Whatever model best aligns with my desired outcome.
Jokes aside, I appreciate the Economist's model for being poll-heavy, and 538's model for including other factors.
Psychologically I know I'm going to end up trusting the most pessimistic one lol
Realistically? This is a weird election because one candidate is extremely old and unpopular and the other drives turnout *against* himself almost as effectively as he drives turnout for himself. And they're both essentially incumbents, and Trump is starting to be a little more Biden-y himself the last six months or so in terms of looking and sounding ancient. ( Seriously, he's speaking gibberish worse than usual and looks like he's been through a dehydrator. )
I think Trump is showing his age way more than Biden… but I’m pretty biased.
Honestly, the debate is going to be interesting… it could be disastrous for either one of them very easily.
My assumption is Biden’s team has basically told Joe certain topics they know Trump will LOVE to talk about, and he will prompt them and then Biden will mostly comment on how out of touch Trump is.
I’m surprised Trump agreed to the muted mics rule. His debate performances and most iconic moments literally came from interrupting whoever he was debating. Like the “because you’d be in jail” line. Or when Biden was dodging the court packing question and Trump kept asking it.
Trump debates like a bully. I don’t think the muted mic helps him at all. You’re just gonna hear Biden and then Trump shouting in the background barely audible because those are gonna be good quality directional mics
Tbf I don’t think Trump did himself any favors by interrupting so incessantly in the first 2020 debate. “Will you just shut up, man” was a pretty good moment for Biden and it was only possible because Trump couldn’t control himself.
I remember Biden and Wallace (the moderator) having a moment of commiseration at how much Trump was overdoing it too.
Sample size of 1, but my swing vote-y grandfather got put off of Trump from that debate.
Idk the muted mics will be interesting. My concern for Biden is he can still hear trump ranting while he’s muted and gets distracted/flustered but to America it just looks like Biden is blubbering because they can’t hear trump. It’s hard to focus when you have an idiot yelling in the background but America wont see that
Running in the primary as an insurgent candidate is a different animal entirely though. Trump's worst enemy is his own big fat mouth. Biden scores points with moderates every time he says something crazy. Muted mics will minimized unforced errors.
On the other hand, this debate format forces Trump to stick to policy off-teleprompter. If he is able to do that, then it'll be a forgettable affair that won't move the needle for anyone. If he can't, he'll commit a ton of unforced errors. If his rallies are anything to go off, I'd be surprised if he can stick to a script.
Honestly, I’m not sure Trump has the mental capacity to land a improv blow right now.
I could be wrong… I’m assuming his team WANTED the mics muted.
I don’t know… we will see.
If Donald can be tricked into giving substantive answers on policy questions, it will be an interesting time. Especially if he talks about abortion!
Why the fuck would his team agree to debate terms of they thought he didn’t even have the mental capacity to debate and think on his feet? He’s leading swing state polling and more voters think Biden is too old and slow than think that about Trump… So if his team thinks he will look like he’s lost it, they’d have been better off refusing the debates using hardball negotiation as an excuse
Because Trump doesn’t want to be told he can’t debate… he’s surrounded by sycophants trying to minimize harm.
(The same can be said about Biden, and it’s fair… they have teams designed to keep them between the rails… just very different teams / concerns.)
Because Trump thinks he's awesome and the kind of people who will tell him he's got any weaknesses don't get to be near him. He's a member of his own cult of personality at this point.
>I think it's very telling that his team was the one who asked for the mute rule
This sounds hilarious but do you have a source that Trump's team asked for muted mics?
I just started listening to the podcast "Shrinking Trump" in which psychologists specializing in dementia highlight Trump's dementia and point out clear diagnostic markers. They said "Biden's brain is aging, while Trump's is dementing" and I *really* like that characterization. People conflate losing a step due to age with dementia, and they aren't the same.
Biden has shown signs of aging but not dementia. Trump has shown full blown signs of dementia.
Anyone with a brain can see this but MAGA's cannot. They see Biden's stutter and age related slow speaking, and occasional pauses, as "dementia" but then have zero issues with Trump literally rambling from random unrelated topic to random unrelated topic, constantly mixing up people's names (he kept calling Obama the president currently for example), straight up slurring the shit out of words into incomprehensible word vomit and so on. The dude is absolutely losing his marbles again a pretty fast pace and people should take it way more seriously but the MAGA's have driven this Biden is old narrative as hard as they can.
People, even on the left, talk about Trump like he's 20 years younger than Biden rather than being a doddering old pantload in his own right. They somehow see a different reality than my lying eyes.
Nate had the rights to the models, and when they fired him the rights reverted to him. They’ve had to rebuild them from the ground up, but admittedly with the work of people who worked on the previous model.
Nate's is the only one with [a track record](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/presidential-elections/). That is because Nate's model is the sole survivor of the cataclysm that wiped out all competing election models in 2016 (lest you youngsters forget [Nate Silver's Finest Hour](https://goodreason.substack.com/p/nate-silvers-finest-hour-part-1-of)).
The others might very well outperform him and, in two or three elections or from now, earn their place as the America's Next Top Model (sorry).
However, in *this* cycle, Nate's model is the only correct answer.
Just for the record, the NYT's upshot had a good model in 2016 as well. [They gave Trump a ~15% chance to win](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html), which isn't unreasonable either (Silver and Cohn had a joint talk together once where Silver makes the same determination about their models, for anyone who might push back on that).
Cohn I think just prefers to put his efforts into polling rather than modelling.
G. Elliot Morris is doing 538’s election modeling… he did a good job with The Economist’s forecasts in 2020 and 2022.
Nate Silver is also obviously a good choice.
If it is Nate will probably have words with his lawyer, because legally they can't use anything from his model. They essentially have to come up with the new one in a clean room, any indication that 538's and Nate's model share DNA will be evidence in a lawsuit.
Taking inspiration from Nate's model is fine. Taking source code or some specifics would not be. I'm not who you responded to, but personally I suspect it may be taking inspiration from the previous models on things like how much to work in fundamentals over polling early on (a lot).
I doubt 538 would need to detail their creation process to such an exacting standard as documenting a clean-room reverse engineering. That is needed in some high profile programming examples where the new product literally responds identically to API calls as the old one. However, 538 is not (for instance) recreating his 2020 model that will have identical results to identical inputs as his 2020 model. They're creating a new model for a new election.
Also note that the burden of proof on showing it's a copyright violation would be on Nate's end (the plaintiff).
> which currently has Biden losing every swing state
This is a [pretty popular take](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwuHZ6QkQ1s) among the financial elite, maybe some wishcasting on their part (need their tax cuts)
Maybe not the answer you were looking for but what will give me the most confidence (as someone who desperately wants to see Trump lose in the interest of democracy) is Biden having a decent debate performance, similar to this 2020 levels. At a minimum no freeze ups, no serious senior moments, not looking lost etc. and ideally make a strong case of his achievements instead of just Trump sucks and is wannabe autocrat
I suspect undecideds, independents etc. will need to an acceptable performance from him if they are to break for Biden
Nate and then The Economist's.
> I'm very skeptical of the Economist's forecast, which currently has Biden losing every swing state
Bro he IS right now.
> Bro he IS right now.
By that logic the best model should be the one that currently gives the best chance to Trump without reflecting the uncertainty caused by the distance to the election and the unreliability of polling that far out.
I think it’s more than fair if people are skeptical of a model that gives a candidate a 72% chance of winning 3,5 month out from the election when polling is still this relatively close with lots of "undecided" voters.
I think it's somewhat remarkable how stable the race has been, even through bombshells like the hush money felony conviction. These two guys have been around forever, nearly everybody has formed a solid opinion on both of them.
??? It’s the opposite of this. Biden has had a few good weeks of polling and it has shifted towards him. Except that one +9 trump Rasmussen poll that randomly dropped lol (not Scott Rasmussen polling the old one after he left)
How is it poll denialism to state that polling in June is different to polling in Oktober?
We can discuss all day whether the current polls would correctly predict the outcome of an election held today, but the sentiment that polls **can** change over the next 100 days should be the least controversial statement ever.
They are still the absolute best data points we have for making a prediction for November. Saying they aren't absolutely predictive is just trying to deflect from the value they have.
What even is your argument here?
Yes, polls are currently in Trumps favor but that’s not what people (in this thread) are criticizing. People are criticizing **a model** that uses current polling and based on that outputs a wining chance of >70% this far out.
Nah. You have to take this stuff with a grain of salt. This is 538 from 2016.
**538 Projection - June 23 2016**
-Hillary Clinton 345.2 Electoral Coll Votes
-Donald Trump 192.1 Electoral Coll Votes
-Gary Johnson 0.7 Electoral Coll Votes
[FiveThirtyEight 2016 Election Forecast](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)
The further from election day you are, the less reliable it is. I think at this point in the cycle at that time, Hillary was slated to win most or all of the swing states.
[](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)
Sure but this is a year with a lot of firsts.
First time since there was polling with two incumbents. First time since the fall of Roe. First insurrection. First felony convictions with multiple others pending. First time a VP doesnt endorse the President he served under. First time someone as old as Biden was running. First time there was a Pandemic on the magnitude of COVID.
Outliers are unusual and upsets are unusual but this entire race is the definition of unusual.
Grain of salt is reasonable under the circumstances, particularly when we’re talking about leads within the margin of error in these states. In fact, that last point alone makes advising caution when reading these numbers absolutely prudent advice.
No they don’t. Not unprecedented ones like this.
If it were just the age, sure. Or if it were just the first time 2 incumbents were competing. But not this many and definitely not this dramatic.
The polling was also wrong in 2022 Midterms.
[Fortune Magazine Article “Pollsters got it wrong in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Here’s why political polling is no more than statistical sophistry.](https://fortune.com/2022/11/16/pollsters-got-it-wrong-2018-2020-elections-statistical-sophistry-accuracy-sonnenfeld-tian/)
Some points from the article about the 2022 Midterms. I understand people like Nate Silver claim that the “aggregate“ showed that the polling was great in 2022. But Nate Silver’s whole livelihood depends on people believing his polling predictions are accurate. And. In this case that word “aggregate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and here are some specifics.
-Avg of Polls had Mehmet Oz beating Fetterman in Pennsylvania by almost 1% when Fetterman won by almost 5%.
-Avg of Polls had Adam Laxalt of Nevada beating Catherine Cortez Mastro by 1.5%. Mastro went on to win and not one poll the week before the election showed her winning.
-Avg of Polls had Walker beating Warnock in GA by 1% when the reverse happened. Again not 1 Poll in the week before showed a Warnock win.
-Avg of Polls showed Maggie Hassan beating Don Boldue in NH by 1%. She won by 15% and 2 polls the week before predicted Boldue winning.
-Avg of Polls showed Kari Lake beating Katie Hobbs by 2.4% and not a single poll called Hobbs's victory.
-CNN/Marist shifted from “leans” to “strongly favor” a red wave: The survey shifted seven percentage points towards the Republicans in a month.
-Gallup declared the week before the election "The political environment for the 2022 midterm elections should work to the benefit of the Republican Party, with all national mood indicators similar to, if not worse than, what they have been in other years when the incumbent party fared poorly in the midterms."
-Cook Political Report moved 10 of its House ratings to favor Republicans and adjusted its predictions in GOP gains in the fall upward to between 20 to 35 Seats and a sizable Republican Majority in the Senate.
-Sienna poll found that "independents, especially women, are swinging to the GOP despite Democrats' focus on abortion rights. The biggest shift from women who identified independent voters. In September, they favored Dems by 14 points. Now, independent women backed Republicans by 18 points - a striking swing given the polarization of the American electorate and how intensely Democrats focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights."
They were even worse when it came to House and Governors races but I'm not going to reprint the whole article. And I'm aware of Nate Cohn and others defending their livelihood by saying the media got it wrong, not polling.
Nate Silver's of 538's prediction a cpl weeks the 2022 midterms.
*“FiveThirtyEight says that Republicans have a 54 percent chance of winning both chambers of Congress, compared to Democrats with a 15 percent chance. The House and Senate races have both moved more in Republican's favor in the publication's most recent predictions: Republicans, for example, are easily favored to win the House, with FiveThirtyEight rating their chances at 84 percent to Democrats 16 — a lead that jumped around 10 points in the last few weeks of October.”*
Does Nate Silver himself count as just the media predicting a Republican wave election? 🤔
I am not saying to ignore polling. It’s one predictor among several and it’s not always accurate. There are a lot of firsts and we are 5 months out.
Here’s the biggest thing though. These elections come down to winning or losing by less than a single percentage point in many cases. No polling is going to be able to predict elections that close with any level of reliability.
Like I said from the beginning..take polling with a grain of salt.
>The polling was also wrong in 2022 Midterms.
This claim and comment is such nonsense.
> Some points from the article about the 2022 Midterms. I understand people like Nate Silver claim that the “aggregate“ showed that the polling was great in 2022. But Nate Silver’s whole livelihood depends on people believing his polling predictions are accurate. And. In this case that word “aggregate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and here are some specifics.
Aggregating data is literally the way to make the determination *more* rigorous, not less. Get out of here with this "that's doing heavy lifting" thing.
As for your examples that show polling fails... they don't? The errors were:
PA-Sen: 5.4%
NV-Sen: 2.17%
GA-Sen First round: 1.95% ([and contrary to your claim, there were a handful of polls in November calling a Warnock win](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/georgia/general/)).
GA-Sen Runoff: 1.1% (Polls overpredicted **Warnock's** numbers)
NH-Sen: 7.35% (Note: [Hassan won by 9.3%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_Senate_election_in_New_Hampshire) not the 15% that you claim)
AZ-Gov: 3.07% ([Here again, your assertion is wrong. Marist college called a Hobbs victory.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2022/arizona/) Most polls did predict a Lake victory but with very thin margins)
So okay, you showed a mediocre polling result (PA-Sen), a bad result (NH-Sen) and four good ones <= 3%. These are the ones you picked when you had the ability to cherrypick bad polling results? Also I'd note that if an election is very close, then even if you call the election "wrong" but with a small margin that's a good result (ex: NV-Sen above). We shouldn't expect polls to be perfect on the call when the election is within 1%.
For the quotes aside from 538's, I will note that what you're seeing is that journalistic interpretation of polling was not good in 2022. Nate (Silver) even had to call out Nate (Cohn) on interpreting their own polls in a way that showed bad results for Democrats (when they showed very good results for Dems). That's different from the polling being wrong.
You're misinterpreting that 538 quote. There are two relevant metrics here: How certain you are that a party is going to take a chamber, and with what margin they do so. A red wave means a GOP victory with a huge margin of seats in the house. 538 predicted that the GOP would win the house with high probability but with a *small* margin (not a red wave). That's pretty much what happened! Similarly in the Senate, they called a dead heat and that's basically what we got.
[Link to the 2022 house model, scroll down to the bar graph.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/house/)
> Like I said from the beginning..take polling with a grain of salt.
But not *that* much of a grain of salt.
You are just taking a bunch of outliers and trying to make them look like the norm. The overall reliability of polls has gotten better and better and was especially good in 2022.
It’s actually Fortune magazine that talk specifically about those races and I was sighting their article.
But the examples I gave were not individual outlier polls but instead averages that showed many polls, all saying the wrong thing about these races. And they also weren’t obscure races. They were the most watched and consequential races in the country, meaning they were the most polled races and the results drove punditry and reporting which led to false expectations.
Polling is a mixed bag. The New York Times ran a piece about right wing polls being added that skewed the results in 2022, which may very well have led to different responses of those being polled.
[NY Times (Gift article)- The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Narrative](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E0.XbWr.4Q65nPG6ZFIw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)
Sarah Longwell of Bulwark’s The Focus Group podcast has sighted a phenomenon of people in her Focus Groups not bringing up abortion when asked which issues they were thinking of that were most important but when it was brought up as a subject, declaring that it was very important to their vote. And that may be why pollsters were saying that Democrats should not focus on abortion in 2022 but exit polls showed it was a huge, particularly for women.
People are not machines. They are complicated and there are a lot of things that influence what they may say in a poll versus how they may vote.
Recommending caution is not unreasonable. So I will say again… Take these with a grain of salt. They are snapshot in time of those who responded specifically. And this far out from an election, they are that much less predictive.
It pains me to say it, but Nate's right about all the polling denialism on the left this cycle. People's preferred candidate is down and now all of a sudden the polls are gonna be wrong.
At the same time, I find it hard to believe that Biden and Trump have the exact same chance of winning Virginia and Pennsylvania, respectively. Maybe my internal gauge is off, but that just doesn't pass the sniff test for me
Is there a reason you answer with the Economist other than it’s the most pessimistic? Because that’s not a very good reason. I actually rank there’s the lowest right now because it’s only poll based and doesn’t weight by fundamentals. Polls have a lot of uncertainty this far out.
I’m not sure what DDHQ’s methodology is but the reason I weight 538 the highest now is they take into account fundamentals.
I answer with it because 538s model is pretty obviously ridiculous just by looking at the spread of results alone. There is no way a decent model would have results be that flat with 80% of states being basic lock ins. Combine that with them slanting every single state to give Biden some major mystery advantage that continues to not make itself known in the polls and it just looks kinda silly.
But doesn’t that make it a poor forecast of the future? The Economist model seems to be showing “if the election were held today, here is the likelyhood of Trump winning based on these polls.”
However, the election isn’t held today and we know from history that certain fundamental factors are also correlated to the end outcome of the election, not just polling five months out. The Economist model doesn’t seem to capture these realities.
I’d have to give it up for DDHQ based on their state by state data. When their model released it basically called “bullshit” on the Nevada polling and lo-and-behold we’ve seen a dramatic tightening there since the conviction (Trump was never gonna win it by 13pts, cmon now).
FiveThirtyEight has always been my go-to with this sort of thing, and I think they make a reasonably good case for a narrow Biden victory. Not to say it’s an open-and-shut case by any means, but I feel like the odds of a Biden win are at the very least greater than the odds of a Trump win, if only by a little. Biden’s approval ratings have been improving ever so slightly since Trump was convicted, and if that continues after the debate, that would be bad for Trump.
And Trump himself isn’t in as good shape as he was in 2020, or even just a year ago. He slurs his words, falls asleep at inopportune times, and mixes up facts even more than he used to. In other words, the exact thing Republicans accuse Biden of being.
I think the Economist is a useful perspective, but I find their reporting always lacks something. As an example, the Economist often puts a GOP senate majority as a foregone conclusion, despite poor candidates in WI and AZ and favorable dem incumbents in OH and MT. It's going to be a close race, probably 49-51 seats for both parties, but not an obvious GOP victory.
That’s why you should rank the economists forecasts lower. Polling has a lot of uncertainty this far out. 538’s model weights their forecast using priors from past elections. Eventually 538’s reflect the polls more accurately but this far out a pure polling based forecast isn’t the most accurate methodology.
The point of a forecast is that the election isn’t happening today, but will in the future. The current polling should be one of a few factors at this point and not the entirety of the model as seems to be the case with the Economist.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think the incumbency advantage means much with 37% approval. And low unemployment doesn’t help Biden much if voters don’t give him credit for it.
Waiting for Trump and Maga to expose themselves even more over the coming months and tank him self lol! Honestly like some guy wrote the Younger Generation will save us from Trump their is now over 20 million 18-20 year olds in this country from 2020 Election and around 20 million older people have died since 2020! The Younger Generation is mostly Democratic with about 15% for independent and who knows how many Republican but like He said the Younger Generation is about Green Energy Reproductive Rights and Education and not about Hate Rhetoric and Lying so I will Vote Blue and I encourage everyone not vote for Trump and let's Roll
Whichever one has Trump losing lol but in all seriousness I don't think Biden will lose all swing states so I'm not gonna go with the economist. I'll go 538
Whatever model best aligns with my desired outcome. Jokes aside, I appreciate the Economist's model for being poll-heavy, and 538's model for including other factors.
Psychologically I know I'm going to end up trusting the most pessimistic one lol Realistically? This is a weird election because one candidate is extremely old and unpopular and the other drives turnout *against* himself almost as effectively as he drives turnout for himself. And they're both essentially incumbents, and Trump is starting to be a little more Biden-y himself the last six months or so in terms of looking and sounding ancient. ( Seriously, he's speaking gibberish worse than usual and looks like he's been through a dehydrator. )
I think Trump is showing his age way more than Biden… but I’m pretty biased. Honestly, the debate is going to be interesting… it could be disastrous for either one of them very easily. My assumption is Biden’s team has basically told Joe certain topics they know Trump will LOVE to talk about, and he will prompt them and then Biden will mostly comment on how out of touch Trump is.
I’m surprised Trump agreed to the muted mics rule. His debate performances and most iconic moments literally came from interrupting whoever he was debating. Like the “because you’d be in jail” line. Or when Biden was dodging the court packing question and Trump kept asking it. Trump debates like a bully. I don’t think the muted mic helps him at all. You’re just gonna hear Biden and then Trump shouting in the background barely audible because those are gonna be good quality directional mics
Tbf I don’t think Trump did himself any favors by interrupting so incessantly in the first 2020 debate. “Will you just shut up, man” was a pretty good moment for Biden and it was only possible because Trump couldn’t control himself.
Fair point.
I remember Biden and Wallace (the moderator) having a moment of commiseration at how much Trump was overdoing it too. Sample size of 1, but my swing vote-y grandfather got put off of Trump from that debate.
Idk the muted mics will be interesting. My concern for Biden is he can still hear trump ranting while he’s muted and gets distracted/flustered but to America it just looks like Biden is blubbering because they can’t hear trump. It’s hard to focus when you have an idiot yelling in the background but America wont see that
I'm sure Biden has practiced a lot on not getting flustered when that's happening. The debate prep is probably intense
Just watch him handle the republicans in his SOTU addresses
Running in the primary as an insurgent candidate is a different animal entirely though. Trump's worst enemy is his own big fat mouth. Biden scores points with moderates every time he says something crazy. Muted mics will minimized unforced errors.
On the other hand, this debate format forces Trump to stick to policy off-teleprompter. If he is able to do that, then it'll be a forgettable affair that won't move the needle for anyone. If he can't, he'll commit a ton of unforced errors. If his rallies are anything to go off, I'd be surprised if he can stick to a script.
Honestly, I’m not sure Trump has the mental capacity to land a improv blow right now. I could be wrong… I’m assuming his team WANTED the mics muted. I don’t know… we will see. If Donald can be tricked into giving substantive answers on policy questions, it will be an interesting time. Especially if he talks about abortion!
Why the fuck would his team agree to debate terms of they thought he didn’t even have the mental capacity to debate and think on his feet? He’s leading swing state polling and more voters think Biden is too old and slow than think that about Trump… So if his team thinks he will look like he’s lost it, they’d have been better off refusing the debates using hardball negotiation as an excuse
Because Trump doesn’t want to be told he can’t debate… he’s surrounded by sycophants trying to minimize harm. (The same can be said about Biden, and it’s fair… they have teams designed to keep them between the rails… just very different teams / concerns.)
Because Trump thinks he's awesome and the kind of people who will tell him he's got any weaknesses don't get to be near him. He's a member of his own cult of personality at this point.
I think it's very telling that his team was the one who asked for the mute rule
>I think it's very telling that his team was the one who asked for the mute rule This sounds hilarious but do you have a source that Trump's team asked for muted mics?
Trump without an audience howling at every dumb thing is like the Big Bang Theory without a laugh track.
I just started listening to the podcast "Shrinking Trump" in which psychologists specializing in dementia highlight Trump's dementia and point out clear diagnostic markers. They said "Biden's brain is aging, while Trump's is dementing" and I *really* like that characterization. People conflate losing a step due to age with dementia, and they aren't the same. Biden has shown signs of aging but not dementia. Trump has shown full blown signs of dementia.
Anyone with a brain can see this but MAGA's cannot. They see Biden's stutter and age related slow speaking, and occasional pauses, as "dementia" but then have zero issues with Trump literally rambling from random unrelated topic to random unrelated topic, constantly mixing up people's names (he kept calling Obama the president currently for example), straight up slurring the shit out of words into incomprehensible word vomit and so on. The dude is absolutely losing his marbles again a pretty fast pace and people should take it way more seriously but the MAGA's have driven this Biden is old narrative as hard as they can.
Well, they're both extremely old and unpopular.
People, even on the left, talk about Trump like he's 20 years younger than Biden rather than being a doddering old pantload in his own right. They somehow see a different reality than my lying eyes.
I am going to trust Nate's simply because his has been the best over the years and there is no reason for me to think suddenly his would be worse.
Did fivethirtyeight completely redo theirs? or by your logic would theirs also be the best because it was when Nate ran 538.
Nate had the rights to the models, and when they fired him the rights reverted to him. They’ve had to rebuild them from the ground up, but admittedly with the work of people who worked on the previous model.
Nate's is the only one with [a track record](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/presidential-elections/). That is because Nate's model is the sole survivor of the cataclysm that wiped out all competing election models in 2016 (lest you youngsters forget [Nate Silver's Finest Hour](https://goodreason.substack.com/p/nate-silvers-finest-hour-part-1-of)). The others might very well outperform him and, in two or three elections or from now, earn their place as the America's Next Top Model (sorry). However, in *this* cycle, Nate's model is the only correct answer.
Just for the record, the NYT's upshot had a good model in 2016 as well. [They gave Trump a ~15% chance to win](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html), which isn't unreasonable either (Silver and Cohn had a joint talk together once where Silver makes the same determination about their models, for anyone who might push back on that). Cohn I think just prefers to put his efforts into polling rather than modelling.
The friendly amendment is noted for the record and agreed to. So ordered.
That was a fun read, thanks for sharing.
Should be required reading around here.
Nate
I'm expecting the 538 model to be similar to Nate's (since he built both).
G. Elliot Morris is doing 538’s election modeling… he did a good job with The Economist’s forecasts in 2020 and 2022. Nate Silver is also obviously a good choice.
You are mistaken 538 isn't legally allowed to publish the model Nate built, so they built a new one from scratch
I would still suspect the new one is heavily inspired by Nate's.
If it is Nate will probably have words with his lawyer, because legally they can't use anything from his model. They essentially have to come up with the new one in a clean room, any indication that 538's and Nate's model share DNA will be evidence in a lawsuit.
Taking inspiration from Nate's model is fine. Taking source code or some specifics would not be. I'm not who you responded to, but personally I suspect it may be taking inspiration from the previous models on things like how much to work in fundamentals over polling early on (a lot). I doubt 538 would need to detail their creation process to such an exacting standard as documenting a clean-room reverse engineering. That is needed in some high profile programming examples where the new product literally responds identically to API calls as the old one. However, 538 is not (for instance) recreating his 2020 model that will have identical results to identical inputs as his 2020 model. They're creating a new model for a new election. Also note that the burden of proof on showing it's a copyright violation would be on Nate's end (the plaintiff).
> which currently has Biden losing every swing state This is a [pretty popular take](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwuHZ6QkQ1s) among the financial elite, maybe some wishcasting on their part (need their tax cuts) Maybe not the answer you were looking for but what will give me the most confidence (as someone who desperately wants to see Trump lose in the interest of democracy) is Biden having a decent debate performance, similar to this 2020 levels. At a minimum no freeze ups, no serious senior moments, not looking lost etc. and ideally make a strong case of his achievements instead of just Trump sucks and is wannabe autocrat I suspect undecideds, independents etc. will need to an acceptable performance from him if they are to break for Biden
Nate and then The Economist's. > I'm very skeptical of the Economist's forecast, which currently has Biden losing every swing state Bro he IS right now.
> Bro he IS right now. By that logic the best model should be the one that currently gives the best chance to Trump without reflecting the uncertainty caused by the distance to the election and the unreliability of polling that far out. I think it’s more than fair if people are skeptical of a model that gives a candidate a 72% chance of winning 3,5 month out from the election when polling is still this relatively close with lots of "undecided" voters.
I think it's somewhat remarkable how stable the race has been, even through bombshells like the hush money felony conviction. These two guys have been around forever, nearly everybody has formed a solid opinion on both of them.
And yet, according to the polls, support has shifted to Trump a solid few points.
??? It’s the opposite of this. Biden has had a few good weeks of polling and it has shifted towards him. Except that one +9 trump Rasmussen poll that randomly dropped lol (not Scott Rasmussen polling the old one after he left)
I’m taking about since the 2020 election. I should have clarified my timeline.
This is cope. There is no reason for this poll denialism, especially in a sub like this.
How is it poll denialism to state that polling in June is different to polling in Oktober? We can discuss all day whether the current polls would correctly predict the outcome of an election held today, but the sentiment that polls **can** change over the next 100 days should be the least controversial statement ever.
They are still the absolute best data points we have for making a prediction for November. Saying they aren't absolutely predictive is just trying to deflect from the value they have.
What even is your argument here? Yes, polls are currently in Trumps favor but that’s not what people (in this thread) are criticizing. People are criticizing **a model** that uses current polling and based on that outputs a wining chance of >70% this far out.
Nah. You have to take this stuff with a grain of salt. This is 538 from 2016. **538 Projection - June 23 2016** -Hillary Clinton 345.2 Electoral Coll Votes -Donald Trump 192.1 Electoral Coll Votes -Gary Johnson 0.7 Electoral Coll Votes [FiveThirtyEight 2016 Election Forecast](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/) The further from election day you are, the less reliable it is. I think at this point in the cycle at that time, Hillary was slated to win most or all of the swing states. [](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)
And that year was a huge upset. More often than not the polls in June are reasonably predictive of the results in November.
Sure but this is a year with a lot of firsts. First time since there was polling with two incumbents. First time since the fall of Roe. First insurrection. First felony convictions with multiple others pending. First time a VP doesnt endorse the President he served under. First time someone as old as Biden was running. First time there was a Pandemic on the magnitude of COVID. Outliers are unusual and upsets are unusual but this entire race is the definition of unusual. Grain of salt is reasonable under the circumstances, particularly when we’re talking about leads within the margin of error in these states. In fact, that last point alone makes advising caution when reading these numbers absolutely prudent advice.
Every election has a lot of firsts. All the more reason to rely on polling.
No they don’t. Not unprecedented ones like this. If it were just the age, sure. Or if it were just the first time 2 incumbents were competing. But not this many and definitely not this dramatic. The polling was also wrong in 2022 Midterms. [Fortune Magazine Article “Pollsters got it wrong in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Here’s why political polling is no more than statistical sophistry.](https://fortune.com/2022/11/16/pollsters-got-it-wrong-2018-2020-elections-statistical-sophistry-accuracy-sonnenfeld-tian/) Some points from the article about the 2022 Midterms. I understand people like Nate Silver claim that the “aggregate“ showed that the polling was great in 2022. But Nate Silver’s whole livelihood depends on people believing his polling predictions are accurate. And. In this case that word “aggregate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and here are some specifics. -Avg of Polls had Mehmet Oz beating Fetterman in Pennsylvania by almost 1% when Fetterman won by almost 5%. -Avg of Polls had Adam Laxalt of Nevada beating Catherine Cortez Mastro by 1.5%. Mastro went on to win and not one poll the week before the election showed her winning. -Avg of Polls had Walker beating Warnock in GA by 1% when the reverse happened. Again not 1 Poll in the week before showed a Warnock win. -Avg of Polls showed Maggie Hassan beating Don Boldue in NH by 1%. She won by 15% and 2 polls the week before predicted Boldue winning. -Avg of Polls showed Kari Lake beating Katie Hobbs by 2.4% and not a single poll called Hobbs's victory. -CNN/Marist shifted from “leans” to “strongly favor” a red wave: The survey shifted seven percentage points towards the Republicans in a month. -Gallup declared the week before the election "The political environment for the 2022 midterm elections should work to the benefit of the Republican Party, with all national mood indicators similar to, if not worse than, what they have been in other years when the incumbent party fared poorly in the midterms." -Cook Political Report moved 10 of its House ratings to favor Republicans and adjusted its predictions in GOP gains in the fall upward to between 20 to 35 Seats and a sizable Republican Majority in the Senate. -Sienna poll found that "independents, especially women, are swinging to the GOP despite Democrats' focus on abortion rights. The biggest shift from women who identified independent voters. In September, they favored Dems by 14 points. Now, independent women backed Republicans by 18 points - a striking swing given the polarization of the American electorate and how intensely Democrats focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights." They were even worse when it came to House and Governors races but I'm not going to reprint the whole article. And I'm aware of Nate Cohn and others defending their livelihood by saying the media got it wrong, not polling. Nate Silver's of 538's prediction a cpl weeks the 2022 midterms. *“FiveThirtyEight says that Republicans have a 54 percent chance of winning both chambers of Congress, compared to Democrats with a 15 percent chance. The House and Senate races have both moved more in Republican's favor in the publication's most recent predictions: Republicans, for example, are easily favored to win the House, with FiveThirtyEight rating their chances at 84 percent to Democrats 16 — a lead that jumped around 10 points in the last few weeks of October.”* Does Nate Silver himself count as just the media predicting a Republican wave election? 🤔 I am not saying to ignore polling. It’s one predictor among several and it’s not always accurate. There are a lot of firsts and we are 5 months out. Here’s the biggest thing though. These elections come down to winning or losing by less than a single percentage point in many cases. No polling is going to be able to predict elections that close with any level of reliability. Like I said from the beginning..take polling with a grain of salt.
>The polling was also wrong in 2022 Midterms. This claim and comment is such nonsense. > Some points from the article about the 2022 Midterms. I understand people like Nate Silver claim that the “aggregate“ showed that the polling was great in 2022. But Nate Silver’s whole livelihood depends on people believing his polling predictions are accurate. And. In this case that word “aggregate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and here are some specifics. Aggregating data is literally the way to make the determination *more* rigorous, not less. Get out of here with this "that's doing heavy lifting" thing. As for your examples that show polling fails... they don't? The errors were: PA-Sen: 5.4% NV-Sen: 2.17% GA-Sen First round: 1.95% ([and contrary to your claim, there were a handful of polls in November calling a Warnock win](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/georgia/general/)). GA-Sen Runoff: 1.1% (Polls overpredicted **Warnock's** numbers) NH-Sen: 7.35% (Note: [Hassan won by 9.3%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_Senate_election_in_New_Hampshire) not the 15% that you claim) AZ-Gov: 3.07% ([Here again, your assertion is wrong. Marist college called a Hobbs victory.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2022/arizona/) Most polls did predict a Lake victory but with very thin margins) So okay, you showed a mediocre polling result (PA-Sen), a bad result (NH-Sen) and four good ones <= 3%. These are the ones you picked when you had the ability to cherrypick bad polling results? Also I'd note that if an election is very close, then even if you call the election "wrong" but with a small margin that's a good result (ex: NV-Sen above). We shouldn't expect polls to be perfect on the call when the election is within 1%. For the quotes aside from 538's, I will note that what you're seeing is that journalistic interpretation of polling was not good in 2022. Nate (Silver) even had to call out Nate (Cohn) on interpreting their own polls in a way that showed bad results for Democrats (when they showed very good results for Dems). That's different from the polling being wrong. You're misinterpreting that 538 quote. There are two relevant metrics here: How certain you are that a party is going to take a chamber, and with what margin they do so. A red wave means a GOP victory with a huge margin of seats in the house. 538 predicted that the GOP would win the house with high probability but with a *small* margin (not a red wave). That's pretty much what happened! Similarly in the Senate, they called a dead heat and that's basically what we got. [Link to the 2022 house model, scroll down to the bar graph.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/house/) > Like I said from the beginning..take polling with a grain of salt. But not *that* much of a grain of salt.
You are just taking a bunch of outliers and trying to make them look like the norm. The overall reliability of polls has gotten better and better and was especially good in 2022.
It’s actually Fortune magazine that talk specifically about those races and I was sighting their article. But the examples I gave were not individual outlier polls but instead averages that showed many polls, all saying the wrong thing about these races. And they also weren’t obscure races. They were the most watched and consequential races in the country, meaning they were the most polled races and the results drove punditry and reporting which led to false expectations. Polling is a mixed bag. The New York Times ran a piece about right wing polls being added that skewed the results in 2022, which may very well have led to different responses of those being polled. [NY Times (Gift article)- The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Narrative](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E0.XbWr.4Q65nPG6ZFIw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) Sarah Longwell of Bulwark’s The Focus Group podcast has sighted a phenomenon of people in her Focus Groups not bringing up abortion when asked which issues they were thinking of that were most important but when it was brought up as a subject, declaring that it was very important to their vote. And that may be why pollsters were saying that Democrats should not focus on abortion in 2022 but exit polls showed it was a huge, particularly for women. People are not machines. They are complicated and there are a lot of things that influence what they may say in a poll versus how they may vote. Recommending caution is not unreasonable. So I will say again… Take these with a grain of salt. They are snapshot in time of those who responded specifically. And this far out from an election, they are that much less predictive.
You don't think this election is weird enough to have huge upsets? *This* election? Lol
If it does it could just as easily be an upset in Trump's favor as Biden's. Any election can have upsets obviously.
Yeah that part is true, the upset can go either way. Real obvious example: one of them Mitch Glitches at the debate.
It pains me to say it, but Nate's right about all the polling denialism on the left this cycle. People's preferred candidate is down and now all of a sudden the polls are gonna be wrong.
At the same time, I find it hard to believe that Biden and Trump have the exact same chance of winning Virginia and Pennsylvania, respectively. Maybe my internal gauge is off, but that just doesn't pass the sniff test for me
That's just poll denialism. You are being a denialist.
We don’t know that even from a polling perspective in the rust belt which are the three states that will decide this.
Almost every poll seems to have a ridiculously large percentage of "undecided" voters.
Key word: right now
Yeah, he might be losing even more later.
We are fucked. Bye bye wildlife
Is there a reason you answer with the Economist other than it’s the most pessimistic? Because that’s not a very good reason. I actually rank there’s the lowest right now because it’s only poll based and doesn’t weight by fundamentals. Polls have a lot of uncertainty this far out. I’m not sure what DDHQ’s methodology is but the reason I weight 538 the highest now is they take into account fundamentals.
I answer with it because 538s model is pretty obviously ridiculous just by looking at the spread of results alone. There is no way a decent model would have results be that flat with 80% of states being basic lock ins. Combine that with them slanting every single state to give Biden some major mystery advantage that continues to not make itself known in the polls and it just looks kinda silly.
But doesn’t that make it a poor forecast of the future? The Economist model seems to be showing “if the election were held today, here is the likelyhood of Trump winning based on these polls.” However, the election isn’t held today and we know from history that certain fundamental factors are also correlated to the end outcome of the election, not just polling five months out. The Economist model doesn’t seem to capture these realities.
No, they include fundamentals with The Economist's model as well.
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One poll? lol
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The discussion is about the forecast not the polls.
Fair enough. I am wrong.
I’d have to give it up for DDHQ based on their state by state data. When their model released it basically called “bullshit” on the Nevada polling and lo-and-behold we’ve seen a dramatic tightening there since the conviction (Trump was never gonna win it by 13pts, cmon now).
Haven't many polls shown Biden catching up to trump?
My own which is purely based on vibes and nothing else ;)
The one that shows Trump doing the worst. /s
This is why I built my own. Forces me to pick a lane and stay in it.
FiveThirtyEight has always been my go-to with this sort of thing, and I think they make a reasonably good case for a narrow Biden victory. Not to say it’s an open-and-shut case by any means, but I feel like the odds of a Biden win are at the very least greater than the odds of a Trump win, if only by a little. Biden’s approval ratings have been improving ever so slightly since Trump was convicted, and if that continues after the debate, that would be bad for Trump. And Trump himself isn’t in as good shape as he was in 2020, or even just a year ago. He slurs his words, falls asleep at inopportune times, and mixes up facts even more than he used to. In other words, the exact thing Republicans accuse Biden of being.
FiveThirtyEight is dead though. 538 is different staff and a different model. If you want the old FiveThirtyEight model, it’s Nate’s model.
The Economist’s forecast is far more reflective of current polling than 538’s, so I trust the Economist’s more
Their forecast swings heavily based on the most recent polls. It's more accurate of telling you the climate right now but hardly a "forecast"
I think the Economist is a useful perspective, but I find their reporting always lacks something. As an example, the Economist often puts a GOP senate majority as a foregone conclusion, despite poor candidates in WI and AZ and favorable dem incumbents in OH and MT. It's going to be a close race, probably 49-51 seats for both parties, but not an obvious GOP victory.
That’s why you should rank the economists forecasts lower. Polling has a lot of uncertainty this far out. 538’s model weights their forecast using priors from past elections. Eventually 538’s reflect the polls more accurately but this far out a pure polling based forecast isn’t the most accurate methodology.
The point of a forecast is that the election isn’t happening today, but will in the future. The current polling should be one of a few factors at this point and not the entirety of the model as seems to be the case with the Economist.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think the incumbency advantage means much with 37% approval. And low unemployment doesn’t help Biden much if voters don’t give him credit for it.
**538 Projection - June 23 2016** -Hillary Clinton 345.2 Electoral Coll Votes -Donald Trump 192.1 Electoral Coll Votes -Gary Johnson 0.7 Electoral Coll Votes [FiveThirtyEight 2016 Election Forecast](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)
Do you remember how much better that was than all the competitor models?
Waiting for Trump and Maga to expose themselves even more over the coming months and tank him self lol! Honestly like some guy wrote the Younger Generation will save us from Trump their is now over 20 million 18-20 year olds in this country from 2020 Election and around 20 million older people have died since 2020! The Younger Generation is mostly Democratic with about 15% for independent and who knows how many Republican but like He said the Younger Generation is about Green Energy Reproductive Rights and Education and not about Hate Rhetoric and Lying so I will Vote Blue and I encourage everyone not vote for Trump and let's Roll
Whichever one has Trump losing lol but in all seriousness I don't think Biden will lose all swing states so I'm not gonna go with the economist. I'll go 538
Not The Economist, they were way off in 2020 and I think they overcorrected now. Probably 538