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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I'll take a wild guess that, under the hood, the baseline model 538 is using is basically just sampling from a lot of normal distributions. Possibly even several layers deep—I wouldn't be surprised if it's using an initial simulation with all these uncertainty terms etc. to determine the variance to use in the second set of simulations. And then go full Monte Carlo simulation on it with the weighted polling averages as the mean or something.
Well, that's a slightly more naive approach, the actual state-by-state races seem to be trying to work out the what contribution the polls should have to the accuracy and what can be ascribed to demographics or underlying factors, but there's no uncertainty specifically mentioned there so maybe it's introduced on the presidential race level...
All comes back to the central limit theorem anyhow and trying to work out appropriate variables for the variances.
Well, it's not October yet. There's still time for the GOP to cook up a harebrained nothingburger scandal against Biden and/or Harris.
For some reason, it feels like Nate Silver has been around for much longer in politics than eight years, because people talk about him constantly.
Edited by BearyScary on Sep 23rd 2020 at 8:34:37 AM
Do not obey in advance.The Hill has regular updates which is how I knew about it, but all it's done is show how much of a clown Ron Johnson is.
Edit: Missouri's Governor Parson has tested positive for COVID.
I think he's the second governor to get it.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 23rd 2020 at 9:52:24 AM
If they want to find something that can stick to Biden, they're running out of time. It was going to be an uphill battle anyway since Biden is generally well-liked or at least not seen overly negatively. The main reason the emails thing stuck with Hillary is because there was a lot of groundwork for people distrusting her to begin with, with the decades long hate campaign against her, which is not the case with Biden at all.
Florida Republicans continue to be the worst. Politico:
Florida AG calls for criminal inquiry into Bloomberg's $16M felon voter donation
Florida's Republican attorney general on Wednesday urged the FBI and state authorities to investigate former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's pledge to spend $16 million helping convicted felons regain their voting rights in the nation's largest swing state.
The attorney general, Ashley Moody, said in a letter to top law enforcement officials that she was asked by Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican, to review the donation Bloomberg announced on Tuesday. Moody said she quickly decided additional scrutiny was warranted.
These people...
Quick question: can Congress pass a bill outlawing felony disenfranchisement? Or is it up to the states?
Edited by nova92 on Sep 23rd 2020 at 10:17:26 AM
It was always evident it was about preventing people from voting rather than paying debt/fines/restitution. The state of Florida doesn't even know how much, if anything, a good number of people owe.
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Yeah, I wouldn't trust the Roberts court (even before Trump's third Justice) to do the right thing on voting rights.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 23rd 2020 at 10:36:00 AM
Silver is good when he sticks to reporting the data. As he himself has admitted, when he moves away from the math, he's no more reliable than any other self-appointed oracle.
@Beary Scary: Viewers Are Goldfish. Eight years is a lifetime in politics.
That said, now we really have a reason to vote if we haven't already. *socially-distanced fistbump*
For all of Joe Biden's opposition's insistence that he's a senile geriatric or "demoCRAP" puppet who supposedly had unfortunate run-ins with some women in the past, nothing really came of it. Disturbingly enough, I've met more than a few unpleasant people across the net who actually believes all of these suspiciously convenient rumors that only started circulating when he got nominated as candidate. But let's not get any further into that, as I don't want to point out the GOP followers' cultish behavior in this thread for the 9001th time.
Edited by Lazlo74 on Sep 23rd 2020 at 11:54:52 AM
Scaled seeker

I didn't get the impression that people had a problem with his specific numbers, it's more of a general "we can't trust any of these polls after what happened in 2016!" thing.