Where were you on the night of Nov. 8, 2016? If you’re like many political junkies, you were watching election night coverage and wondering not whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would win but might Clinton do so well that she’d win in places like Texas and Arizona.
When she lost, many on both sides of the aisle were shocked. After all, forecasters gave her odds of winning that ranged from 70 to 99 percent. These statistical win-forecasts are increasingly prominent and widely shared — thanks in part to the work of sites like FiveThirtyEight, the Huffington Post, the New York Times Upshot and the Princeton Election Consortium.
How exactly do people understand these forecasts? Could this widespread confidence in a Clinton victory be due in part to increasing coverage of win forecasts? CONT.
Solomon Messing (Pew), Monkey Cage