Elections Clinton vs Trump Polls thread (Clinton's Bounce Larger than Trump's)

Prediction on Win Margin for Election Night (Electoral College)

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LogicalInsanity said:
When was the last time Nate Silver was wrong about a presidential election?

I know he was dead on about the last two.
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He only started doing this in 2008 (he was in baseball before--he invented BP's PECOTA projection system).
 
LogicalInsanity said:
When was the last time Nate Silver was wrong about a presidential election?

I know he was dead on about the last two.
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Kinda why his call matters, at least to me.
He was wrong about Trump being the GOP candidate but that says more about the sorry state of the Party than it does about Silver.
Regardless of his initial successes, I'm still thinking Trump's not even gonna pull Romney numbers in the GE.
 
Nate Silver and his team---Trump's chances of being the Republican nominee:

oddspic-e1438804785711.jpg
 
Overpressure said:
Kinda why his call matters, at least to me.
He was wrong about Trump being the GOP candidate but that says more about the sorry state of the Party than it does about Silver.
Regardless of his initial successes, I'm still thinking Trump's not even gonna pull Romney numbers in the GE.
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personally, I don't think anyone saw Donald Trump coming...none of the "experts".

Even the GOP are wondering, "how the fuck did this happen?"
 
waiguoren said:
Nate Silver and his team---Trump's chances of being the Republican nominee:
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Good illustration of the point I made earlier. These calls weren't based on polling analysis. The calls that were based on polling analysis did way better.
 
LogicalInsanity said:
personally, I don't think anyone saw Donald Trump coming...none of the "experts".

Even the GOP are wondering, "how the fuck did this happen?"
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They know exactly how it happened: nobody real to run, nobody serious, and they're stuck with a say -whatever rich dude who mouths all the fear-based shit they've based their party on for a long while now.

The GOP's problem is the single issue voters they once prioritized.
 
Jack V Savage said:
Good illustration of the point I made earlier. These calls weren't based on polling analysis. The calls that were based on polling analysis did way better.
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Yes, way better. And way less impressive than what most people think he did. The popular view of Nate Silver as a predictive genius is totally unjustified.

He works harder then everyone else in assigning weights to various polls, so he often gets better results than a straight average would yield. It's not very impressive.
 
waiguoren said:
Yes, way better. And way less impressive than what most people think he did. The popular view of Nate Silver as a predictive genius is totally unjustified.

He works harder then everyone else in assigning weights to various polls, so he often gets better results than a straight average would yield. It's not very impressive.
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Sure. Silver isn't magic. He just does a better job than any mainstream source of analyzing the available, quantifiable evidence about political races. But that is way the fuck better than anything we see in the WR.
 
Jack V Savage said:
Read more closely. I wasn't pointing to any particular poll. I was making a general point. If, hypothetically, Clinton's actual margin is +7%, it wouldn't be unusual (or indicative of a polling conspiracy) to see anything from Clinton +15% to Trump +1%. That was in response to you jumping to that conclusion on the basis of a minor difference in two polls.

Your post indicates otherwise.

Again (sigh), you misunderstood my point. The fact that polling group A and polling group B have the differences in results that you outlined doesn't say anything at all about the existence of a polling conspiracy. The fact that you think it does is another example of the kind of flawed thinking that is too common here. The kind of thing that in another era would lead to you to think that a dead rooster on your lawn is a sign of a coming invasion.

Well, good luck with that. My instinct is to presume that an individual layperson's analysis of an extremely difficult and complex subject like how world events will cause some people to change their minds about who they'll vote for in November is completely worthless (and I wouldn't put much stock in expert analysis either). Betting odds and polling analysts are the best guides.

http://www.oddsshark.com/entertainment/us-presidential-odds-2016-futures

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-has-a-20-percent-chance-of-becoming-president/

Since both candidates are known to have a chance (a +260 underdog winning wouldn't be an Earth-shattering event) and humans generally have a great ability to interpret events as confirming their pre-existing biases, I don't expect anyone will learn anything here.

An interesting realization I had when discussing the state of the race with Judo was that if someone genuinely believes that polling is nearly irrelevant--particularly at this point in the race, but it applies broadly--no particular outcome could ever be seen as evidence that they're wrong! That works both for "polling skeptics" and "polling CTers" (the difference is just--"polls don't tell you anything" vs. "polls are not reported accurately"). If you look at results as a whole, that's a different story (you'll be forced to the conclusion that polling works), but people don't do that.

Silver is giving Trump a 20% chance. That's way better than "basically no chance."
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Oh, Holy Shillary, look at this wall-o-strawman.

Nowhere did I voice the opinion that polling isn't valid or useful. If I thought that way I wouldn't be posting polls so regularly. I voiced a casual suspicion that Rasmussen and CNN are potentially tampering with their population surveys because they seem to diverge so routinely towards opposite sides on the general polling spectrum. I didn't quote the margins of error or more closely explicate that, and as it turns out, herpaderp!!, I didn't even point to the correct polling bodies working off the top of my head. It's not CNN, but the Reuters/Ipsos that I was musing I'd noticed deviate more consistently, steeply from the Rasmussen. And I respect Reuters neutrality far above CNN/ABC, but it's interesting to watch.

It's not like polling being used as a political weapon is new. Hell, we saw those anti-exit bodies in Britain trying to circumvent the law by posting sham exit polls confirming the "remain" vote win to dissuade more exit voters from turning out.

Meanwhile, you've done nothing to investigate or dispel such a casual suspicion. As it turns out they aren't separated by two weeks. There's a 14-pt discrepancy for Clinton this week between the two (+10 Reuters, -4 Rasmussen), and these are in the pretty familiar ~2.5%-3.5% margins of error range. I don't feel like looking up the history of their differences in the national election, but if you really want to impress me, then run that down and calculate the average deviation between them over the course of the entire election, and compare it versus their average deviation against all other polls. Is their deviation consistently greater, and does this deviate beyond what would be expected as normal? If not, groovy, numbers tell truths.

Now that would be demonstrate formidable probability and statistics chops. That would impress me. In fact, an article on this comparing all the polling bodies and how they trend versus the RCP average is something I would love Nate Silver to do.

But he isn't here. You're here. Go be useful, for once.
 
Madmick said:
Oh, Holy Shillary, look at this wall-o-strawman.
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I don't think you know what "strawman" means.

Madmick said:
I voiced a casual suspicion that Rasmussen and CNN are potentially tampering with their population surveys because they seem to diverge so routinely towards opposite sides on the general polling spectrum.
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The suspicion is crazy, and what you actually said was: "It becoming difficult not to suspect some sort of manipulation when the CNN polls have Hillary at +12 and the Rasmussen polls have Trump at +4 within a few weeks of each other." That is, you didn't reference "routine" differences; you referenced a single one. It is known that different polls have "house effects"--that they use different methods that produce (predictable) differences in results. That's not a result of some kind of nefarious conspiracy; it's just that different orgs have different ideas about how to get the most accurate results.

Madmick said:
It's not like polling being used as a political weapon is new. Hell, we saw those anti-exit bodies in Britain trying to circumvent the law by posting sham exit polls confirming the "remain" vote win to dissuade more exit voters from turning out.
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LOL! Holy moly, you are a nutter. Not only are you factually wrong here (it's actually illegal to publish exit-poll results in the UK before the polls close), but you're not even positing a plausible CT.
 
Jack V Savage said:
The suspicion is crazy, and what you actually said was: "It becoming difficult not to suspect some sort of manipulation when the CNN polls have Hillary at +12 and the Rasmussen polls have Trump at +4 within a few weeks of each other." That is, you didn't reference "routine" differences; you referenced a single one.
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This is a fair point. I didn't add the context that I was making this observation within the history of my casual observation on that matter.

A casual observation that-- although probably baseless-- has yet to be addressed. Perhaps I'll shoot a tweet at Nate Silver. I'm actually quite fascinated to see deviation trends by polling body versus the RCP average over the course of entire elections. I'm not capable of that math. Clearly you aren't, either.
LOL! Holy moly, you are a nutter. Not only are you factually wrong here (it's actually illegal to publish exit-poll results in the UK before the polls close), but you're not even positing a plausible CT.
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That's why I said "sham" exit polls and added the phrase "to circumvent the law"; LOL, how could it not be obvious from that latter clause that I was aware of the law? I posted a very example of such a poll that was released in the middle of polling in the BREXIT thread. Should be my first post in it.

Poor JVS. You were doing so well for the first time in so, so, so long against me, desperately pouncing on my casual and careless expression of skepticism, only to find yourself staring up at the ceiling again.
 
Madmick said:
This is a fair point. I didn't add the context that I was making this observation within the history of my casual observation on that matter.

A casual observation that-- although probably baseless-- has yet to be addressed. Perhaps I'll shoot a tweet at Nate Silver. I'm actually quite fascinated to see deviation trends by polling body versus the RCP average over the course of entire elections. I'm not capable of that math. Clearly you aren't, either.

That's why I said "sham" exit polls and added the phrase "to circumvent the law"; LOL, how could it not be obvious from that latter clause that I was aware of the law? I posted a very example of such a poll that was released in the middle of polling in the BREXIT thread. Should be my first post in it.

Poor JVS. You were doing so well for the first time in so, so, so long against me, desperately pouncing on my casual and careless expression of skepticism, only to find yourself staring up at the ceiling again.
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I think it is silly to talk about "winners" in these sorts of discussions but if there were one, you got curb stomped.
 
Overpressure said:
Interesting that Nate Silver is giving Trump basically no chance.
Between his call and the polls all summer, we'll get a pretty clear picture of how things will pan out.
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Nate's been off lately. But keep hoping!
 
Cmart said:
Nate's been off lately. But keep hoping!
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Silver's commentary has been off, his models haven't. Their polls only model correctly predicted 91% of primaries and the "polls-plus" 89%. That's very good. They also state that the frequency of upsets is what was expected. Both of those points highlight that 538's predictions were actually quite good.

Silver discusses the failure of 538 commentary at length here:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/
It's a good read because it indirectly/unintentionally highlights why 538 is very useful but why one should always be careful in what one takes away from different sources. What's interesting to me is that their major estimates of Trump's chances weren't based on any sort of statistical model--and in that article he explains why. Personally I was a bit lazy and read the blurbs from 538 but didn't always read the article to find out that their estimates weren't based on statistical models--it's actually very aggravating that they published estimates in the absence of that.
 
UpaLoompa said:
It's a good read because it indirectly/unintentionally highlights why 538 is very useful but why one should always be careful in what one takes away from different sources. What's interesting to me is that their major estimates of Trump's chances weren't based on any sort of statistical model--and in that article he explains why. Personally I was a bit lazy and read the blurbs from 538 but didn't always read the article to find out that their estimates weren't based on statistical models--it's actually very aggravating that they published estimates in the absence of that.
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This is exactly why I was so critical of Silver at the time for his primary predictions. I tried to explain this but a lot of people here didn't listen.
 
Fawlty said:
This is exactly why I was so critical of Silver at the time for his primary predictions. I tried to explain this but a lot of people here didn't listen.
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I'll admit I mainly just read the titles.
 
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