Final 538 House and Senate predictions

[Fiendish Thingy]

22. But not really- did he adjust the 538 model?

My understanding is 538 just tweaked some of the weightings of these polls, which seems to me to be a significant undersized response.

While it may have been too late and too costly to reconstruct the entire 538 model to account for the deliberate manipulation of the polling averages, that’s what is required under the circumstances.

Once it became clear the polling averages were being manipulated, Silver should have either a)excluded all the R sponsored polls from the averages or b) issued a statement declaring that the GOP was flooding the system with shitty polls, and that no valid projections could be made for this year’s elections. (I know ABC wouldn’t let him do that, as it would cost them money, but that would have been the honest thing to do).

Instead, he kept reporting manipulated averages based on shitty polls, and then wrote an article throwing up his hands and saying “who knows?!?! It could go either way!”