At this moment of great division in America, with tempers flaring and tensions high, let us gather together as a people, as a nation, and discuss the one thing we can all agree on: The Atlanta Falcons are hot garbage. …
That the Falcons have this remarkable propensity for complete and total collapse is rewarding for me, as a devoted fan of a rival squad. But they are also useful as a real-world example of the limits of statistical forecasting — a lesson that, if learned at the ballot box, can have far greater implications. Yes, a team with a 99.9% chance of winning can lose. And a presidential candidate with a 99% chance of winning — or a 92% chance, an 85% chance, or a 71% chance. …
If you believe Yphtach Lelkes, Solomon Messing, and Sean Westwood, though, the risks of this sort of election forecasting goes beyond simple disappointment. The act of probabilistic forecasting — the sort of poll-aggregating statistical model most associated with Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight — can actually change an election’s outcome; we are democracy’s Schrödinger’s cat. In an op-ed for USA Today, these three political scientists (of Penn, Georgetown, and Dartmouth, respectively) argue that creating and publishing this sort of election forecasting models is actively harmful. CONT.
Joshua Benton, Nieman Journalism Lab