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A few words about FiveThirtyEight

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Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#31

Post by smt88 »

qqtt wrote: post #24

As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…

The purpose of statistical coverage of elections is to tell campaigns what their strengths and weaknesses are and to entertain the rest of us.

Since we don't run campaigns, the only value is entertainment. But that's not a negligible value for a lot of people.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#33

Post by red_hare »

I started listening to the 538 Politics podcast a lifetime ago when they did The Gerrymandering Project. The deep intertwining of history, intentions, and statistics made the narrative compelling. I learned so much about how our democracy worked that I would never have known otherwise.

So, I kept listening and kept learning. It was sometimes difficult, not because of their storytelling skills, but because the news was hard to consume. But the cold numbers helped me manage my emotions with clarity and not disengage.

There's something wonderful about journalism backed by data. The line between news and editorial has long been blurred beyond visibility. 538 was a rare example of a place where smart people could express strong opinions but always had to show the work behind their conclusions.

I'll miss 538. They were an amazing team.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#34

Post by mvdtnz »

lurk2 wrote: post #26
koolba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean polls like this that put Clinton 15% ahead? https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/20... I think there’s a stronger argument that those polls were intended to suppress Trump voters into thinking they were not the majority (when in fact they were).

Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes in 2016.

Are American elections decided on the popular vote?

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#35

Post by sdwr »

qqtt wrote: post #24

As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…

I kinda get your point - statistics suck the air out of the room. If regular people are talking about swing state poll margins of error instead of the actual issues, something's gone wrong.

538 democrasized the numbers that were the domain of political whizzes. I don't know if that's a good thing.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#36

Post by tbrownaw »

qqtt wrote: post #24

As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…

But how else will you know the correct emotional tone to use when complaining / gloating about the upcoming election with friends? Or know how seriously to take various prepper activities like stocking up on Twinkies in case the wrong team wins?

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#37

Post by ks2048 »

smt88 wrote: post #31
qqtt wrote: post #24

As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…

The purpose of statistical coverage of elections is to tell campaigns what their strengths and weaknesses are and to entertain the rest of us. Since we don't run campaigns, the only value is entertainment. But that's not a negligible value for a lot of people.

I agree it's mainly entertainment, but it also affects a lot of people "involved" in campaigns who aren't "running" them - mainly people donating their money or time.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#38

Post by koolba »

Gerardo1 wrote: post #22
koolba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean polls like this that put Clinton 15% ahead? https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/20... I think there’s a stronger argument that those polls were intended to suppress Trump voters into thinking they were not the majority (when in fact they were).

Are you saying that Trump won the popular vote in 2016?

He won the popular vote in 2016 in States like Wisconsin that for months said he was 10-15% behind in the polls. It’s my interpretation that those polls were wrong but the majority of the media didn’t care. They just wanted to push a narrative that supporting Trump was a fringe minority in those States, rather than the true majority that it was.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#40

Post by Uehreka »

qqtt wrote: post #24

As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…

I find the modeling super useful, many conventional media outlets still don’t properly communicate probabilities to their audience. For instance, I vividly remember the following exchange between Nate and some news anchor in during one of the 2016 conventions:

Anchor: So Nate, you say Trump has a 25% chance of winning, can you tell us exactly what that means?

Nate: Sure. So imagine I flipped two quarters, and they both came up heads. In that scenario, Trump wins.

Anchor: (shocked) Wait but that’s… that’s a thing that actually happens! You’re saying Trump has an actual chance of winning?

Nate: Well I’d rather be Hillary than Trump right now, but yes, people shouldn’t be that surprised if Trump wins, his chances aren’t insignificant.

I remember people in October still saying that Nate had to be wrong, that there was just no way Trump could win. There was even a growing market for what I would now call “cope forecasts” that “unskewed” the results to show that, really, Hillary had a 99% chance of winning, just like you knew she did (all of these people looked extremely foolish after the election was over).

I also feel like good models provide valuable pushback against media narratives that try to characterize the “closeness” of a race. In 2016, people wanted to hear that Trump had no chance of winning, but Nate/538 correctly pushed back that the race was actually pretty close and both candidates had a good chance. And he did the opposite in 2012: Pundits wanted to cast Obama and Romney as being neck-and-neck (which makes for a more exciting story) and Nate had the stats to push back that actually the race was not very close at all. If Romney had won in 2012, Nate would’ve had to eat crow, but Romney didn’t win.

Nate and 538 also do senate races, which are super valuable if you’re figuring out which candidates to donate money to. Often there are Democratic candidates in totally doomed races against Republicans I really don’t like, and the data helps me look at those situations and go “yeah I hate Lindsey Graham, but his challenger has no chance, I’m going to donate to the milquetoast Nevada senator whose race is on a knife’s edge instead”.

I could probably just look up polls, but the way Nate/538 process the polls into results with error bars and probabilities makes it a lot easier to reason about.

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