Saturday, September 3, 2022

Thanks, Nate

If you're either a baseball fan or a politics junkie, you're familiar with Nate Silver. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of Fivethirtyeight. Nate first came to the public's attention when he put together software that tracked and predicted development of major league baseball players. But, much as we love the National Pastime here at GOTV, we feel Silver's most germane contribution was when, in 2008, he created an election forecasting system that accurately predicted the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in that year's Presidential election. In 2012, Nate's system aced it again, correctly anticipating the winner of all 50 states and DC.

Like many political prognosticators, Nate and Fivethirtyeight said Donald Trump had a lower likelihood of being elected than did Hillary Clinton; Fivethirtyeight gave the Donald a 28% chance of victory. But even this modest edge was significantly higher than that seen by most analysts. What's more, and again unlike most seers, FiveThirtyEight considered a Trump victory quite possible.

In 2020, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted Joe Biden's victory against the (thankfully now-former) President, forecasting 48 out of 50 states correctly.

Consider all this as prologue to Fivethirtyeight's soothsaying about the upcoming midterms. As far as GOTV understands, 538:

  • averages a number of well-respected political polls

  • at the same time, weights the results

Only then does it gaze into its crystal ball.

Which makes it a comfort that, as of today:

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