey" statistically.
- ianai 6y ago
  Part of the problem with the polls are their error bars. 538 hopes they’re eliminating those error bars through a number of different tactics - like averaging the polls. That should do something like increasing the N and decreasing the error. But that’s assuming the methods used to generate the surveys are themselves fully unbiased and representative of the underlying population. On the other hand, seasoned pros are saying if the polls are wrong this year then it’s time to hang up the towel on the polling profession entirely-some of the gaps are wide enough to be significant even with large error bars.
  - nl 6y ago
    > On the other hand, seasoned pros are saying if the polls are wrong this year then it’s time to hang up the towel on the polling profession entirely- I haven't heard anyone say that. Polls are always wrong, it's how wrong that is important.
    - Fezzik 6y ago
      Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. Same link. Polls, in general, are typically measuring tendencies or preferences, which they also (tend to) accurately capture. So saying they are always wrong doesn’t really make sense, as they are not trying to be right in an absolute sense. The error is with the reader who misconstrues what the poll is measuring and how it is doing so. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_Unite... Edit: slight elaboration.
      - nl 6y ago
        > Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. This isn't true in the US. Your own link shows not a single result since the 1984 where the error was under 1% for both candidates. They are usually somewhat accurate for the overall vote, but the results on state races haven't been great. That hasn't mattered until 2016 where it was a critical issue.
        newacct583 6y ago
        Even state polling in 2016 was pretty good, historically. The reason to think otherwise is that there was a specific error (non-college white voters swinging to R) that happened not to be tracked well (those voters don't respond as well to polling) nor accounted for (most pollsters didn't weight for education). And it happened to be most concentrated in a few states in the upper midwest that were close to the tipping point. AND it happened to be JUST ENOUGH to have predicted a very narrow (sub 1% in PA/WI/MI) win incorrectly. To wit: 2016 was a perfect storm. Swap any of those factors above and 538 would have been predicting a 50:50 race (instead of 70:30) at election day and Trump's very narrow victory would have been "correctly predicted". Assuming that's going to happen again seems a bit like magical thinking to me. Remember that in 2012 the polls were "wrong" in the opposite direction (undercounting Obama votes by a bit) and no one cared.
  - rkuykendall-com 6y ago
    538 hopes they’re _reducing_ those error bars. If they thought they were eliminating them, they wouldn't need to run simulations at all.
AniseAbyss 6y ago
Fascinating isn't it? Makes you wonder why people in New York and California even bother to vote at all.

mmarvick 6y ago

The difference is that the FiveThirtyEight tool is taking into account the coupling between the outcomes. They project Trump's odds of winning PA at 13%, so if he does win PA it's likely he's doing better than expected in other competitive races. The originally linked tool is just showing all the combinations of outcomes for these 12 competitive races. Sure, Biden would win the election if Trump won PA and FL but then lost Ohio and Georgia. But what are the odds that Trump wins PA and then loses Georgia? Unlikely.

newacct583 6y ago

Winning both FL and PA when the polls show you down by 3 and 5.7 points respectively is pretty much the definition of a "long journey" statistically.

ianai 6y ago
Part of the problem with the polls are their error bars. 538 hopes they’re eliminating those error bars through a number of different tactics - like averaging the polls. That should do something like increasing the N and decreasing the error. But that’s assuming the methods used to generate the surveys are themselves fully unbiased and representative of the underlying population. On the other hand, seasoned pros are saying if the polls are wrong this year then it’s time to hang up the towel on the polling profession entirely-some of the gaps are wide enough to be significant even with large error bars.
- nl 6y ago
  > On the other hand, seasoned pros are saying if the polls are wrong this year then it’s time to hang up the towel on the polling profession entirely- I haven't heard anyone say that. Polls are always wrong, it's how wrong that is important.
  - Fezzik 6y ago
    Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. Same link. Polls, in general, are typically measuring tendencies or preferences, which they also (tend to) accurately capture. So saying they are always wrong doesn’t really make sense, as they are not trying to be right in an absolute sense. The error is with the reader who misconstrues what the poll is measuring and how it is doing so. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_Unite... Edit: slight elaboration.
    - nl 6y ago
      > Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. This isn't true in the US. Your own link shows not a single result since the 1984 where the error was under 1% for both candidates. They are usually somewhat accurate for the overall vote, but the results on state races haven't been great. That hasn't mattered until 2016 where it was a critical issue.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        Even state polling in 2016 was pretty good, historically. The reason to think otherwise is that there was a specific error (non-college white voters swinging to R) that happened not to be tracked well (those voters don't respond as well to polling) nor accounted for (most pollsters didn't weight for education). And it happened to be most concentrated in a few states in the upper midwest that were close to the tipping point. AND it happened to be JUST ENOUGH to have predicted a very narrow (sub 1% in PA/WI/MI) win incorrectly. To wit: 2016 was a perfect storm. Swap any of those factors above and 538 would have been predicting a 50:50 race (instead of 70:30) at election day and Trump's very narrow victory would have been "correctly predicted". Assuming that's going to happen again seems a bit like magical thinking to me. Remember that in 2012 the polls were "wrong" in the opposite direction (undercounting Obama votes by a bit) and no one cared.
- rkuykendall-com 6y ago
  538 hopes they’re _reducing_ those error bars. If they thought they were eliminating them, they wouldn't need to run simulations at all.

AniseAbyss 6y ago

Fascinating isn't it? Makes you wonder why people in New York and California even bother to vote at all.