# Is Nate Silver just in an "I can never be wrong" position. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 30, 2012, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287 "2012-10-30T02:19:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/22 "2012-10-30T04:59:36Z")
Nate Silver is [a limp wristed queer](http://www.allvoices.com/news/13276576-dont-listen-to-nate-silvers-gay-polls-says-superstar-conservative-pollster). You can ignore his faggoty polls. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/23 "2012-10-30T05:03:35Z")
Ultimately the 538 model depends on the polls. If the polls are wrong the model will be wrong. The model does have some bells and whistles but they aren’t enough to overcome a systematic problem in the polls. 538’s final state-by-state prediction is probably going to be very close to that arrived by taking a simple average of the last 10 polls in every state. ``` A sophisticated modeling approach is more useful in races where polling is fairly light like primaries. IIRC in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Nate significantly improved his forecasts by combined polling data with state demographic data. A model also helps in understanding a race which is some months away. I believe every single state in the 538 model today is leaning the same direction as June which is impressive considering that there was much less polling data then and the model relied more heavily on economic variables. To understand exactly how state-by-state unemployment numbers will affect an election you need a good model. ``` ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/24 "2012-10-30T05:12:01Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > The thing is, he’s not making just one prediction. He’s making a whole bunch of them - forecasting outcomes down to the congressional district level - and so you have more than one prediction to judge him on. This. Silver is making lots of predictions. You can’t judge his accuracy based on just one of them. But you can get a good idea of whether his predictions are statistically significant themselves by looking at the lot. This is why he’s functionally different from those meaningless oracles, like the high school football team that predicts the presidential election since whenever, or the octopus who picks a March Madness bracket. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/25 "2012-10-30T05:17:04Z")
Also, keep in mind, a small advantage in the polling popular vote for a state does not necessarily equal a small percentage chance of winning. For example, if Obama is polling a state at 52%, with a 2% margin of error, means Obama should win the start 66% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/26 "2012-10-30T05:21:41Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > But, he’s “just presenting statistics,” right? If Romney wins, can’t he just say that he told all of us that there was a 25% chance of that happening, and it happened! How could someone like Silver ever be proven a fraud\* or just plain wrong? How is he different, in this, from any other pollster? Why are you singling him out? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/27 "2012-10-30T05:27:22Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > How is he different, in this, from any other pollster? Why are you singling him out? “Other pollster”? Silver isn’t a pollster. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/28 "2012-10-30T08:00:13Z")
Nate Silver isn’t the only person modeling the elections. Sam Wang of [Princeton Electoral Consortium](http://election.princeton.edu/) is another: he tends to give much higher odds for an Obama victory. After the election, the various polling aggregators (for that is what they are) can discuss where they went wrong and right. Silver has 50 probabilities for 50 states over 2 elections: that’s a sample of 100, enough to do some crude probabilistic matching perhaps. The time series of the reported probabilities can be compared across analysts: it seems to me that Sam Wang [will fall down](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/todays-sam-wang-what-are-the-odds-of-an-obama-victory-anyway.html) under this criteria. Meanwhile, when faced with all this mathematical rigor, conservatives are predictably butthurt. Never mind that Silver hasn’t touched his model since last Spring and no substantive objections have been offered. It must be librull bias! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/29 "2012-10-30T09:00:46Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > There are others who make wildly different predictions based on different assumptions about different numbers, most notably [a pair of University of Colorado professors](http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2012/10/22/predicting-2012-presidential-election) whose software has Romney winning with 330 electoral votes. I think the Bickers and Berry prediction is weak. They based their prediction on economic indicators not poll results. They tracked indicators like unemployment and income and then correlated those with the outcomes of past elections. Now I’m not saying that’s valueless but I think that approach has its limits. People do make voting choices for economic reasons but there are also dozens of other reasons. And more critically, I think it’s wrong to make a prediction based on what you think people should believe and ignore contradicting data on what people say they believe. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/30 "2012-10-30T11:55:40Z")
I don’t think you need to be concerned about Silver being treated too lightly if his predictions prove incorrect. There is an entire media machine ready to tear him apart. If he predicts even a 51% Obama re-elect chance and Romney actually wins Silver will get way more than his share of mocking and derision, and will likely go into the next cycle with very little national credibility. Predictions made by math and science are treated with far less mercy if they are wrong than predictions made by intuition, woo, or “gut feelings”. Just look at the jailed earthquake scientists for an example of this. Or, conversely, Dick Morris has been wrong more times about his political gut feelings than anybody in the world, but still has a job and his predictions are still given credence. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/31 "2012-10-30T12:29:30Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > Predictions made by math and science are treated with far less mercy if they are wrong than predictions made by intuition, woo, or “gut feelings”. I don’t know if that’s the situation here. Nate Silver is perceived as liberal, and he’s predicting success (in aggregate) for Democrats, who are also perceived as liberal, and so people, particularly conservatives and political hipsters, are skeptical that he’s even using a model. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/32 "2012-10-30T12:42:38Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > people, particularly conservatives and political hipsters, are skeptical that he’s even using a model. Conservatives are skeptical because he’s saying something they don’t want to hear (and of course liberals like the fact that he’s saying something they approve of), and I think a lot of political reporters resent the fact that he’s making predictions based just about entirely on polls and hard data without a lot of the other speculative bullshit that has come to pass for political reporting. I can’t vouch for Silver’s statistical methods, but they’re a tool that can be used to understand what’s going on. If it’s this or watching a debate and making guesses about what viewers will think about the body language of the candidates, I know what I consider more informative. I don’t think the criticism in the OP is reasonable. It’s like criticizing a weatherman if he tells you there’s an 80 percent chance of rain and it doesn’t rain. Maybe the station’s weather satellite stinks, or maybe he was right - because even if there’s an 80 percent chance of rain there’s a decent chance it’s not going to rain, and it doesn’t make sense to demand certainty when we can’t know for sure what’s going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/33 "2012-10-30T13:03:02Z")
Even if Obama won by taking Florida and losing Ohio we would start to question Silver’s model. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/34 "2012-10-30T13:08:40Z")
I think one thing that would make me a bit skeptical is if “simpler” models (like a straight average of the polls) performs better. That would at least imply that his weighting and adjusting is not adding value to the predictions. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/35 "2012-10-30T13:18:51Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Even if Obama won by taking Florida and losing Ohio we would start to question Silver’s model. That would be a more valid criticism than whether or not he ‘calls’ the presidency correctly. At least that’s two events he predicted to be unlikely in the \*opposite \*directions. (Today he has Ohio at 73% Obama, Florida 64% Romney). ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/36 "2012-10-30T13:19:57Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I think a lot of political reporters resent the fact that he’s making predictions based just about entirely on polls and hard data without a lot of the other speculative bullshit that has come to pass for political reporting. God. Yes. Seriously, I could not agree with this more. Look, even if you think that Silver is a partisan hack, he’s completely transparent with his methodology, so you can easily go and see exactly what he’s doing and say, “OK, I think you are inappropriately weighting this set of polls” or whatever. It’s not like he’s just making up a bunch of bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/37 "2012-10-30T13:46:59Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > I don’t know if that’s the situation here. Nate Silver is perceived as liberal, and he’s predicting success (in aggregate) for Democrats, who are also perceived as liberal, and so people, particularly conservatives and political hipsters, are skeptical that he’s even using a model. I don’t understand this criticism. Silver also predicted 34/36 2010 Senate races correctly (24 Pubs and 10 Dems), and the two he got wrong were states that elected Dems where his model said Pubs (Colorado and Nevada). Do the people criticizing him now think he was just trying to set everyone up two years ago? Well, ok, I do _understand_ the criticism. It’s just wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/38 "2012-10-30T13:48:12Z")
> [@Enginerd](#): > > I don’t understand this criticism. You can’t understand it with your brain. You feel it with your gut. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/39 "2012-10-30T14:10:03Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Never mind that Silver hasn’t touched his model since last Spring and no substantive objections have been offered. It must be librull bias! Do you have a hard link for this? I’m also pretty sick of the constant stream of bullshit about Silver “massaging the numbers in favor of his preferred candidate” and would like something to point people to who are unwilling to investigate his methodology. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/40 "2012-10-30T14:13:53Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > \*I’m not suggesting he’s a fraud. He seems to have his shit together, but let’s pretend that he was an old fashioned snake oil salesman. What would prove that? Being off the mark consistently in the past. He has a reputation that’s well deserved for accuracy, but I guess it’s possible he could throw this prediction on purpose…for what reason I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287/41 "2012-10-30T14:49:47Z")
For me, the least interesting thing from Silver is his odds of Obama winning the election; I find his exploration of the data far more intriguing and thought-provoking. Focusing on the odds is like focusing on how many stars Roger Ebert gives a movie and ignoring his excellent film analysis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-nate-silver-just-in-an-i-can-never-be-wrong-position/639287.md?page=3)