view the rest of the comments
politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
538 has been unreliable for several election cycles, though..
I think people need to stop thinking that "most likely outcome" = prediction. They gave Trump a 1/4 chance of winning in 2016, which is far from impossible and better than most were saying. Their latest trackers have really emphasized the probability aspect of things, rather than the expected vote share.
They actually did a project about this. Here's how close they were with US House predictions: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/us-house-elections/ (you can look up other elections but since there are so many to work with here I thought it was a good place to start)
They gave him a 1/4, with a bunch of caveats like "If we see these midwest states start trending red, that's a good sign for Biden". And then Hillary lost Pennsylvania, and 538 basically called it for Trump on the spot.
But polling in 2016 was generally stronger, because we had more professional pollsters and fewer partisan polling operations. Modern polling is increasingly polluted by unreliable narrators, push polls, and polling-as-propaganda for partisan news sites. The problem with 538, structurally speaking, was that it got people to stop doing their own polls and fixate on aggregates to the exclusive of internal research. This, combined with the ongoing consolidation of domestic media markets, means we have fewer and fewer people doing professional polling research.
So the data firms like 538 use has degraded. The interest in their results has faded, as a consequence. And the trend towards eye-polling click-bait headlines has resulted in pollers being defunded in favor of automated screen scrappers and headline generator scripts.
I mean, they were only actually reliable in 2008, and that's looking more and more like a fluke.
True.
Are they more accurate than other analyses, though? What is the magnitude of the error?