7) So what happened?
Well, it's.... close. Anyone could win.
One point for prediction markets!
Do they deserve it? Does Nate Silver deserve a black mark?
8) It's unclear.
On the one hand, I think he had a bit of a point: the people trading on prediction markets was *not* representative.
Crypto Twitter is ~60% Trump supporters, but the US is ~45% Trump.
So there were more buyers than sellers of http://ftx.com/trade/TRUMP on FTX
10) I'm not totally sure either way.
But part of my had similar instincts--instincts I couldn't put into words convincingly, but roughly:
"IDK 10% seems way too low. Anything could happen, this is a weird election, volatility is high."
11) And something like--
"We've been here before, and the fact that the media is pro Biden makes me wonder if the consensus is right."
Maybe that's all bullshit. Maybe 10% was right, and this was just a lucky night for Trump.
Or maybe he'll still lose by a lot.
12) IDK. We'll see.
But I definitely wouldn't have been as confident as Silver was about the model.
Models are only as good as their inputs.
And who knows what the right parameters are here.
It’s far too late here for me to have a coherent argument, but I’ll note for a later date that I’ll challenge you on this. I think Silver et al, are still on track and haven’t seen much off. I think it’s a lot of misunderstanding people have of political models vs finance etc.
I don't think the miss was egregious--but I do think it's likely that 538 will have underestimated Trump here, and that their error bars will end up seeming a bit small here.
Tbf the only state I think they’ve predicted off was Florida. Other states are tracking right. I think once we get an even distribution of vote types counted this will show it’s a stronger Biden night than ppl thought. So I think their electoral numbers are decent
I think his Senate calls were daft. Agreed.
But, 538 had Ohio, Texas & Iowa as leaning Trump. They went Trump but thinnest margins & best numbers Dems have had there. So I think they called it right.
(+Trump wanting to stop voting & talking about legal action is a telling sign)