# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/121 "2012-09-02T20:44:55Z")
> [@An\_Arky](#): > > I wonder if he’s already done the Monte Carlo simulation (or something similar) before he posts or not…maybe I’ll go check the methodology when I get a round tuit). Yes. Nate Silver does large numbers of simulations. He reports predictions that converge. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/122 "2012-09-02T21:36:59Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > … we really care about whether the individual state-level EV predictions are correct. … From [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight): > [@](#): > > Writing as Poblano on Daily Kos, he had gained a following especially for his primary election forecast on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008.[9] From that primary election day, which included contests in 24 states plus American Samoa, “Poblano” predicted that Barack Obama would come away with 859 delegates, and Hillary Clinton 829; in the actual contests, Obama won 847 delegates and Clinton 834. Based on this result, New York Times op-ed columnist William Kristol cited “Poblano” thus: “And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site ([poblano.dailykos.com](http://poblano.dailykos.com)) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio”.[10] > [FiveThirtyEight.com](http://FiveThirtyEight.com) gained further national attention for beating out most pollsters’ projections in the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic party primaries on May 6, 2008. As Mark Blumenthal wrote in National Journal, “Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, [FiveThirtyEight.com](http://FiveThirtyEight.com). He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data… Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina… But a funny thing happened. The model got it right”.[11] … > > … Silver projected a popular vote victory by 6.1 percentage points for Barack Obama and electoral vote totals of 349 (based on a probabilistic projection) or 353 (based on fixed projections of each state).[27] \*\*Silver’s predictions matched the actual results everywhere except in Indiana and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska, which awards an electoral vote separately from the rest of the state. \*\*His projected national popular vote differential was below the actual figure of 7.2 points. > **The forecasts for the Senate proved to be correct for every race.** (Bolding mine.) Like that? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2012, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/123 "2012-09-02T23:55:43Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > From [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight): > (Bolding mine.) > > Like that? I have no idea what that is supposed to do with the Bickers-Berry model under discussion. Silver made a bunch of off-the-cuff critiques without, I presume, having seen the paper since this month’s issue of the journal in question is still forthcoming. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/124 "2012-09-03T00:09:42Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Eh, 1984, 2004. I had a brain glitch. There was still a slow but pronounced course correction following Reagan’s landslide re-election. Yep, that’s how we got the DNC and the Clintons. ---
**Author:** ![Untoward\_Parable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/51bf81/32.png) [@Untoward\_Parable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Untoward_Parable)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/125 "2012-09-03T00:24:04Z")
I don’t know, anytime 100% of black people in the US are against something/ for something I’m not particularly optimistic about their preference. But Romney has been pretty darn incompetent. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/126 "2012-09-03T02:01:23Z")
I thought the result meant the sample was so small that it happened not to include any black Republicans (not an unlikely thing; a sample of 3000 tends to be enough). Hard to apply a statistical correction from 0 to any other number, right? ---
**Author:** ![Baracus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@Baracus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baracus)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/127 "2012-09-03T02:43:26Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I have no idea what that is supposed to do with the Bickers-Berry model under discussion. Silver made a bunch of off-the-cuff critiques without, I presume, having seen the paper since this month’s issue of the journal in question is still forthcoming. If you do a little digging you can find something that appears to be the paper in question on [this page](http://polsci.colorado.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52). ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/128 "2012-09-03T04:27:10Z")
> [@Untoward\_Parable](#): > > I don’t know, anytime 100% of black people in the US are against something/ for something I’m not particularly optimistic about their preference. What do you mean, “not particularly optimistic about their preference”? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/129 "2012-09-03T04:55:17Z")
Five Thirty Eight does really good work. Nate Silver is one of the few political analysts out there who has the honest respect of both the left and the right. That’s impressive since he’s personally liberal. It’s very hard to keep bias out of your own work, and Nate Silver does it about as well as anyone else I can think of on the left or right. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/130 "2012-09-03T14:52:13Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I have no idea what that is supposed to do with the Bickers-Berry model under discussion. Silver made a bunch of off-the-cuff critiques without, I presume, having seen the paper since this month’s issue of the journal in question is still forthcoming. My apologies. I was reading the discussion as being about the 538 model with the Bickers-Berry model being brought up as a compare and contrast example. I have to admit the digression to the discussion being specifically about the Bickers-Berry model still eludes my comprehension. As to a side discussion about the University of Colorado Bickers-Berry model - I would completely agree that “validating” a model by showing that accounted for the data that you based the model off of is goofy. One _can_ use post-dictions to test a model, but only if the data you are testing against was not used in model formulation - for example if they they only used the two last election cycles to develop their model and then went back and tested against previous cycles that were not used in model formulation and the data before the election also predicted the outcomes then that would be suggestive of the model’s strength. From what posters here are saying that is not what they have done. In any case, my comment is the compare and contrast relevant to the op: 538 made _predictions_ that did very well at the state by state and contest by contest levels. Given that what is being reported are probabilities my only complaint is that he was not “wrong” _more_ … if he is stating that a particular contest has an 80% probability of turning out a particular way then, if his model is accurate, he should be wrong one out of five individual contest with those odds. Given that he was wrong in only two electoral districts and not a single Senate race his model is leaving too wide of standard deviation based on the data collected so far, unless he was making predictions with a 97% average probability (which he was not). If I hadn’t read his predictions ahead of time that data would be like the Mendel experiments … correct but so good that they had to be cooked. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/131 "2012-09-03T15:48:51Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > … > > Silver believes that the trend line of a series of polls is in an indicator of the final result, and uses that as a factor. Individual polls don’t matter much. It’s the comparison of the trend line to past elections that’s important. I don’t know how much weight he puts on that, but I know it’s just one of many factors. > … Then the relevant trend line should be the trend for polls for that particular state - not national polls. In some states there might not be enough state specific data for some states to provide a statistically significant trend line. For example he only cites 7 polls in Montana starting in November 2011. He refers to 32 polls in Ohio since December 2012 by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/132 "2012-09-03T16:18:16Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > If I hadn’t read his predictions ahead of time that data would be like the Mendel experiments … correct but so good that they had to be cooked. I guess the probabilities tell the frequencies output by his model, but don’t necessarily have to be interpreted as meaning “these would be the frequencies if you ran the election a large number of times.” Instead, they could be interpreting as meaning “Here’s how confident I am that person X will win this election.” In other words, the assumption is that the frequency of wins within the model corresponds, not to frequencies of wins in the real world, but rather, to levels of confidence about predictions concerning the real world. (On that reading, it would seem to me that the more Silver turns out right about individual elections, the closer to 100 and 0 the reported percentages should be in his future predictions–because the past record of success should rationally make him more and more confident about his results.) ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/133 "2012-09-03T16:27:18Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > The premise is false. > > 0bama’s failure over the past 3.5 years will make this an easy victory for Romney. > [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I guess the mainstream media is falsifying all the polls that show Obama with a lead, and a big lead in the key states. > > Damn the lamestream conservative media! Sarah Palin was right! **Lamar Mundane** is being _sarcastic_, **moonshot925**. I just thought I’d mention that. To you. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/134 "2012-09-03T17:16:20Z")
My wife just told me she heard that the Romney campaign was reducing its ad presence in Ohio and Pennsylvania. 1. Is this true? 2. If so, is it because they have reason to believe that these two states are shifting from “tossup” to “solid Obama”? 3. If _that’s_ true, is part of their reasoning that the recent “defeat” of voter “suppression” in Ohio (via voting hours), and the possibility of true voter ID shenanigans in Pennsylvania being turned over on appeal, puts those states out of reach for the Repubs? (Or maybe, in the case of Pennsylvania, the opposite is true…they think the Voter ID crap _won’t_ be overturned on appeal, and so they think Penn is now solidly Romney’s?) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/135 "2012-09-03T18:04:15Z")
You’ll never hear a campaign surrender before Election Night, but [here’s the PA story](http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/28/13530408-resurgent-pennsylvania-gop-making-the-case-for-putting-the-state-in-play?lite). > [@](#): > > No Democrat has lost the state since Mike Dukakis in 1988. Obama carried it by 620,000 votes in 2008 > … > The latest Franklin & Marshall poll shows Obama with a six percentage point lead in the state, 44 percent to 38 percent, over Romney, with 15 percent undecided. > … > Three Republican groups have spent more than $11 million on TV ads, according to NBC’s ad-tracking data, but Romney’s own campaign has yet to spend any money on TV in Pennsylvania. The Obama campaign and an allied group, Priorities USA, have spent $8 million on TV so far in the state. [Not the case in Ohio, though](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/us/politics/in-a-tactical-test-mitt-romney-stakes-hopes-on-ohio.html?pagewanted=all). Without PA, Romney \*needs \*OH, FL, and VA. All of them. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/136 "2012-09-03T18:35:03Z")
A correction and a question: > [@septimus](#): > > … useful models must be _simple_. A 4-variable model with good prediction may be better than a 12-variable model with excellent prediction. I phrased this poorly. Better than “prediction” might have been “fitting the training data” (or “post-diction” to use **DSeid** ’s term). Note that some problems, perhaps _including this one_, come with such a meager amount of useful historical data that one may not have the luxury of setting some aside for testing. Question: Are Nate Silver’s predictions based on _an election held today_? The real danger for Obama is not noise in the polling results, or even normal voter shifting, but some unforeseen October Surprise that changes sentiment drastically. I think the possibility of a Surprise is why Intrade still gives Romney a 42% chance. What will the Surprise be? I don’t know, that’s why they call it a Surprise! 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/137 "2012-09-03T19:17:18Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Yep, that’s how we got the DNC and the Clintons. :smack: I meant D **L** C. Either yous knew what I meant or you didn’t catch my error. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/138 "2012-09-03T19:31:15Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > What will the Surprise be? I don’t know, that’s why they call it a Surprise! 🆒 But it won’t be Romney who springs it. He can’t; he has to wait for something to blow up in Obama’s face and somehow appear more competent than Obama by comparison. Only an incumbent can spring an OS, and since it’s under his control, it means a bounce his way. But the argument is right if the reference is to mere chance events - and there’s only 8 weeks of window left for them to happen. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/139 "2012-09-03T19:46:40Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > You’ll never hear a campaign surrender before Election Night, but [here’s the PA story](http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/28/13530408-resurgent-pennsylvania-gop-making-the-case-for-putting-the-state-in-play?lite). > > [Not the case in Ohio, though](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/us/politics/in-a-tactical-test-mitt-romney-stakes-hopes-on-ohio.html?pagewanted=all). Without PA, Romney \*needs \*OH, FL, and VA. All of them. Thanks, Elvis. So you mean, the Romney campaign doesn’t think they have a shot in PA, with or without voter ID shenanigans…but as for Ohio, assuming the ad-spending pullback is true, what’s their strategy? Maybe saving up for a blitz late in the campaign? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316/140 "2012-09-03T19:51:22Z")
They’re spending big in Ohio _now_, sez the article, and will keep spending right up to the end. Where have you seen anything about a pullback there? That would be suicidal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-538-is-right-and-romney-loses-by-60-electoral-votes/633316.md?page=8)