3 ms·

What? I'm struggling to find an analogy to help you understand what the projections actually mean, but also I'm asking "Do I care if this person is wrong on the

What? I'm struggling to find an analogy to help you understand what the projections actually mean, but also I'm asking "Do I care if this person is wrong on the internet?". Maybe you need to compare it to a weather prediction. If you hear "30% chance of snow" where you're about to vacation, would you pack a winter jacket? What if it's 85%? If it's 0.5%? And if it's at 25-30% for months on end, that doesn't mean that "No chance it'll snow!". It's not like a sports league where one person is behind for months and then suddenly wins it. Indeed what is the point of following the polls? For one thing people were probably addicted to the rollercoaster of "Oh shit my side's losing! " and then "Oh yeah my side's gaining!". At least for the campaigns themselves they should've been able to adjust their work in hopes of moving the needle (e.g. leaking stuff about the other side).

khazhoux 4y ago
No, I understand what the probabilistic prediction means. The problem is that there is no way to tell if 538's prediction was any more accurate than if they'd said 50-50 (or any numbers whatsoever) because the presidential election is only every 4 years. We can't measure the predictive ability of his model at all. If Hillary won, we'd say "Yup, the model gave her 70%". When Trump won, we said "Yup, the model gave him 30%".
- tomrod 4y ago
  Correct. It's a forecast based on polling sentiment. Who does it help? People who face regulatory uncertainty between the regimes. Mostly businesses, nonprofits, etc.
- Nition 4y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but it's not strictly true. For instance if their model had given Hillary a 99.5% chance and Trump only 0.5%, then we could be pretty sure it wasn't a good model when Trump won. You might say even then, how do we know the result didn't just fall into that 0.5% remaining chance? But polls can and do still give some useful idea of what the result might be.

khazhoux 4y ago

No, I understand what the probabilistic prediction means. The problem is that there is no way to tell if 538's prediction was any more accurate than if they'd said 50-50 (or any numbers whatsoever) because the presidential election is only every 4 years. We can't measure the predictive ability of his model at all. If Hillary won, we'd say "Yup, the model gave her 70%". When Trump won, we said "Yup, the model gave him 30%".

tomrod 4y ago
Correct. It's a forecast based on polling sentiment. Who does it help? People who face regulatory uncertainty between the regimes. Mostly businesses, nonprofits, etc.
Nition 4y ago
I get where you're coming from, but it's not strictly true. For instance if their model had given Hillary a 99.5% chance and Trump only 0.5%, then we could be pretty sure it wasn't a good model when Trump won. You might say even then, how do we know the result didn't just fall into that 0.5% remaining chance? But polls can and do still give some useful idea of what the result might be.