Based on a single recent poll in which Cruz leads Trump by a single percentage point, Nate Silver somehow concludes in his “Polls-Plus” Forecast that “Ted Cruz has an 81% chance of winning the Wisconsin primary.
Precisely One Relevant Poll
In the only other weighted poll, albeit at a mere 0.02 weight, Trump led by +10.
Supposedly that 10-point advantage is to the detriment of Trump.
Weighted Average of Polls
Polls Only Projection
Silver’s Odds Estimate
I thought that Silver missed updating his blog with recent polls but Real Clear Politics does not show any.
Silver’s Incredulous Odds
Something is seriously messed up. Silver has not (that I have seen) been willing to make a projection based on a single poll.
Silver did so today even though that one poll will certainly be stale by the April 5 primary date.
Future polls may appear to vindicate the above call. But they can’t.
Assuming there really is only one poll now, then based on what we currently know, that 81% projection is ridiculous.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Have to agree that it is rather speculative to base so much on the one poll.
But, there is not much to go by, as the next most recent poll ended in Feb.
To be fair, he does talk about the fact that he does weightings and what factors go into his model. However, Nate does not discuss how he comes to the specific weightings in the Wisconsin race.
Perhaps he has other information we are not privy to.
I think the thing that is messed up is Nate Silver.
Since there is only one poll to go by, we could argue if it was a reasonable “judgement call” or if it was intentionally inserted “bias”.
Don’t think there is enough to say Nate is “messed up”, because we don’t like his outcome.
Having said that, Nate ought to have a better explanation to how he came to the weightings, otherwise, all we have is his reputation to go by (which has been one of the better ones out there).
What’s worse are the tactics/methodologies behind the polls themselves…
Most are landline telephone polls – such polls have been proven poor/inaccurate many time over… yet NS/538/RCP et al. still insist on reporting & using them.
Further, most polls draw their respondents from a list of some sort, usually a list associated with a marketing firm or political organization… so the poll is ALWAYS heavily skewed demographically by default… yet NS/538/RCP et al. still insist on reporting & using them.
And if you really want to get your blood boiling, find/read the actual poll questionnaire… the questions are framed to encourage a pre-determined choice/answer… the bias w/in these polls is so egregious, so disgusting that’s it’s a miracle that people respond to them at all.
Like all polls, its meant to tell us not inform us. more B/S !
Robby
The only projection anybody should be able to make when you crunch the numbers is that cruz should be losing by about 400 delegates+ at the end of this race and that nobody gets the magic 1237. Then the games begin. Maybe you should run a contest of your readers. It could get interesting.
Nate Silver disqualified himself when he posted that Hillary’s chance of winning the Michigan primary were 99%.
Silver is nothing more than a propagandist tool; we’ll be seeing a lot of this subtle anti-Trump BS in the next few months, since they can’t quite figure out how to eliminate Donald without making it too too obvious.
While you may disagree with Nate Silver’s analysis,
he does at least have the bookmakers behind him
oddschecker latest US REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES – WISCONSIN PRIMARY BETTING ODDS
Ted Cruz 4/6
Donald Trump 1
perhaps Cruz is on to a charge
and, of course, Wisconsin is a winner-take-all state.
i suppose that if Cruz did happen to win Wisconsin,
then perhaps we could get to him hear make a Dean-scream
Nate Silver is obviously a corporatist/bankster tool.
Polls (and reporting on polls), ‘data’, expert commentary……… All tools to shape the weltanschauung of the masses. Most don’t read beyond the headlines. And most of what is written below the headlines is not worth reading.
There has been a subtle shift in how pundits on the left write about Trump during the last couple of weeks. Before, they were cheerleading Trump on while mocking Republicans for even considering him. The last two weeks, they have shifted to trying to talk themselves into reason why Trump can’t get the nomination. I think some of them have started to realize that Trump vs Clinton might actually be the worst possible matchup for Democrats. I predict the Democrats force Clinton out of the race in July.
Not sure where he got the 81 percent but “predict IT” (a betting site) currently has the odds at 61c/41c to Ted Cruz.
https://www.predictit.org/Browse/Group/71/April-Primaries
I think Trump will edge it, just. Will need to put the work and organisation in to this one to do it though. Nate doesn’t have a great record and I have read Steve Sailer’s criticisms of him.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Nate Silver & 538 are frauds.
Highly political agenda/propaganda, poorly hidden behind psuedo-statistics.
Like all poll-watchers, NS & 538 (and RCP for that matter) will be wrong 100x before they are ‘right’ even once… such is the nature of polls, i.e. worthless.
Nate Silver first became famous as one of the guys who put together the “PECOTA” system for Baseball Prospectus that predicted baseball player performance for the coming year. It got a lot of acclaim but as barely better than the prediction method sometimes called “Marcel the monkey” which assigns a 3 parts of 6 weight to a player’s performance last year, 2 parts of 6 to the player’s performance two years ago and 1 of 6 to how he did three years ago. This utterly simplistic method did nearly as well at predicting how a player would do the next season as Nate Silver and the PECOTA system he and others created.
As to his other big claim to fame, I’m sort of mystified as to why it’s considered so amazing to look at polling that other people do and predict how an election will turn out.