Seen this way, 77% is really not that much bigger than 50%…

Wang not only refuses to weight his model based on gut-feeling (unlike Silver, who does)

Citation about Nate using gut feeling?

As far as Nate has explained in his posts, the “house-effects” weighting are entirely data-driven: if Rasmussen is consistently leaning 1% Republican, then the model automatically corrects for that, without Nate having to step in.

Likewise, I think that the erosion of a poll’s weight over time is similarly data-driven. Looking at past data, Nate’s algorithm’s can calculate the relative coupling between a poll’s data eight weeks before an election and the actual results. If the historical data suggest a weak coupling, then the poll can calculate how much to erode the weight by over time.

Nate’s plugging all this data into his models and running the models thousands of times a day to get these statistics. In all those simulations, 23% of the time Romney still wins, even with all these things going for Obama.

Don’t forget that there are huge numbers of unknowns (voter turnout etc.) that can’t be easily grasped by those of use just looking at polls, but that his model is attempting to account for.

First slavery, then Jim Crow, then the War on Drugs and attendant felony records: face it, a very large and powerful section of your society has never and will never accept the black vote. And if they can deny votes to  other 47 percenters, why wouldn’t they?  After all, the worse that can happen to the fixers is that a handful of political opponents will scream about it and be shushed into line by their own “sensible” allies.

That said, I’m not entirely thrilled about an Obama reelection but I’ll take it over Mitt Romney any day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17fWth3YgA

:confused:

Give readers of BoingBoing more credit.

I wasn’t referring to Boingers. Talking ’bout the general public who deserves little or no credit. Especially when you consider they expected all kinds of “hope & change” without themselves voting out enough republicans to thwart filibusters.

Does your impression of the political climate in the USA lead you to believe this is even remotely possible?

Um, same country that voted in George Bush… twice. Yes, I think it’s VERY possible in the United States of Amnesia.

That people will read an article on Salon.com and then abandon their plan to vote? Sheesh!

No, not most Salon readers, but many people are reading that statistic elsewhere and they sure will. I think you underestimate just how lazy and pacified many Americans are. Once again, I refer you to two (2) Bush terms.

http://election.princeton.edu/ (the website seems to having issues today, probably from increased traffic)

Wang not only refuses to weight his model based on gut-feeling (unlike Silver, who does), he publishes all of his work on the PIC website, usually in MatLab-friendly code, so that anyone can replicate his calculations.  Silver still relies on a ‘secret sauce’ that he refuses to divulge.

Dr. Wang’s current prediction?  99% chance of an Obama victory, or 95%, if you want to accept the more skeptical (non-Bayesian) model.  Romney is stuffed.

If you look at the overall trend, Obama has been leading by a thin margin every time Nate Silver has checked in the last 6 months. And at this point 538 is updating it more than once a day — and Obama is still ahead, every time. Of course, things can change suddenly in a different direction (for example, there might be a giant hurricane that affects voting…)

Not, mind you, in every single poll! But in the aggregate analysis of those polls (which is not probabilistic, it’s just math) Obama has held a continuous lead since the start. Claming that will change in a week starts to seem ridiculous. The only conclusion I can draw is that Nate’s model is hedging its bets pretty severely.

If they knew how hard was, they’d probably be more cautious in their opinions, but these people don’t get into their positions through humility or caution. Pundits are formed when a constant stream of cogent certainties flows out from good bone structure, and to hope for statistical nuance in such formations is 99% futile.

Shit.

(Also, I have to get it off my chest that, after reading the fivethirtyeight blog post, the election seems like a really stupid and arbitrary game.)

While a certain amount of the storm surge of vitriol directed at Silver is the result of — or at least aided by — poor math skills, the actual numbers and interpretation thereof are mostly irrelevant. Silver thinks it’s likely that Obama will win, so he’s an enemy.