Georgia Senate Run-Off’s

[firstfloor]

Very important race coming up next:

Within minutes of Joe Biden becoming president-elect Saturday, top Democrats and Republicans raced to the front lines of 2020’s last battlefront: A pair of January Senate runoffs in Georgia, where the country’s racial, economic and cultural crosscurrents could help determine whether Democrats complete their takeover of Washington.

Republicans looking to turn the page on President Trump’s defeat shifted their attention to the runoffs, framing them as a last line of defense against a left-wing agenda. Democrats, seeking to capitalize on their momentum and celebratory mood, promoted the races as the best way to advance Biden’s policies.

That makes the Jan. 5 runoffs an unusual finale to a tempestuous campaign rocked by a deadly pandemic, a national reckoning on race and an economic free-fall. The races will unfold in a rapidly diversifying state that has become a national bellwether, one whose votes split nearly evenly between Biden and Trump.

[rogue06]

Very important race coming up next:

Typically the party that loses the presidential race picks up any special elections held immediately after. Likely because the victors are resting on their laurels and less motivated.

But in the era of Trump nothing is typical.

[Thoughtful Monk]

I looked up the results. In the normal race, the Republican was leading. In the special election, the combined Republican vote was bigger than the Democratic vote. I predict either 2 Republican wins or 1 Republican and 1 Democrat win. I'm not convinced a Democratic sweep is likely.

[LiconaFan97]

I looked up the results. In the normal race, the Republican was leading. In the special election, the combined Republican vote was bigger than the Democratic vote. I predict either 2 Republican wins or 1 Republican and 1 Democrat win. I'm not convinced a Democratic sweep is likely.

Is there a good reason to believe that people will split their votes though? I assume people will (correctly) view this as voting for control of the Senate and not as voting for the candidates.

[firstfloor]

Definitely an uphill battle, but what a prize if they were to succeed and put an end to McConnell’s obstruction.

Failing that, Biden will try to build alliances to circumvent Moscow Mitch, or put a horse’s head in his bed, or something.

[Reepicheep]

The Georgia senate races are probably going to be squeakers. The latest polls have the Democrats +3 in each race. The averages of the latest polls have Ossoff (D) +1 and Warnock (D) +2. The winners will likely be determined by which party's members are more motivated to vote.

Earlier today, Trump did a tweet where he stated that the Georgia Senate elections are "illegal and invalid" because of the "Georgia Consent Decree", whatever that may be:

"Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections." - Donald Trump tweet, Jan 1, 2021.

Since Trump has declared the Georgia Senate runoffs to be illegal and invalid before the votes have taken place, I assume he is expecting the Democratic candidates to win both races.

[rogue06]

The Georgia senate races are probably going to be squeakers. The latest polls have the Democrats +3 in each race. The averages of the latest polls have Ossoff (D) +1 and Warnock (D) +2. The winners will likely be determined by which party's members are more motivated to vote.

Most likely but considering how miserably the polls did in 2018 in the House race between Ossoff and Handel, I don't put much stock in them.

For instance, Nate Silver proclaimed that "there's a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN" (emphasis in the original) while CNN had it 51% for Ossoff and 44% for Handel.

Handel won 52 to 48. The only poll that I'm aware of that didn't have Ossoff up by at least a couple points was one conducted by the local Fox affiliate, WAGA (which was very anti-Trump in their coverage of the 2016 race), who had it at 49.7% for Ossoff and 49.4% for Handel.

[CivilDiscourse]

Most likely but considering how miserably the polls did in 2018 in the House race between Ossoff and Handel, I don't put much stock in them.

For instance, Nate Silver proclaimed that "there's a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN" (emphasis in the original) while CNN had it 51% for Ossoff and 44% for Handel.

Handel won 52 to 48. The only poll that I'm aware of that didn't have Ossoff up by at least a couple points was one conducted by the local Fox affiliate, WAGA (which was very anti-Trump in their coverage of the 2016 race), who had it at 49.7% for Ossoff and 49.4% for Handel.

Having followed Nate for a while, he has a tendency defend models and pollsters. So, I believe (but cannot back up) that the 30% comment is more of a tongue in cheek comment to how people react to things like a 30% chance coming to pass. Similar to how they reacted to Trumps win. This would be more in line with his positions on his website.

[rogue06]

Having followed Nate for a while, he has a tendency defend models and pollsters. So, I believe (but cannot back up) that the 30% comment is more of a tongue in cheek comment to how people react to things like a 30% chance coming to pass. Similar to how they reacted to Trumps win. This would be more in line with his positions on his website.

It's pretty obvious that he was employing hyperbole here but doing so to indicate that an Ossoff victory was all but assured.

[CivilDiscourse]

It's pretty obvious that he was employing hyperbole here but doing so to indicate that an Ossoff victory was all but assured.

That's what I'm saying. It's out of character for Nate to take a 70% chance as "all but assured", especially given that this tweet happened AFTER Trump was elected, where the fivethirtyeight models gave him ~70% of losing to Hillary.

Here's a link to Nate's article the day before Trump Beat Clinton.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...=2016-forecast

You'll note that Nate specifically calls Clinton favored (and at 71% chance, she definitely was favored to win), but talks heavily about her uncertainty, and how things can still cause her to lose. (i.e. anything but "all but certain).

Even a couple of days before, here's what he had to say (Clinton was at 65% chance):

Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-dont-ignore-the-polls-clinton-leads-but-its-a-close-race/

At the same time, it shouldn’t be hard to see how Clinton could lose. She’s up by about 3 percentage points nationally, and 3-point polling errors happen fairly often, including in the last two federal elections. Obama beat his polls by about 3 points in 2012, whereas Republicans beat their polls by 3 to 4 points in the 2014 midterms. If such an error were to favor Clinton, she could win in a borderline landslide. If the error favored Trump, however, she’d be in a dicey position, because the error is highly correlated across states.

There’s also reason to think a polling error is more likely than usual this year, because of the high number of undecided voters. In national polls, Clinton averages about 45 percent of the vote and Trump 42 percent; by comparison, Obama led Mitt Romney roughly 49-48 in national polls at the end of the 2012 campaign. That contributes significantly to uncertainty, since neither candidate has enough votes yet to have the election in the bag.

To be honest, I’m kind of confused as to why people think it’s heretical for our model to give Trump a 1-in-3 chance — which does make him a fairly significant underdog, after all. There are a lot of ways to build models, and there are lots of factors that a model based on public polling, like ours, doesn’t consider.³ But the public polls — specifically including the highest-quality public polls — show a tight race in which turnout and late-deciding voters will determine the difference between a clear Clinton win, a narrow Clinton win and Trump finding his way to 270 electoral votes.

© Copyright Original Source

He also tends to fight against the hyperbole about polls and models being "garbage".

Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/

But here’s a stubborn and surprising fact — and one to keep in mind as midterm polls really start rolling in: Over the past two years — meaning in the 2016 general election and then in the various gubernatorial elections and special elections that have taken place in 2017 and 2018 — the accuracy of polls has been pretty much average by historical standards.

You read that right. Polls of the November 2016 presidential election were about as accurate as polls of presidential elections have been on average since 1972. And polls of gubernatorial and congressional elections in 2016 were about as accurate, on average, as polls of those races since 1998. Furthermore, polls of elections since 2016 — meaning, the 2017 gubernatorial elections and the various special elections to Congress this year and last year — have been slightly more accurate than average. This isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon: Despite often inaccurate and innumerate criticism over how polling fared in events like Brexit, a recent, comprehensive study of polling accuracy by Professor Will Jennings of the University of Southampton and Professor Christopher Wlezien of the University of Texas at Austin found polling accuracy has been fairly consistent over the past several decades in a variety of democratic countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The media narrative that polling accuracy has taken a nosedive is mostly bull****, in other words. Polls were never as good as the media assumed they were before 2016 — and they aren’t nearly as bad as the media seems to assume they are now. In reality, not that much has changed.

© Copyright Original Source

So, what I'm saying is this: It's out of character for Nate to take a 70% chance and treat it as all but certain given the analytical nature and the way he understands models and statistics. So, this is why I think your interpretation of his tweet is wrong, and more he's making a comment about how people react when the model under-dog wins.

Obviously, my interpretation could be wrong, but mine seems more in-line with the view his articles put forward, though his articles tend to have less snark in them.

[rogue06]

That's what I'm saying. It's out of character for Nate to take a 70% chance as "all but assured", especially given that this tweet happened AFTER Trump was elected, where the fivethirtyeight models gave him ~70% of losing to Hillary.

Here's a link to Nate's article the day before Trump Beat Clinton.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...=2016-forecast

You'll note that Nate specifically calls Clinton favored (and at 71% chance, she definitely was favored to win), but talks heavily about her uncertainty, and how things can still cause her to lose. (i.e. anything but "all but certain).

Even a couple of days before, here's what he had to say (Clinton was at 65% chance):

Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-dont-ignore-the-polls-clinton-leads-but-its-a-close-race/

At the same time, it shouldn’t be hard to see how Clinton could lose. She’s up by about 3 percentage points nationally, and 3-point polling errors happen fairly often, including in the last two federal elections. Obama beat his polls by about 3 points in 2012, whereas Republicans beat their polls by 3 to 4 points in the 2014 midterms. If such an error were to favor Clinton, she could win in a borderline landslide. If the error favored Trump, however, she’d be in a dicey position, because the error is highly correlated across states.

There’s also reason to think a polling error is more likely than usual this year, because of the high number of undecided voters. In national polls, Clinton averages about 45 percent of the vote and Trump 42 percent; by comparison, Obama led Mitt Romney roughly 49-48 in national polls at the end of the 2012 campaign. That contributes significantly to uncertainty, since neither candidate has enough votes yet to have the election in the bag.

To be honest, I’m kind of confused as to why people think it’s heretical for our model to give Trump a 1-in-3 chance — which does make him a fairly significant underdog, after all. There are a lot of ways to build models, and there are lots of factors that a model based on public polling, like ours, doesn’t consider.³ But the public polls — specifically including the highest-quality public polls — show a tight race in which turnout and late-deciding voters will determine the difference between a clear Clinton win, a narrow Clinton win and Trump finding his way to 270 electoral votes.

© Copyright Original Source

He also tends to fight against the hyperbole about polls and models being "garbage".

Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/

But here’s a stubborn and surprising fact — and one to keep in mind as midterm polls really start rolling in: Over the past two years — meaning in the 2016 general election and then in the various gubernatorial elections and special elections that have taken place in 2017 and 2018 — the accuracy of polls has been pretty much average by historical standards.

You read that right. Polls of the November 2016 presidential election were about as accurate as polls of presidential elections have been on average since 1972. And polls of gubernatorial and congressional elections in 2016 were about as accurate, on average, as polls of those races since 1998. Furthermore, polls of elections since 2016 — meaning, the 2017 gubernatorial elections and the various special elections to Congress this year and last year — have been slightly more accurate than average. This isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon: Despite often inaccurate and innumerate criticism over how polling fared in events like Brexit, a recent, comprehensive study of polling accuracy by Professor Will Jennings of the University of Southampton and Professor Christopher Wlezien of the University of Texas at Austin found polling accuracy has been fairly consistent over the past several decades in a variety of democratic countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The media narrative that polling accuracy has taken a nosedive is mostly bull****, in other words. Polls were never as good as the media assumed they were before 2016 — and they aren’t nearly as bad as the media seems to assume they are now. In reality, not that much has changed.

© Copyright Original Source

So, what I'm saying is this: It's out of character for Nate to take a 70% chance and treat it as all but certain given the analytical nature and the way he understands models and statistics. So, this is why I think your interpretation of his tweet is wrong, and more he's making a comment about how people react when the model under-dog wins.

Obviously, my interpretation could be wrong, but mine seems more in-line with the view his articles put forward, though his articles tend to have less snark in them.

Silver, like several other pollsters, in the last days before an election, tend to describe the races as being closer than they'd been showing the weeks leading up to it. The fact that they do this election after election tends to support the idea that this is largely a CYA move to help explain why their models were wrong if they blow it (see, I showed a shift taking place) rather than every single election suddenly tightening up.

[CivilDiscourse]

Silver, like several other pollsters, in the last days before an election, tend to describe the races as being closer than they'd been showing the weeks leading up to it. The fact that they do this election after election tends to support the idea that this is largely a CYA move to help explain why their models were wrong if they blow it (see, I showed a shift taking place) rather than every single election suddenly tightening up.

But that doesn't hold. 538's model showed Clinton's odds improving (64 to 71). Plus, him having the race at 71% favoring Clinton was much more favorable to Trump than Huffpost or even CNN did. In addition, calling Nate a pollster is inaccurate. He's not a pollster, does not take polls. He does use polls in model building. It's like calling a limo driver an automobile manufacturer.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...tion-forecast/

[oxmixmudd]

The Georgia senate races are probably going to be squeakers. The latest polls have the Democrats +3 in each race. The averages of the latest polls have Ossoff (D) +1 and Warnock (D) +2. The winners will likely be determined by which party's members are more motivated to vote.

Earlier today, Trump did a tweet where he stated that the Georgia Senate elections are "illegal and invalid" because of the "Georgia Consent Decree", whatever that may be:

"Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections." - Donald Trump tweet, Jan 1, 2021.

Since Trump has declared the Georgia Senate runoffs to be illegal and invalid before the votes have taken place, I assume he is expecting the Democratic candidates to win both races.

18 days. Let's all hope its just 18 more days.

[rogue06]

But that doesn't hold. 538's model showed Clinton's odds improving (64 to 71). Plus, him having the race at 71% favoring Clinton was much more favorable to Trump than Huffpost or even CNN did. In addition, calling Nate a pollster is inaccurate. He's not a pollster, does not take polls. He does use polls in model building. It's like calling a limo driver an automobile manufacturer.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...tion-forecast/

And yet a couple days before the election Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site ran an article by their analyst Harry Enten titled, "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton."

It seems that Silver was all over the place days before the election. As Dana Milbank of the WaPo put it in a piece with the tongue in cheek title No matter who wins the presidential election, Nate Silver was right

This raises a pertinent question: How can Silver be predicting a healthy Clinton victory while also noting she is in danger of losing (and simultaneously making allowance for the possibility she’ll win in a landslide)? Well, this is the result of a complex statistical method known as covering your bases. Or your backside.

[CivilDiscourse]

And yet a couple days before the election Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site ran an article by their analyst Harry Enten titled, "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton."

It seems that Silver was all over the place days before the election. As Dana Milbank of the WaPo put it in a piece with the tongue in cheek title No matter who wins the presidential election, Nate Silver was right

This raises a pertinent question: How can Silver be predicting a healthy Clinton victory while also noting she is in danger of losing (and simultaneously making allowance for the possibility she’ll win in a landslide)? Well, this is the result of a complex statistical method known as covering your bases. Or your backside.

And that was correct and in-line with what he and 538 does. That is explain the uncertainty, and produce accurate odds of outcome from the data. They showed the data, showd linton's lead becoming better, but still said "hey, trumps still in this" which ended up reflecting reality.

None of this supports your initial assertion that he was trying to say it was all in the bag.