Election forecasters took a lot of blame for getting the outcome of the presidential race wrong. But Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, says the outrage is misplaced because journalists and the public were warned that the race was close. He admits that while there were polling errors, they weren’t out […] Read more »
Media Culpa? The Press and the Election Result
Since Tuesday night, there has been a lot of handwringing about how the media, with all its fancy analytics, failed to foresee Donald Trump’s victory. … Whatever went wrong with the polls in this country, they inevitably colored perceptions. … The prediction models didn’t help things. On Tuesday morning, FiveThirtyEight’s […] Read more »
Election surprise, and three ways of thinking about probability
Background: Hillary Clinton was given a 65% or 80% or 90% chance of winning the electoral college. She lost. Naive view: The poll-based models and the prediction markets said Clinton would win, and she lost. The models are wrong! CONT. Andrew Gelman, Columbia U. Read more »
What the Polls Were Never Going to Reveal
… While many Americans are surprised by the result, the people who populate the punditry class are truly shocked by it. I’m one of them. Many of us relied on a set of polls that were structurally off by two or three points in favor of Clinton, and exit polls […] Read more »
Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else
Based on what most of us would have thought possible a year or two ago, the election of Donald Trump was one of the most shocking events in American political history. But it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise based on the polls — at least if you […] Read more »
In record numbers, Latinos voted overwhelmingly against Trump. We did the research.
What can we learn about the 2016 election from the Latino Decisions Election Eve Poll (about which more below)? Two things stand out. On Nov. 8, Latino turnout was up significantly compared with 2012. And Latinos gave a substantial share of their votes — we estimate 79 percent — to […] Read more »