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A few words about FiveThirtyEight

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Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#41

Post by nozzlegear »

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 largely agree with your points. Election modelers and forecasters really don't add much to the conversation after 2016, despite their attempts and even purported success at correcting their models and mistakes. The only election forecasting model that I take seriously these days is my own vibes based forecasting.

I have enjoyed the meta-drama around forecasting and modeling that pops up every election season though. It's hard to beat "[Nate Silver] doesn't have the faintest idea how to turn the keys," or "I ran 80,000 simulations."

¹ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-doesnt-have-the-faintest-i...

² https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-ran-80000-simulations

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#42

Post by tekla »

This is an absolute loss. 538 is amazing because it forced people to confront the cold hard data about polls surrounding politics and if you didn't like it, figure out what they did wrong or deal with it.

I'll never forget being called racist because I showed someone a 538 poll that said the presidential election was at best a toss-up to someone who was sure Kamala Harris would sweep the swing states.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#43

Post by mgfist »

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 that's because elections these days are incredibly close. It's like being upset that the best statistical answer to "who will win a coin toss" is "well it's 50/50".

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#44

Post by alisonatwork »

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…

538 in its final form was not about predicting election outcomes, it was about the business and science of polling, and contrasting factual data with the way people perceived related issues. It was an interesting outlet that helped illuminate the data side of political science, and at its best also provided some insight into the disconnect between how the general public thinks about a topic versus what is actually happening.

Disney killing 538 is broadly a loss for political journalism in the US, imo, because most other American media is more interested in sensationalism and hyping imaginary culture war issues, i.e. exacerbating exactly the disconnect with reality that 538 was trying to combat with its more evidence-based reporting. From my perspective the only place still doing this kind of work outside of niche, single-topic outlets like SCOTUSblog is ProPublica, and even they don't tend to be as politics-centric as 538 was. So I definitely will miss the site, and the pod. I don't have the stomach for most other American media.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#46

Post by nozzlegear »

rconti wrote: post #30
moffers wrote: post #21

I really enjoyed 538 in its heyday, and am glad to see Nate carry on with some of the work. I know he can be a polarizing in some circles, but keeping the data angle visible helps smooth some of the rougher edges of following politics sometimes.

I really enjoy Nate's podcast with Maria Konnikova - I read her book The Biggest Bluff a few years back and really enjoyed it, and them podcasting together is great. (Despite my feelings about never wanting to hear Malcolm Gladwell's voice ever again, as he's omnipresent in Pushkin podcast network ads, which seem to be the worst of the entire podcasting ecosystem). I never really followed the "Nate Silver" controvers…

> I never really followed the "Nate Silver" controversy after 2016, but it basically seems to boil down to a bunch of liberals being mad because they felt lied to for no apparent reason.

FWIW I don't think he's controversial because of the 2016 polling miss, most people who follow 538 understand what 538 does and that it wasn't his "fault." He's controversial because he posts scalding hot takes on Twitter and then goes to the mat to defend them. He also has a penchant for getting into Twitter beefs with other big names in his industry.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#47

Post by alisonatwork »

red_hare wrote: post #33

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 wa…

I will miss them too. I saw that Galen is already considering starting his own politics pod, but I fear that by immediately jumping into the Substack black hole it will just end up spiraling into the usual engagement-driven slide to the right: https://www.gdpolitics.com/p/my-thoughts-on-the-end-of-fivet...

Imo part of what made 538 work post-blogosphere heyday was exactly that it had backing from legacy media and the funding to continue sharing information with the public without a paywall. As soon as sites go behind a paywall they become a personification of the "media elite" stereotype, where only rich people have the privilege of being informed. But how otherwise to fund not just a cheerful host but a team of data scientists, editors etc in this day and age? Seems like the only interested billionaires do it with strings attached.

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#48

Post by prawn »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #32

it must be a wild experience to have a megacorp buy out your brain child, burn it to ashes and throw it away, and chase after the next shiny thing to slap ads on...

Nate: "I wasn’t technically laid off — but my existing contract was set to expire in June 2023, and there was profound mutual disinterest in negotiating a new deal."

Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight

#49

Post by wslack »

sdwr wrote: post #35
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.

I think aggregators are useful to tell us what actually moved voters in a campaign - the swings are visible even if baseline error is not.
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