61–70 of 373 posts
Really cool use of data visualization! Nice work! What ever happens I just pray we don't hit one of the paths ending in a unfilled circle.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?
It's still a problem if no candidate gets plurality but not a majority.
Really cool use of data visualization! Nice work! What ever happens I just pray we don't hit one of the paths ending in a unfilled circle.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought 538 was one of the few outlets to give Trump a decent chance? Granted, I was 16 but I seem to remember that being the case.
They gave Trump 28.6 which was beyond problematic. You can give baseball analogies but they were wrong. All that bad polling lead into people believing some really dumb things about the election. They've published several articles since then on why the polling is better now. Heck, even their article on being more bullish was tepid. The pre-election article they wrote[1] should have made them actually examine what the…
I don't see where you've said anything that comes close to supporting such a strong assertion.
2016 was FiveThirtyEight's third time forecasting a presidential election. Getting one of those three "wrong" when they gave themselves slightly less than one in three chances of getting the 2016 election "wrong" doesn't seem at all surprising. It sounds like you're demanding that FiveThirtyEight make their forecasts deliberately underconfident but still expecting them to call the correct winner every time.
Really cool use of data visualization! Nice work! What ever happens I just pray we don't hit one of the paths ending in a unfilled circle.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?
Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).
He "beat the odds" because most models were incorrect. They have been corrected. Are the models wrong again? Maybe, but it would need to be in a totally different way, and by a much larger margin than in 2016.
Also, the last person ANYONE should be listening to is 538/Nate Silver. People need to remember that before he was in politics, he used to be in sports betting but because his "models" were so terrible, he got pushed out of the industry. Nothings changed and he is still as wrong as ever.
If HN wants some high quality punditry, look at People's Pundit and their shows, Barnes Law (20 year election better wbo has never failed to make a profit in a cycle), and Cotto Gotfried. Stay away from the Nate Silvers and the Nate Cohns, terrible data and terrible forecasts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.
We could add a senator. Give it to DC.
That's literally the one thing you cannot do, even by Constitutional Amendment (though arguably you can by two, but that's definitely hacking around the clear intent to exploit a possible loophole in the wording.)
OTOH, you could just explicitly give DC an extra electoral vote (or give either one or three or any other odd number of electoral votes to US citizens not resident in a state or D.C., or to any other particular US territory whose resident citizens are currently unrepresented in Presidential elections.)
So the fate of the world rests in the hands of Floridians...
Really cool use of data visualization! Nice work! What ever happens I just pray we don't hit one of the paths ending in a unfilled circle.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?
If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties.
If you gave DC fewer EC votes, then that just gives them even less representation, and they are already underrepresented.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought 538 was one of the few outlets to give Trump a decent chance? Granted, I was 16 but I seem to remember that being the case.
They gave Trump 28.6 which was beyond problematic. You can give baseball analogies but they were wrong. All that bad polling lead into people believing some really dumb things about the election. They've published several articles since then on why the polling is better now. Heck, even their article on being more bullish was tepid. The pre-election article they wrote[1] should have made them actually examine what the…
Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).
He "beat the odds" because most models were incorrect. They have been corrected. Are the models wrong again? Maybe, but it would need to be in a totally different way, and by a much larger margin than in 2016.