2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumNate Silver rips Trump-Clinton polls in 8-part Twitter rant
Nate Silver thinks it's time to pump the brakes on predicting the results of a Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton matchup in November.
"For f--k's sake, America. You're going to make go on a rant about general election polls -- in May?" the editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight wrote as part of a tweetstorm on Tuesday.
Silver said Clinton has an about 6 percent lead over Trump nationally, but cautioned: "It's early. Trump could win. Also, he could lose in a landslide." He added that Trump's presumptive nomination and Clinton's ongoing battle with Bernie Sanders could be having an effect "We'll know more in June."
The statistician said he wouldn't have polls of each state for "a few months."
He also warned his followers to check whether pollsters interview likely voters or registered voters.
"The election will go through a lot of twists and turns, and polls are noisy. Don't sweat individual polls or short-term fluctuations," Silver tweeted.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/nate-silver-trump-clinton-polls-223015
Matt_in_STL
(1,446 posts)He'd do best to lay low and not really critique anyone else and their methods for a while.
merrily
(45,251 posts)factfinder_77
(841 posts)538's "Polls-only" model is up to 52/57 (91%) correct "calls" this year, and "polls-plus" up to 51/57 (89%), after Sanders's win in WV.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538
merrily
(45,251 posts)Which time did he err to Hillary's disadvantage? Who is his candidate and the candidate of the other 538 writers?
I have a diner rule. http://www.democraticunderground.com/128037667
merrily
(45,251 posts)Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)Consequently they boost Hillary's numbers while understating both Bernie's numbers and Trump's. As for relevancy, general election match-up polls taken beginning in April historically show correlation with November results (Silver knows this!). Finally, Silver steadfastly refuses to recognize that this election is a change election for which he does not adjust his predictions - which is why he has been wrong to such a high degree.