# What if 538 is right, and Romney loses by 60+ electoral votes **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 31, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316 "2012-08-31T23:22:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/81 "2012-09-02T02:53:36Z")
If Romney loses, the Republicans continue their march toward a smaller, more right wing party until they implode. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/82 "2012-09-02T02:55:56Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The GOP seems to think there is every reason to get rid of Obama (the same way democrats felt that way about Bush in 2004). If they find out people prefer him, and not by razor thin margins like Bush had in 2000 and 2004 but by a 60 or so EV margin, what happens then? Then they’ll focus on the popular vote, which is sure the be a whole lot closer. In fact . . . Imagine the cognitive dissonance among Pubs, if Obama wins the EV but Romney wins the popular vote! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/83 "2012-09-02T03:30:25Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > So explain why it’s B.S. > > It’s perfectly legitimate to look at past correlations and try to find causation and then test your hypothesis in the future. In fact, that’s the scientific method right there. Doesn’t mean the model is right, but the method is sound. Ok I don’t know if this example will clarify or not but I’ll give it a shot… I realize it might sound out of left field. But let’s say we have a sample of 8 data points and all I need to do is develop a regression model to predict future data points. The historic data is: (6, 9, 7, 8, 15, 33, 7, 43). I have developed a model based on the 8 historical data points, namely: 0.1486x **6 - 3.7394x** 5 + 36.488x **4 - 174.55x** 3 + 426.25x\*\*2 - 495.5x + 217. My model fits the historic data extremely well. In fact, it accounts for 97.41% of the variation in the data. Unfortunately it didn’t do a very good job predicting the 9th point, which was 17. My model predicted it would be about 600. ☹ But like you said, we’ll just add the new historic data and come up with a better model. The new model is -0.0481x6 + 1.4798x5 - 17.671x4 + 103.23x3 - 304.38x2 + 418.92x - 196 and it accounts for about 91% of the variation in the data. Not nearly as good but still a damn good fit. But does it have any more predictive value or validity than the original model now that we added additional data to factor into the model? Of course not. All my data points were random. But it’s extremely easy to fit a model to it that very closely predicts the historic data, particularly when the training data set is small and you allow a large number of parameters as I did. Don’t get confused by the fact that presidential elections aren’t random and economic data is likely to have an actual impact on it. It’s still trivially easy to over-fit your model to the data. One way to test if you’ve done that when you don’t have an explicit validation set available (i.e. the 2012 election) is with cross validation, but you can’t if you’ve used all your available data to build your model. And you certainly can’t call it accurate just because you managed to fit a model to your historic data each and every time. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/84 "2012-09-02T03:32:44Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Say that every Presidential election since 1980 had been won by the guy with the most vowels in his name. You figured that out by going back and counting vowels and seeing the correlation. Then you say, “Well, Obama is going to win in 2012 because he has more vowels than Romney and this model would have predicted the right outcome since 1980.” > > Do you see why that doesn’t work? It’s not a prediction if you simply tailor it to the results you know happened. You have to test it before you can say that it has any ability to predict anything and you can’t test it by using the same data that you used to build it. Sigh. Of course you have to test it. Otherwise there’s not point to it. Nobody said you don’t test it. Of course you don’t pick random meaningless variables like vowels in a name. You test strong causal predictors, like the economy. You can do multivariate analysis to see how strong the correlations are and whether they are more likely to be causal. But ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/85 "2012-09-02T03:33:15Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > If Romney loses, the Republicans continue their march toward a smaller, more right wing party until they implode. That is my impression/hope, but who knows really. A fear I have is the GOP will move really far to the right but still win elections. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/86 "2012-09-02T03:37:48Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > Ok I don’t know if this example will clarify or not but I’ll give it a shot… I realize it might sound out of left field. > > But let’s say we have a sample of 8 data points and all I need to do is develop a regression model to predict future data points. The historic data is: (6, 9, 7, 8, 15, 33, 7, 43). > > I have developed a model based on the 8 historical data points, namely: 0.1486x **6 - 3.7394x** 5 + 36.488x **4 - 174.55x** 3 + 426.25x\*\*2 - 495.5x + 217. My model fits the historic data extremely well. In fact, it accounts for 97.41% of the variation in the data. > > Unfortunately it didn’t do a very good job predicting the 9th point, which was 17. My model predicted it would be about 600. ☹ Sure. But all that means is you need a better model. How else can you predict the next number in a series then by analyzing the trend though? > [@](#): > > But like you said, we’ll just add the new historic data and come up with a better model. The new model is -0.0481x6 + 1.4798x5 - 17.671x4 + 103.23x3 - 304.38x2 + 418.92x - 196 and it accounts for about 91% of the variation in the data. Not nearly as good but still a damn good fit. Yep. Are you going to use it to predict the next number? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/87 "2012-09-02T03:41:10Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > What’s BS is claiming the model is a strong one _solely_ based on its being able to account for the very data it is based on. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do - fit the data it is based on. A model is nothing more than a theory that explains data. If it fits, it’s good. And the next election is like the experiment that tests the theory. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/88 "2012-09-02T03:45:38Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do - fit the data it is based on. A model is nothing more than a theory that explains data. **If it fits, it’s good.** And the next election is like the experiment that tests the theory. This vastly untrue, as I apparently unsuccessfully demonstrated. I mean I demonstrated it clearly but evidently the point was lost. It’s trivially easy to build a model that fits your training set. It’s not ‘good’ in any way and doesn’t deserve to be treated as potentially valuable just because there’s no explicit validation set. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/89 "2012-09-02T03:55:37Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > Sure. But all that means is you need a better model. How else can you predict the next number in a series then by analyzing the trend though? It’s complicated; much more complicated than trying to minimize in sample loss, which is not particularly useful. You have to select a model that is neither so small that you miss useful patterns nor so large that you mistake noise for pattern. You can penalize or constrain flexibility. Most of all you can cross validate, or at a minimum, not pretend your model has any validity before it’s been tested even one time. > [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > Yep. > > Are you going to use it to predict the next number? I’m not really sure what you think that means but sure. My model predicted -47 and the next number was 15. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/90 "2012-09-02T03:57:53Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > This vastly untrue, as I apparently unsuccessfully demonstrated. I mean I demonstrated it clearly but evidently the point was lost. I understood. I shouldn’t have said it that way. How about this: if it fits, and it uses logically connected variables, it’s probably as good as anything else you’ve got. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/91 "2012-09-02T04:01:13Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > I understood. I shouldn’t have said it that way. > > How about this: if it fits, and it uses logically connected variables, it’s probably as good as anything else you’ve got. If it fits what though? The training set? How many variables do you allow? If you keep adding variables it’s going to fit and it’s not going to be as good as anything else, even granting that the variables have a logical connection. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/92 "2012-09-02T04:02:45Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > It’s complicated; much more complicated than trying to minimize in sample loss, which is not particularly useful. You have to select a model that is neither so small that you miss useful patterns nor so large that you mistake noise for pattern. You can penalize or constrain flexibility. Most of all you can cross validate, or at a minimum, not pretend your model has any validity before it’s been tested even one time. I think you’re more mathemetician than economist. I note that your example isn’t a model like this one. It’s not a cause and effect predictor with two variables. It’s just a random string of numbers that you’re trying to put a trend on. I don’t think that’s the same thing. There are logical connections between things like the economy and election results, and there are good correlations between the two, and they are persistent. That’s a model that predicts something causing something else, in the real world. It’s not just random numbers. For instance, I predict that ice cream sales will be higher whenever the temperature is higher, because there’s a logical connection between the two and it fits the past data, which is where I got it in the first place. > [@](#): > > I’m not really sure what you think that means but sure. My model predicted -47 and the next number was 15. I mean would you rely on it to predict the next number after refining it? If not, what would you use? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/93 "2012-09-02T04:03:49Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > If it fits what though? The training set? How many variables do you allow? If you keep adding variables it’s going to fit and it’s not going to be as good as anything else, even granting that the variables have a logical connection. You try a bunch and see which are the strongest. Ask them how they picked. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/94 "2012-09-02T04:06:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Then they’ll focus on the popular vote, which is sure the be a whole lot closer. > > In fact . . . Imagine the cognitive dissonance among Pubs, if Obama wins the EV but Romney wins the popular vote! 😃 It wouldn’t be the first time OBama lost the popular vote and won. Hillary Clinton got more votes than him. He could be trotting out the same strategy: Focus on key races which are winnable and don’t worry about the popular vote. If he wins, he wins, that’s the rules we agreed upon. But if that happens, it doesn’t mean Republicans have to change course, it just means they didn’t play the game as well. There are defeats and then there are defeats. Winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college is a technical defeat, not a popular repudiation. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/95 "2012-09-02T04:16:48Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > I think you’re more mathemetician than economist. > > I note that your example isn’t a model like this one. It’s not a cause and effect predictor with two variables. It’s just a random string of numbers that you’re trying to put a trend on. I don’t think that’s the same thing. There are logical connections between things like the economy and election results, and there are good correlations between the two, and they are persistent. That’s a model that predicts something causing something else, in the real world. It’s not just random numbers. I picked it deliberately because it’s a very simple way to illustrate pitfalls of selecting a model with an overly high capacity. Whether or not there is a logical connection doesn’t change the fact that you can over or under fit your model and that in any event, closely fitting the training set is no indication of predictive value in itself. When you start throwing in logical relationships that intuitively make sense you forget the basic fact that if you keep adding parameters to your model it’s guaranteed to fit your data better. > [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > I mean would you rely on it to predict the next number after refining it? > > If not, what would you use? They’re random numbers, there’s no point trying to model them. But for any given set it’s trivially easy to find a model that fits them well - it just won’t have any predictive validity. It doesn’t matter if I give you 10,000 random numbers and 10,000 parameters, the model won’t predict anything. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/96 "2012-09-02T04:20:33Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > You try a bunch and see which are the strongest. Ask them how they picked. When you try a bunch of things and pick the best ones you guarantee that you will confuse useful pattern with noise. ---
**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:** [September 2, 2012, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/97 "2012-09-02T04:45:58Z")
**GIGO** : Reason #2 is worse: 2. The CU model depends on flawed assumptions. Unemployment affects the chances of Democratic incumbents being reelected but not Republicans? Republicans’ results are linked to per capita income while Democrats are not? Really? In statistics you need to start with assumptions that make sense and then test them, not start with data and then allow for as many crazy assumptions as you need to create a model that “correctly predicted” all of your data. I’m a little disappointed actually. If your assumptions are that squirrelly, you create the impression that you just ran a bunch of models before landing on a preset conclusion. And the fact that they truncated the dataset before 1980 doesn’t look good either. Sigh. I guess there’s a market for this kind of thing. > [@Voyager](#): > > There were lots of Republican presidents who didn’t drive the country into the crapper, back in the hazy past. Yeah, Eisenhower. Seriously Voyager, Reagan was awful. He brought the Religious Right to Washington. He gave us Antonin Scalia. And he fostered the illusion that Big Guv could cut taxes and the deficit simultaneously: in other words he advanced magical thinking. Launching the largest peacetime defense buildup in US history was reversible. But the memes he established did lasting damage to the body politic. ---
**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:** [September 2, 2012, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/98 "2012-09-02T04:54:57Z")
ETA! That said, most of Reagan’s opponents in the 1980 Republican primary were fine or better. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/99 "2012-09-02T04:59:21Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > No black incumbent has ever won an election. Wrong! Clinton, '96. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/100 "2012-09-02T13:27:37Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > Sigh. > > Of course you have to test it. Otherwise there’s not point to it. Nobody said you don’t test it. > > Of course you don’t pick random meaningless variables like vowels in a name. You test strong causal predictors, like the economy. To a great degree, it’s the testing that let’s us _figure out_ what the strong causal predictors are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316.md?page=6)