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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#51

Post by bryanlarsen »

rayiner wrote: post #34
function_seven wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

AFAICT the polls had a systemic error AND the 538 models included the possibility of a systemic error. It's really the only way that they could have given Trump a 28% chance in the first place.

Of course, the polls themselves also acknowledge the chance of a systemic error. They're reported similar to +/- 2% 19 times out of 20. They make no claim that the 19/20 of multiple polls are not correlated.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#52

Post by mey »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #49
bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

Another similar tool, with very different visualization. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-ma...

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

538's map re-simulates with the assumption that if x's goes in y direction, it implies a certain correlation to other states behavior and remodels things.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#53

Post by robrenaud »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28
splatcollision wrote: post #14

So the fate of the world rests in the hands of Floridians...

According to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-ma... If Biden wins Florida, then it's a >99% chance of a Biden victory. But if Trump wins Florida, it's a 58% chance of a Biden victory. So Florida is essential for Trump, but not for Biden. Biden has a 70% chance in Florida. So I wouldn't say the fate of the world rests in the hands of Floridians. However, an early Biden win in Florida could all…

You are giving a little bit too much weight on Florida in your analysis and perhaps confusing the casuality a little bit. It's not just directly that the Floridians have that much influence, it's that knowing the outcome in Florida tells one quite a bit about, the direction/magnitude of polling errors across the nation.

The 538 model factors in the outcome of Flordida's election with its own belief about the other states results. This is why if you select Biden wins Texas, the model believes the national result likely in landslide territory, the Biden expected electoral college outcome goes up +70, even though Texas only has 38 electors. If Biden wins Texas, he also probably wins in Georgia or maybe even Arizona.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

jstanley wrote: post #20
vanattab wrote: post #12

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?

> 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?

Technically, no, because it's possible for electoral votes to be split among more than two candidates, or for electoral votes to be invalid and not counted, etc.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#55

Post by dragontamer »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #49
bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

Another similar tool, with very different visualization. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-ma...

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

You're not thinking like a pollster. Florida is currently projected to be Biden's win. So what happens if Trump wins Florida?

It means the polls were wrong. Which means, you'd have to reconsider the state-polls in all the other states with that new information: that the country is slightly redder than polls today suggest.

If Trump wins Florida, then there's a "hidden vote", so to speak, that's pushing Trump's victory. Once you add that hypothetical hidden vote to the rest of the states, it becomes a closer race.

---------

The question is whether or not you think there's a hidden vote for Trump. For all we know, there's a hidden vote for Biden this year: but we won't know that until the polls close and the votes are tallied up.

In the absence of knowledge, the best we can do is find indications of cross-correlations and model those.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#56

Post by bhupy »

mey wrote: post #52
greenpizza13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

538's map re-simulates with the assumption that if x's goes in y direction, it implies a certain correlation to other states behavior and remodels things.

I found the 538 tool to be a fantastic way to get the intuition for Bayesian probabilities. Wish I had this intuition in college.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#57

Post by googthrowaway42 »

standardUser wrote: post #4
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).

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.

> They have been corrected.

Based on what are you saying this?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#58

Post by rayiner »

wtallis wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Yes, it does. FiveThirtyEight's modeling includes sources of uncertainty beyond just the margin of sampling error of the individual polls. They've tallied up how much the polling consensus erred for past elections, and have found that while it is not consistent which direction the polling consensus will err for a…

Thanks for the correction about 538's methodology. In that case, the "batting average" analogy isn't really a good one, because that implies random odds. When it comes to systemic errors, it's something that is unknown, but is theoretically knowable in advance. This election is so weird that I think there may be lots of systemic errors like that.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#59

Post by mey »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #18
standardUser wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

2020 is unprecedented with the various pandemic voting procedures (mail-in, early, and election day) across the country. If the models are wrong this year, that would be much more understandable than them being wrong in 2016.

It really is, https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html As of now, the early voting in Texas is 71% of what was voted in Texas in 2016.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#60

Post by bryanlarsen »

protomyth wrote: post #40
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.

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…

Yes, they screwed up the primary, then acknowledged and fixed their mistake. It's a large part of the reason they did much better than everyone else on the election.
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