I retract the poll data I posted yesterday from 538. That data gave Biden a 53% chance of winning. Nate Silver, formerly at 538, explains the problem with the model that 538 is using:
When the Silver Bulletin presidential forecast launched last month, I said I wasn’t interested in prosecuting the “model wars”, meaning having big public debates about forecasting methodology. One reason is that I find these arguments tiresome: I first published an election model in 2008, and it’s been the same debates pretty much ever since. But there’s also a more pragmatic consideration. If I think a model is unsound, I worry about elevating it by giving it even more attention. Because I do believe in probabilities, after all. Joe Biden’s chance of winning another term is hard to forecast because (1) he might still drop out and (2) he’s probably not capable of running the sort of normal campaign the model implicitly assumes he can. Biden’s chances are probably lower than the current 28 percent in the Silver Bulletin forecast, in other words. But they’re certainly not zero. I worry about a news cycle on Nov. 6 when an unsound model is validated because it “won” the model wars based on a sample size of one election.
What also makes this awkward is that the model I’m going to criticize comes from the site I used to work for, 538. I’m sure newsletter readers will know this, but what was formerly the FiveThirtyEight model1 from 2008-2022 is now the Silver Bulletin model — I retained the IP when I left Disney. But, I’m not sure the rest of the world knows that. (I still sometimes run into people who think FiveThirtyEight is affiliated with the New York Times, which it hasn’t been since 2013.) I worry a little bit about a Naomi Klein / Naomi Wolf situation in which criticism of the 538 model rebounds back on me.
Let’s also state the other and more obvious conflicts here: I publish a competing product. And I’m not a fan of the guy 538 hired to develop its new model, G. Elliott Morris.
However, various high-profile reporters have contacted me for comment. And I think I have a professional obligation to speak up. Not all that many people have explored the inner workings of models like these. Moreover, we’re in an unusual circumstance where the models themselves have become part of the debate about what Biden should do. For instance, the 538 model — which showed Biden with a 53 percent chance of winning as of Thursday afternoon — has been cited by Biden defenders like Ron Klain, the former White House Chief of Staff, as a reason that Biden should stay in the race: ....I’m not sure that Klain or anyone else should get their hopes up from the 538 model, however. At best, all it’s really saying is that Biden will probably win because he’s an incumbent: the polls have very little influence on the 538 forecast at this point. And at worst, it might be buggy. It’s not easy to understand what it’s doing or why it’s doing it.
I thought the 538 model seemed basically reasonable when it was first published in June, showing the race as a toss-up. But its behavior since the debate — Biden has actually gained ground in their forecast over the past few weeks even though their polling average has moved toward Trump by 2 points! — raises a lot of questions. This may be by design — Morris seems to believe it’s too early to really look at the polls at all. But If my model was behaving like this, I’d be concerned.
Moreover, some of the internal workings of the model are strange, or at least appear that way based on the information Morris has made publicly available.
I retract this
The prediction model is possibly flawed
The rest of Nate’s long post is fascinating about weighing poll data vs two fundamentals (incumbency and the economy), but not necessary to explain my retraction.
This prediction model kerfuffle raises a question. Based on my limited knowledge about the science of prediction probably being a ridiculously dangerous thing, is predicting a presidential election outcome fundamentally different than predicting other events? This prediction model flaw issue makes no sense to me unless presidential elections are fundamentally different than other kinds of events.
We all recall my wonderful blog post blithering about the predictive power of a moderately sophisticated algorithm called autoregressive distributed lag. Don’t recall it? Well, it’s here if you’re interested. It did really well at predicting future events compared to both human experts and confident blowhards who make their living telling the public false predictions about basically everything. We live in strange times.
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From the What Fresh Hell is This Now? Files: The AP reports the most amazing, mind-blowing thing about Hunter Biden one could ever imagine -- Aileen Cannon has bailed him out of his federal legal troubles 😮:
Hunter Biden seeks dismissal of tax, gun cases,citing decision to toss Trump’s classified docs casePresident Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, asked federal judges on Thursday to dismiss tax and gun cases against him, citing a ruling in Florida this week that threw out a separate prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
The requests in federal court in Delaware and California underscore the potential ramifications of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal Monday of the classified documents case against Trump and the possibility that it could unsettle the legal landscape surrounding Justice Department special counsels.
Both Hunter Biden and Trump were prosecuted by special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. In dismissing the Trump case, Cannon ruled that the appointment of the special counsel who prosecuted Trump, Jack Smith, violated the Constitution because he was appointed directly to the position by Garland instead of being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
In a pair of filings Thursday, lawyers for Hunter Biden said the same logic should apply in his cases and should result in the dismissal of a pending tax prosecution in Los Angeles — currently set for trial in September — and a separate firearm case in Delaware, in which Hunter Biden was convicted in June of three felony charges.
Presumably, the judge on Hunter’s federal lawsuit is a normal, actual judge, not a loose Republican Party cannon like Aileen. In that case, the judge would reject Hunter’s plea and his prosecution would probably carry on. His attorneys will probably appeal to the local federal appeals court and they might apply for a stay of prosecution until the legal question is ultimately resolved by the US supreme court in a year or two (or maybe three). Hunter, like DJT will probably die of old age before the courts figure out what the hell is going on with the rule of law.
Our legal system has degenerated into a stupid fustercluck. What a mess.
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The New Republic reports that Republican racists are raising a ruckus -- Rut Roh!:
MAGA Enters Racist Meltdown ModeOver J.D. Vance’s WifeThe past week has seen an outpouring of hate from the far right over the wife of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. The unremarkable fact that Vance is married to Usha Vance, a woman of Indian heritage, has become a fixation for white nationalists online.
Following Monday’s announcement of Vance as Trump’s running mate, white nationalist “groyper” Nick Fuentes seemed to enter a meltdown on his broadcast, saying, “What kind of man marries somebody that isn’t a Christian? What kind of man marries somebody named Usha? Clearly, he doesn’t value his racial identity, his heritage. Clearly, he doesn’t value his religion. He doesn’t marry a woman that professes Jesus Christ? What does that say about him?”
Jaden McNeil, another white nationalist activist, posted a picture of Vance, his wife, and their newborn with the caption, “I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration.” Other prominent far-right accounts have similarly bemoaned Vance’s multiracial family, with replies awash in bigotry. “There is an obvious Indian coup taking place in the US right before our eyes,” whined far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters.
Considering the flagrant racism of the far right, this reaction may not shock, but it certainly appalls. [Well said, if I do say so myself!] It’s a reminder that there are factions of Trump’s base that view diversity in their party, and the country, with horror. (Recall Ann Coulter telling Vivek Ramaswamy that she would not vote for him because he is Indian.)
It’s good to know that most of America’s bigots, racists, misogynists, pedophiles, perverts, crackpots, creeps, cranks and Christian theocrats are now comfortably ensconced in the radical authoritarian, morally rotted Republican Party. Wheee!! What great fun.
Q: What the hell is a groyper?
Lest we forget, or never knew, here are some patriotic Trump supporters:
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