Silver was right and very publicly challenged Wang to bet him on the results. But that’s what makes Silver good, he does attempt to go beyond the polls and figure out where things are headed. Even when Romney enjoyed a brief lead, Silver still had Obama as the heavy favorite, which I took issue with. But it showed that Silver wasn’t just going with the national polling averages.
And CNN exit polls are so far showing I amwrong in Georgia. Rubio getting his butt kicked.
But Romney never had a lead, except perhaps in a few national polls – in the swing state polls, Obama always led by a significant margin.
That’s what steered me wrong, aside from the skewed polls stuff. I thought that a popular vote loss/electoral vote win for Obama was very unlikely, so I put my faith in Gallup and Rasmussen, who showed the race tied or with Romney ahead pretty consistently right up till the end.
I’ve learned from that, although polls can actually be skewed. They were in 2014(against Republicans). There’s always a margin of error. The trick as a prognosticator is to read the tea leaves, figure out where the conventional data is pointing in the wrong direction.
If it’s a trick, it’s one that Silver is better than anyone at so far.
Sanders wins Vermont! I’m a genius!
And although I didn’t predict it, the exit polls seem to indicate a surprise Kasich win in Vermont.
Come on, man. Less than 1% of the vote and now Trump is ahead. Jackshit is indicated.
It’s 1% of the vote. At this point, the exit polls are more reliable than the minimal vote count.
Rubio’s making it close in VA too. The polls showed him down 14, he’s down by 4. He may have disappointed you in GA but he’s coming on strong in VA.
Speaking of upsets, Cruz has a clear lead in the exit polling in Oklahoma. He was 3rd in the RCP average, down by double digits to Trump.
I didn’t see that one coming. Sometimes it’s awesome to be wrong.
Sigh, Rubio did a heck of a lot better than the polling, but fell just short in Virginia. I lose that one, but dammit I deserve some bonus points for seeing that he was going to outperform there!
So guess where the polls were most off? Oklahoma. RCP average said Trump and Clinton, it’s actually Cruz and Sanders.
Not a terrible day for me. Andy will probably just tally my rights and wrongs, which aren’t bad today, but it should be noted that the two predictions Lance took issue with, Rubio in VA and Sanders in MA, that in both cases the guys I picked outperformed their polling substantially.
That’s what I mean by making predictions that aren’t slam dunks. I was wrong about the end result, but it wasn’t a fantasy that I saw things a little differently from the pollsters in those races. Sanders lost by only 2-3 when he was supposed to lose by six, and Rubio lost by 3 when he was supposed to lose by 14.
If we’re going by point spreads, I did really good.
You predicted Trump would be irrelevant. He’s going to be your nominee. Compared to missing that one, nothing else matters.
Before Super Tuesday, adaher’s total was 5 out of 12. Here are his Super Tuesday predictions:
For Sanders, that’s 3 correct predictions and 1 incorrect prediction (MA).
For the Republicans, that’s 7 correct predictions and 4 incorrect (VA, OK, AK, and Cruz didn’t drop out).
Super Tuesday count is 10 out of 15 predictions.
Total to date is 15 out of 27 predictions.
My analysis: the Super Tuesday predictions were made in a reasonable time frame (about a week before the contests). The pre-Super Tuesday predictions were not made in a reasonable time frame – long before the actual contests. Predictions that early are no more than guesses, really, and no more likely to be right than guesses. When adaher looks at upcoming contests in the short term, his predictions can be okay – 10 out of 15 isn’t great, but it’s not terrible. But when adaher tries to look long into the future and prognosticate, he does little better than a dice throw.
In terms of trying to make a long-range prediction about contests that are a long way off, I doubt many of us could do much better, but perhaps we were wise enough not to try. If there’s a lesson, I think it’s don’t bother trying to make long range election predictions – they’re little better than guesses, most of the time. Even though I think Hillary has an advantage and will be more likely to defeat Trump than be defeated, I won’t predict it at this time; too much could change, and too many things could happen.
I’ll make one prediction, though – as long as adaher sticks to relatively short-term predictions for the rest of the cycle, he’ll do okay. If he tries to make long range predictions about states or contests many weeks or months away, he will do poorly.
Not such a safe prediction after all! That’s another one you got wrong!
Kidding! 
My prediction 03.02.2016;
Right now, my money is on Mrs. Clinton for the win. If Mr. Trump gets the nomination, a fractured GOP will not elect him. If he does not get the nomination, he will run third party due to his enormous ego. All he needs to do at this point is to peel off ten to fifteen percent of the GOP vote and Mrs. Clinton wins.
I predict he won’t win third party. He’s refused to spend his money to this point and it’s hard to see how he gets on the ballot everywhere without a major investment. Free media can get you votes, but it can’t get you on the ballot.
Of course, I’ve been wrong about almost everything regarding Trump, so we’ll see.
I didn’t really take issue with those predictions. I just pointed out that those two were the most likely to be incorrect and they were, in fact, incorrect. I’ll also point out that I did not call out your prediction that Rubio would win Minnesota. Based on available evidence (almost none) that looked more likely than your VA and MA predictions.
I’ll add this. If you would have predicted Cruz winning Oklahoma (RCP poll data) I would have ridiculed that prediction (and looked foolish later).
Does anyone have any idea how that happened? The Dem side is pretty weird in OK as well because Sanders plus Clinton falls well short of 100% (much more so than other states).
Is Oklahoma just goofy is there something that makes sense under the surface?
I think there just wasn’t that much good polling in OK. I’ll await Nate Silver’s post mortem.