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This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!
by mabbo 4y ago
This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!"
But he gave Trump a higher probability of winning than just about anyone, other than Trump himself. One of Silver's detractors, Sam Wang, even said it was so impossible Trump would win that he'd eat a bug if he got more than 240 electoral votes. (he chose a gourmet cricket https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-eats-bug-231278 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-...)
- greesil 4y agoNate and team do modeling well. Fat tails, correlated populations, and they deal with the crap datasets they get from pollsters. I always tune into his podcast when an election rolls around.
- yamtaddle 4y ago> This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!" What was funny about that one was he also got a bunch of "LOL no way you lunatic, he can't possibly have that large a chance and no-one else is saying so, so you're dumb, or maybe you're secretly a pro-Trump shill". Caught it going both ways.