1) One last note on .
In general, they've done well.
Tonight was not their best moment.
Conversation
2) Going into the election, they'd have to be off by 5% nationally for Trump to win: projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-
In fact, it looks like Biden will win, as they predicted.
electionbettingodds.com
But it looks like a ~1% swing nationally would make it a dead heat.
Replying to
3) So they were off by about 4% on the tipping point odds.
They said 10% chance Trump won (~outperforms by 5%).
In fact he outperformed by about 4%, which would have had ~15% chance if you assume normal distributions.
So this should be in the ~85th percentile of Trump.
2
2
5) Prediction markets, for instance, had Trump around 35% going into the election.
ftx.com/president2020
If you take 538 and shift it by enough so that Trump is 35% to win, you'd have to shift it by... about 3.5%.
Which is pretty close to how much 538 was off by.
2
7
7) All of which would have been ok, except that didn't say "yeah prediction markets are cool too, idk, ours is just a model, it's unclear what's right".
He said this:
Quote Tweet
3
2
16
8) And, now, when presented with a bit of a miss, his response is...
Quote Tweet
LOL to all of you who gave 538's model shit for producing really weird maps every now and then.
Show this thread
2
4
Well, no. They could be spot on nationally and the election could still go either way. Depends on where the votes are cast. Of course, it’s *very unlikely* they could get the national number right and Trump still win, but they don’t “have to be off 5% nationally”.
1
And of course, if they got the national number right but Trump still won, it would mean their state-by-state’s would have to be way off all over the place. But precise communication is important when talking about this stuff, and so I felt I had to pick this nit😉