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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#31

Post by pwinnski »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #10
protomyth wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Trump beat any overwhelming odds. I think the polling was beyond horrible. A bit too many people put too much faith in the NYT and 538's methodology. I wouldn't expect the map to change too much between elections. Now, the 2022 (House & some Senate) and 2024 Presidential will be different because of the change in districting and electoral votes per state caused by the census.

I thought 538 gave Trump a 25% chance to win in 2016? Sure, he wasn't the favorite, but that's like the probability of a typical batter getting a hit in baseball. It isn't what happens in most at-bats, but it shouldn't be a big surprise either.

Correct. On Election Day 2016, they had him at 28.6%.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#33

Post by bryanlarsen »

roywiggins wrote: post #15
weakfish wrote: post #6

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.

You remember correctly. "538 thought Clinton had a lock on it" is a meme, but it doesn't seem grounded in anything.

538 gave Clinton an 86% chance for a brief period of time after the Access Hollywood tapes but before Comey's press conference. I wouldn't call that a lock, but maybe some would.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#34

Post by rayiner »

function_seven wrote: post #21
protomyth wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Trump beat any overwhelming odds. I think the polling was beyond horrible. A bit too many people put too much faith in the NYT and 538's methodology. I wouldn't expect the map to change too much between elections. Now, the 2022 (House & some Senate) and 2024 Presidential will be different because of the change in districting and electoral votes per state caused by the census.

538 analyzed the various polls--and corrected for their methodologies and predictive power--just fine! A sibling comment brings up a batter, and I think that's a great analogy. A good batter has a batting average of, say 0.273. Nobody is shocked when they hit the ball! 538 gave a similar chance to Trump. He hit the ball.

Yes and no. 538 published an article after the election explaining that there were in fact systemic errors in the models; the result wasn't just random probability within models that were otherwise correct: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-...

> While the errors were nationwide, they were spread unevenly. The more whites without college degrees were in a state, the more Trump outperformed his FiveThirtyEight polls-only adjusted polling average,1 suggesting the polls underestimated his support with that group. And the bigger the lead we forecast for Trump, the more he outperformed his polls.2 In the average state won by Trump, the polls missed by an average of 7.4 percentage points (in either direction); in Clinton states, they missed by an average of 3.7 points. It’s typical for polls to miss in states that aren’t close, though. The most important concentration of polling errors was regional: Polls understated Trump’s margin by 4 points or more in a group of Midwestern states that he was expected to mostly lose but mostly won: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

If the errors had been random rather than systematic, it would have been statistically quite unlikely for Trump to have swept all of those midwestern states.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33
roywiggins wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You remember correctly. "538 thought Clinton had a lock on it" is a meme, but it doesn't seem grounded in anything.

538 gave Clinton an 86% chance for a brief period of time after the Access Hollywood tapes but before Comey's press conference. I wouldn't call that a lock, but maybe some would.

86% is about a one in seven chance of not happening. It's very much not what anyone would treat as a lock on anything that had important consequences.

I grant you plenty of people have sufficient trouble understanding probabilities that they would mistake 86% for a lock, though.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#36

Post by dragontamer »

" If Biden wins Florida and New Hampshire but Trump wins Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nevada then Biden wins "

I like the diagram, but it seems like a lot of superfluous words are going on in the "English translation" at the top.

How about "If Biden wins Florida and New Hampshire, Biden Wins" ?? It doesn't matter if "Trump wins Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nevada" in that case, so its just meaningless.

------------

Another example:

If Trump wins Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona but Biden wins Georgia, Wisconsin, and Iowa then Biden wins

Clearly, the "Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona" statement is meaningless in this example. All that matter is "If Biden wins Georgia, Wisconsin, and Iowa, then Biden wins".

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#37

Post by kenjackson »

rayiner wrote: post #5
atonse wrote: post #2

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).

I think Biden will win by a big margin, but I suspect there is a lot more uncertainty baked into the polls than the headline number shows. Polling involves lots of assumptions and making adjustments based on expected turnout of different demographic groups and people with different voter registrations. 95% of people called do not take polls, so it’s not just a truly random sampling like people assume. This year, ther…

> It does not address the possibility that there are systematic methodological shortcomings in the polls.

I think 538 does take this into account in terms of the uncertainty, which plays into their probabilities. I know they certainly talk about this.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#40

Post by protomyth »

weakfish wrote: post #6
protomyth wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Trump beat any overwhelming odds. I think the polling was beyond horrible. A bit too many people put too much faith in the NYT and 538's methodology. I wouldn't expect the map to change too much between elections. Now, the 2022 (House & some Senate) and 2024 Presidential will be different because of the change in districting and electoral votes per state caused by the census.

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 they were doing. It did not. IDP/TIPP and USC/LA Times got it right.

I get that 538 is an HN favorite, but they are too damn politically biased for their own good.

1) https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pund...

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