Still couldn't control things, but at least shaped the agenda.

I wonder how much of his septum is left?

Sure that everyone wants to weigh in before debate.

That CNN poll is looking kind of stale. Wonder if it'll be them.

Continued from here.

Technical Stuff: So, I took jpegs of both 538 probability graphs and the Huffington Post poll trendlines (national) from the same interval, used numpy to convert the jpegs into arrays of data and then used a spline from scipy to put both curves onto the same 117 day grid. I then subtracted the Clinton trendline (HuffPo) from the 538 probability estimate for a Clinton Win. I did the same for the Trump numbers.



Results: As you can see, there is VERY LITTLE structure in the residuals (fluctuations after subtracting the poll average, left side plots) as a function of time. Certainly no meaningful temporal structure. So Silver's model extracts no trend apart from poll average. And plotting Trump residuals vs Clinton, it's clear there is no dependency between the two of them. It looks like, apart from the poll average trend, the fluctuations in 538 probabilites are close to zero mean gaussian (noise) process. Small changes in Clinton's win probability have nothing to do with small changes in Trump's probability.

Conclusions: If Silver's model were providing added value over simple poll averages one would expect that, after removing the poll average, a reduction in Clinton's numbers should show some dependence on an increase in Trump's numbers and vice versa. Clearly this is not the case.


Whole thing looks like a random walk.

What am I saying? Nate Silver has argued that his models extract the real signal masked by noisy data. The results here indicate that nearly all of that signal is the smoothed national poll average.


In short, this does NOT inspire confidence that fast changes in the 538 model are anything but noise.

9/24 Update

9/21 Update

9/22 Update

9/1/2016 update

8/16/2016 update

Update with drift included 8/6/2016

Original Model Writeup 8/3/2016

Model projections:

#############################################
# INSTANTANEOUS MODEL
#############################################

Instantaneous Probability of a Clinton Win: 71.25 %
Mean Electoral Votes Clinton Currently Winning: 291.57
Median Electoral Votes Clinton Currently Winning: 294.0
Maximum Likelihood Electoral Vote Scenario for Clinto: 299

#############################################
# PROJECTING RESULTS TO NOVEMBER
#############################################

Probability of a Clinton Win if Current Trends Continue: 63.29 %
Mean Electoral Votes Clinton Projected to Win: 284.25
Median Electoral Votes Clinton Projected to Win: 285.5
Maximum Likelihood Projected Electoral Vote Scenario: 269

Predicted National Point Spread (Clinton = +, Trump = -) 2.45

Just look at this graphic of the national poll average and the 538 probabilities



Maybe, MAYBE the 538 model is squeezing some information out at the margins. I bet I could construct a model that does as well or better than 538 simply by taking the differences in the two poll averages and converting it to a direct probability.

Look at this graph of poll outcomes vs when they are in the field:

:large

legend:

Position of poll on y axis is size of Clinton Lead.
Intensity of color of boxes is number of polls in field on that interval.
Length of boxes is the period over which the poll is taken.

https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/780032565176508416

Last week same poll had her up 8.
Conclusion: she's up 5.

Been a while since we've had fresh data from there.

National polls are instructive in that they are highly correlated with movements in many of the states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-clinton-trump-in-virtual-dead-heat-on-eve-of-first-debate/2016/09/24/b99c95de-81cb-11e6-8327-f141a7beb626_story.html

H2H: C49 T47
4way C46 T44 rest: who cares

Bad points: obviously closer than last post poll.

Good points: Clinton is near 50 in the two way. Registered voters are split evenly. That's almost certainly NOT the case. Also respondents don't expect Clinton to win the debate by that large a margin 44% expect her to in, 34$% expect Trump to win. Expectations game may be a wash.

Polls from Thurs/Friday put this at around a 6 point race. Average with this, looks like a 4-5 point race at this point. Even the write up above acknowledges other polls disagree with this one. They know they have a slightly funky sample.