In less than a month, Nate Silver’s 2016 Presidential Election Forecast has jumped wildly.
Odds of Donal Trump winning went from 19.7% on June 29 to 47.0%. on July 24.
On July 22, I received an email from a Political oddsmaker who stated Hillary Clinton had a 74% chance of winning.
The above forecast and Silver’s June projections were ridiculous.
Online Gambling says Election Odds: Clinton v. Trump is anything but conventional.
In that article Political oddsmaker Larry Josephson projects
- Hillary had a 74% chance of winning.
- Trump has 49/50 odds (50.5 %) that Donald Trump wins the swing state of Ohio.
- Clinton has 1/1 (50%) chance of winning Florida.
I find that parlay ridiculous. Hillary does not have a 74% chance of winning if Trump carries Ohio and Florida.
I will hand them one thing, the forecast was “unconventional”. But unconventional and reasonable are not the same thing.
Nate Silver Election Forecast June 29
Nate Silver Election Forecast July 24
Nate Silver State by State Forecast
Nonsense
Trumps odds of winning were never as low as 20%. Heck they were never as low as 40%.
Ahead of two conventions, Silver jumped the gun by a mile. It appears as if Silver posted the odds of Hillary winning based on an election in July, not November.
By now, Silver should have learned something about his Trump predictions, voter anger, voter dislike of both candidates, and Trump’s appeal to the working class in rust belt states.
Silver still has not learned this is not a normal election year.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Don’t forget to factor in Trump’s appeal to the Russians.
The police shooting (both giving and receiving) and protests at each political parties’ conventions, are indicators public mood is turning even more negative. This favors Trump more than Crooked Hillary.
Mish,
Nate Silver is part of the established shills that surround the Elite. He has motive for making the predictions regardless of reality. Applying Occams Razor, he is a fraud.
http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/memes/4019668.jpg
Here’s a good one… The UAW has spent decades fighting against the Koch Brothers and pointing out that the Koch Brothers have always supported the Republicans who are fighting for Right To Work legislation in states and against legislation benefiting workers rights. Every election cycle, the UAW has endorsed a democrat every timeafter time over the decades. The UAW also opposed NAFTA, and all the trade agreements as detrimental to workers. So this year, they waited to endorse a candidate until the nominee was known, and, surprize, surprize, it’s Hitlary Clinton, of course. Now, the rank and file are supposed to vote for her, right? Now we have Donald Trump as the Republican Candidate who want NAFTA renegotiated, TPP burned to the ground, Globaliztion destroyed, illegal immigration stopped, everything that the UAW could wish for, ect, ect, but they endorse Hitlary. Now the Koch Brothers step in and endorse Hitlary Clinton too. UAW, “what do you tell your workers now”? Fuckin’ really, UAW, you’ve finally done it to yourself. You’ve obviously lost your rank and file. This is going to get really interesting after 8 years of obama and the great nothing that the democratic party has delivered.
Most of these positions have been Bernie’s, too, but he also endorsed shill. There’s no accounting for tastes, but she is obviously quite appealing to some. Wonder if it has anything to do with the ‘for sale’ sign she hangs around her neck?
Bernie just railed against the Koch brothers in his prime time DNC speech.
I guess he didn’t get the memo.
big nothing democrats delivered while not controlling the legislature for the big part of those 8 years. american sheeple is like european sheeple, dashing from side to side, never figuring out that the problems are far more fundamental to be fixed by electing an egomaniac buffoon.
Odds of Americans being phucked….100%.
The WikiLeaks scandal is going to cost Hillary probably 10-15% of Dem voters {the diehard Bernie hippies} who are going to sit home and watch Frau Hildegard get thumped. She might even lose Pennsylvania. Highlighting Black Lives Matter people will also cost her any blue dog Dems that mightve supported her. Trump in a rout.
http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/03/08/635929941638012330517585747_kDk4FgTqIewNRsCLkfL66WR1jf-z4YT2MIR0tLMSBZTqkHOjpbtsXYH-mNzW45CANmFYaD4xDEoRrm_PEQ9Ir61iZmQNol_ZqIJm-FI2ZrZ0q_WeyKtFq0DixwvpIvMz3CqFG12B
And what will Putin get for the leak? The Republican party platform was already altered to be more pro-Russian. Whether you agree or not, it is troubling to see a foreign nation hacking servers and leaking emails that favor one candidate over another.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
Focusing on who did the hack is like “slight of hand” in the political magic show . . . . look at the content of the emails. This is one bunch the our “handlers” didn’t delete – woe up and smell the coffee!
So Putin was smart enough to hack into the DNC server – but not smart enough to hack into Hitlery’s server.
ha.
Every night before I go to sleep I pray that Huma publishes a tell-all book that hits the bookstores 6 weeks before the election and leaves nothing to the imagination.
7.7% of the population is really going to vote for Gary Johnson? Dream on.
Gary Johnson is just another GOP retread who has about as much chance at becoming President as I have sprouting wings and flying to the moon.
I have no idea why the Libertarians repeatedly embarrass themselves by choosing this clown over and over again to represent their Party in the Presidential race. If Gary gets 2% of the vote in November I’ll throw a clot.
When I was young and stupid I considered becoming a Libertarian. I went to a local meeting. It took them an hour to decide who would chair the meeting. The next hour was devoted to what the agenda would be for the next month’s meeting. Then the meeting was adjourned.
I came to the conclusion that they don’t eat enough meat.
That ended my brief relationship with the Libertarian Party.
And he’s going to get a fractional electoral vote. Is that some new state we haven’t heard about?
The math might be this:
If DJT requires both OH and FL to win, and he has a 50% chance of winning each, that pencils out to a 25% chance of winning. And therefore a 75% of losing.
The corollary assumption is that HRC does *not* require both states to win, and that she must lose both states to lose the election.
@Andrew: “The math might be this:”
WTF? That is not math at all. Not sure if that “corollary” is your math or if you are attempting to explain the media headline. Definitely you misused the word “corollary”
IF (a big if) one accepts the electoral map from Nate whomever…. you would have to have failed middle school math to conclude a 74% chance of hitlery doing anything. The guy’s math ability (handicap?) shows he is in over his head trying to keep up with the count on Sesame Street.
These election forecasts are really just an illustration of how far behind the US is in STEM education — the media clearly doesn’t understand what they report on. They don’t even grasp basic math, never mind Bayesian theory
Sorry Frank, Andrew is mathematically correct — though I can’t say whether his logic matches Silver’s or not.
If you have two independent fair coin flips (i.e., Trump has 50% in Ohio and separately 50% in Florida), then there is a 25% chance of two heads (Trump takes both), a 50% chance of one head, one tails (Trump wins one), and a 25% chance of both tails (Hillary takes both). If Trump needs both the win but Hillary does not (Andrew’s “corollary” assumption, really just an interpretational assumption), that gives 25% to Trump and 75% Hillary. So Andrew’s math is one possible explanation of how Silver gets to 74%
The problem with such a claim is that these are not independent events. People see and read the same news in Florida and in Ohio. So the numbers will tend to move together. If Trump has the edge in Florida, he is likely to also have the edge in Ohio, and moreso in reverse. Silver may have accounted for some of these correlations based on demographics and history, but I don’t know.
Regardless, I think statistical predictions of this election will fail because they cannot account for the anger and frustration of many people that particularly grows when people like Obama lecture them on how there is no anger and frustration in America.
The problem with such a claim is that these are not independent events.
Correct
If he wins one he is likely to win both, and Pennsylvania as well.
The question is how these states break. I do not think it is 70% likely they break for Clinton
I never thought the odds of Trump winning were less than 40%
You are both wrong.
Nothing says the people of one state must or even will vote the same way. They ARE independent events. They might be correlated (if the same candidate says something stupid that impacts both states) — but they are independent “coin flips”. The red square on your roullette wheel has no idea the ball landed blue the last three spins.
And Trump, by definition, is one of the “green” spots on the wheel designed to gum up the crowd trying 50/50 bets.
Second, you still forget that whatever happens in OH and FL, there are also 6-8 states that are “barely leaning Hilary”… those are each separate events also.
You both fail math
@mish “If he wins one he is likely to win both, and Pennsylvania as well.”
Did you think that through Mish?
LIKELY to win both (which is your opinion, not a fact), is not the same thing as “certain to win both”. They are independent evens, even if they turn out to be (in your opinion) loosely correlated
Go back to math class Mish, you are as bad at Nate
You’re a rather querulous fellow, aren’t you, Frank? You’re tilting against windmills, though. Neither Andrew nor Mish nor I agreed with Silver’s analysis.
I’d be willing to bet everything I own that I know a lot more about statistics and probability theory than you do. I can tell as much from how loosely you use the words “correlated” and “independent”, not to mention the word “event”, all of which are technical terms with very specific meanings in this context.
You’re not in a position to fail anyone on their math. You say, “they might be correlated but they are independent”. But independent events are by definition uncorrelated (though conversely, uncorrelated events need not be independent).
The correlation of random variables X and Y is defined as E[XY] – E[X]E[Y], where E[] is expectation (averaging) and XY is the product of X and Y. If X and Y are independent, then the definition of independence implies that E[XY] = E[X]E[Y], i.e., zero correlation. You can check that at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_(probability_theory)
What you seem to object to in a rather inchoate manner is how statistics is being applied to polling for the 2016 election. But no one here seems to be taking a strong view on that. Rather, we are all struggling to make sense of why Nate Silver has been so certain that Hillary Clinton would win, and why he now seems to be changing his tune. And the answer to that puzzle does not lie in the math.
If Trump wins PA he wins the election.
PA is like OH in ’04, FL in ’00.
Looks like Nate took a wild swing at home plate going for the fence and missed by a mile again.
Why would anyone take him seriously as a political prognosticator?
I assume that Mish is posting his predictions only to mock him. It couldn’t possibly be to inform us.
I will worry if Nate ever picks Trump to win. That could indicate a Hillary victory.
Oh, and if I could find odds that give Hillary a 74% chance to win in Vegas I would dump a load of cash on Trump to move into the White House in 2017. I don’t think any bookie is that stupid though.
After Bloomberg’s speech this Wednesday – Metro New York will be solidly in favour of Il Ducé. The Suburbs despise Nanny Bloomberg.
This might just be enough to tip the scales in NJ & NY
sure going to be funny watching TV on election night when NJ & NY vote for Il Ducé.
http://e.lvme.me/rten8td.jpg
Honestly no one knows who will win. Who thought Trump would be the RNC pick in the end. The RNC definitely did not want Trump. After watching Bernie basically getting booed off the stage after telling his supporters to vote for Clinton it is anyone’s game.
My prediction is Clinton. Only because she was the anointed one when she stepped back after Obama was beating her. Currently Trump is ahead in many states.
One might understand why Bernie didn’t want to end his political career the way Cruz did, so he endorsed the corruption to save his own perks… but its not lost on Bernie’s supporters that Wasserman-Schulz didn’t write 30,000 anti-Sanders e-mails by herself. The rot within the DNC extends to a LOT more people (all the others who took sides and wrote nasty emails against bernie).
So what is Bernie thinking still defending this corrupt trash now? He claimed during primaries (and was proven 100% correct) that DNC insiders were rigging primaries with tactics that would make Nixon cringe. Being loyal to the party is one thing (however misguided the party is) — but loyalty toward people who just stabbed you in the back? And its not just his suspicions that they stabbed him in the back, its rock solid undeniable proof in his face (and his supporters).
If Bernie doesn’t want to go against his party, ehh. He is a politician after all. But he has the option of going back to VT and just laying low. Silence would say a lot. Backing corrupt people who stabbed him in the back makes him look foolish…
Which makes me wonder why the math drop-outs in the media are focused on Trump leaning states, while ignoring all those pale blue states that hilary just betrayed yet again… ME, CT, PA, NJ, VA, MI, WI, MN, NM, and OR might shift to Trump if moderate Dems get disgusted by corruption and/or lots of unaffiliated voters support Trump (both of which seem a lot more likely).
And hilary’s wanna-be-vp warmonger, in a really dim witted attempt to defend the DNC’s efforts to silence Bernie supporters (violating their free speech rights) went on MS”DNC” and said “Being a US senator, I am not allowed to pass classified intelligence around, free speech doesn’t allow that”
Is the VA warmonger aware hilary was just found guilty of doing exactly that by the FBI? Yes, lawyers will argue its not a legal conviction because the attorney general was having secret meetings at remote airports with Bill… but in the minds of voters (and in FBI findings), hilary is guilty of lying and treason.
And now the man she picked to be her vp just admitted on DNC TV that he also thinks hilary is guilty of treason.
What are the odds that Trump’s PR people are going to use Kane’s own video with his own words to decimate hilary? Its not just 70% of voters, her own vp pick says she broke the law!
For those who took a basic statistics class, the odds of Trump making this nate guy look even more stupid has two parts:
(1-odds of Trump winning states he has a slight lead in) **MINUS**
the odds hilary loses states where she had (past tense now?) a slight lead.
Too many people fail statistics because they forget about the second part of the equation. There are 50 states in the USA, not 2.
What these probabilities mean is a bit confusing.
If the weatherman says there’s a 25% chance of rain today, that does not mean it will be sunny. It means for every four days he says that, one of them will have rain and three will not.
So if you say Trump has only a 20% chance of winning, that doesn’t mean he will not win. That means out of 10 elections you make a call that X has 20% chance, about two of them will be won by the guy with 20%. If out of those 10 elections the guy with 20% never wins, or if he wins a lot, the odds are your probabilities are bad.
How, though, do you test such predictions? You need to assemble lots and lots of races and see how often there are upsets. Upsets should happen 20% of the time in 20% elections, nearly half the time in elections called with odds like 49%-51%. This, though, is NOT the final vote count. If Hillary gets a solid 51% in every state her odds are 100% of winning, not 51%.
Even more tricky, the only time you can test the predictions is at the end. Trump’s odds might have been 20% months ago but we can’t test that since we never have elections months early multiple times.
“If the weatherman says there’s a 25% chance of rain today, that does not mean it will be sunny. It means for every four days he says that, one of them will have rain and three will not.”
Hardly.
25% chance of rain means that 25% of the area within the forecast area will receive rain, so witin that area there’s a 1 in 4 chance that any given spot will have rain.
I truly believe that Bernie was in on the rigged system from the start. Why? There will be a reward down the line for him. Either funds or a sweet appointment.
For the 1st four months of the dem primary Bernie went tremendously soft on Hitlery. He even apologized for bringing up the emails. Hitlery accumulated a huge lead making it impossible mathematically for Bernie to catch her. Then he started talking tough when it was too late. I don’t think that was a faux pas. I think it was part of the script.
And now, after it’s a proven fact that the DNC screwed Bernie over and that Hitlery controls the DNC – Bernie is telling his supporters to vote for Hitlery.
Come on, folks. Use your critical thinking skills. It’s as obvious as the nose on your faces.
‘Rigged’ here means not being able to get the votes to win. Bernie didn’t, stop crying.
Did the DNC screw Bernie? How? By telling everyone in the South that he was Jewish? Errr was there any actual campaign of “don’t vote for Bernie because he’s Jewish”? No. Should the DNC be impartial? Sure but this isn’t a referee, it is a political party whose job is to find the best candidate to field.
Hillary was a favorite 8 years ago and an unknown Obama was able to take the nomination from her. Bernie wasn’t. So what is ‘rigged’ about that?
SUPERDELEGATES.
’nuff said. All Dem primaries are ‘rigged’ because their system is fundamentally fraudulent, i.e. not democratic.
There are hundreds of ‘delegates’ called ‘superdelegates’ whose convention vote(s) are bought & paid-for, not determined by party member/primary voting results. That’s a rigged system.
Err no not nuff said. They didn’t invent superdelegates halfway through the nomination. They’ve been in place for decades now. Sanders entered the game knowing the system just like Hillary 8 years ago entered the game knowing the system and lost to Obama. That doesn’t make the system rigged anymore than the Super Bowl is rigged because of the whild card.
Reminiscent on how in 1968 Nixon needed an opponent to show he could win primaries..and Mitt Romney’s father George provided that. Nixon threw George a bone after the election: made him Secretary of Housing and Urban Decay.
“Silver still has not learned this is not a normal election year.”
Silver must treat all elections like they are “normal” – he has no choice. 538’s entire schtick is based upon cherry-picked historical data & averages thereof. Thus, 538/Silver will NEVER forecast anything as seen through the windshield (forward), but only what historical data commands via the rearview mirror (backward).
538/Silver are glorified con artists.
Compare the election/candidate analyses of Scott Adams vs. Nate Silver. One is using psychology & understanding of the zeitgeist… the other is looking at old data from old elections & expecting the same results.
Guess which one has been right all along, and which one has been wrong all along…
Donald Trumps chances of winning are 52% (thats just my own a priori opinion, and its a pretty good guess)
And, yes, you’re right, his odds of winning (since may/june)
have never been less than 40%, (never mind 20%)
Hilary is the kind of person who could lead all the way, only to fall at the final hurdle.
(though i can see her tripping up a long way before that)
However, i think you’ll much find better odds at bookmakers (see oddschecker.com for that)
odds are good enough for person to take the risk, (as i have at 2/1 and greater)
bookies were wrong in calling UK to stay in EU at 1/5 on the day of polling
they were even worse in saying that Brexit vote would be less than 47% (evens chance)
Talking heads need to talk, but the facts are Obama is still president, WikiLeaks has more emails., and more dirt will be dug up about Trump. Much can happen and it is just to early to call except for a few ‘safe’ states.
predicting any of this is a crap shoot. Voters are confused. And the DNC has 3 months along with media to disseminate false info on Trump. Trump has 3 months to dig a further hole or extract himself.
While our Pres and Fed says the economy is good and improving there are a ton of good companies out there reporting even weaker revenues.
there is no rule of law. The SEC is finally going after non GAAP; its kind of like the movie Mr Roberts when the doctor takes his tine getting to the captain.
***
◾Hillary had a 74% chance of winning.
◾Trump has 49/50 odds (50.5 %) that Donald Trump wins the swing state of Ohio.
◾Clinton has 1/1 (50%) chance of winning Florida.
I find that parlay ridiculous. Hillary does not have a 74% chance of winning if Trump carries Ohio and Florida.
****
Let’s say Trump and Clinton have 50-50, coin toss, odds to win Florida and Ohio….so two coin tosses.
Trump needs both of those swing states to win the overall election. Clinton needs one.
So toss two coins, Trump wins if they are heads-heads Clinton wins anything else. Clinton has 1 way to loose, Trump has 3 ways to loose.
Hillary has, therefore 75% chance of winning.
Now you might lower that a bit because Ohio and Florida are not independent. If Trump is very high in the polls, then his chance of winning both states is higher so maybe instead of 75% you say 74% or 70% but still with one way to win and three ways to loose you’d give Clinton higher odds.
Already responded to that
If one breaks to Trump – odds are both do
Not quite, odds are good for both to break if Trump is well ahead, if Trump is neck and neck then it is more like winning two coin tosses in a row.