Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium has a very different analysis of the upcoming election than Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. but it looks like it's getting kind of personal.
Their models take different approaches, with Nate taking into consideration more of the fundamentals like presidential popularity, how long the president has been office... while Sam tries to concentrate strictly on the polling data.
Well, apparently Nate Silver has some problems with Sam Wang's model:
Well here's the latest analysis of Sam Wang:
Probability of Democratic+Independent control: 80% in an election today, 70% on Election Day.
But Nate Silver says:
But if you’re looking for a headline, we have two. First, Republicans are favored to take the Senate, at least in our view; the FiveThirtyEight forecast model gives them a 64 percent chance of doing so.
Republicans have a 63.8% chance of winning a majority.
Democrats have a 36.3% chance of keeping the majority.
There is a 15.6% chance Republicans will control 52 seats and Democrats will control 48 seats.
Well Sam Wang has a pretty good record with his approach, so he deserves a little more respect. So have at it Mr. Wang!
I guess when you’re the King of the Nerds, you have to be willing to engage in a little trash talk. I think this is a good time to administer a lesson in probability – and also question who is doing the “heavy favoring” around here.
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FiveThirtyEight’s probability is 64% favoring the Republicans, based on a model with polls plus a substantial dose of special sauce (a.k.a. fundamentals).
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I have to say, this special sauce is messy stuff. Really, the GOP has an 25% chance (3-1 odds) of getting 54 or more seats? I’d put it at more like 5%. Even 53 GOP seats is a fairly outside outcome. If a betting person were offered the chance to put up $3000 against Nate Silver’s $1000 on that outcome…that would be taking his money.
Joking aside, there are two serious points to be made here. First, nobody should be getting excited about any probability that is in the 20-80% range. That includes Nate Silver, who should know better.
The gauntlet has been thrown! The challenge is on. A lot of the success of forecast models and polling results are based on the last forecast before the election. I don't like that. I don't care about a poll or forecast the day before the election, I want to know what's happening weeks before the election, and so do the candidates. A lot of campaigning is based on poll results. An Example, Grimes in Kentucky is behind in the polls and she needs to be taking some risks rather than running the same old Ads that every challenger runs about the incumbents attendance record.
So now we've got some forecasts from both Nate Silver and Sam Wang, weeks before the election so we can look back after the election and see how they did. But one thing to keep in mind, the very small percentage of uninformed voters that determines many elections can turn on dime, and above all, if we don't do enough GOTV and our supporters stay home, the polls might all be off.
Time will tell. Go Nate Silver and Sam Wang!