Wednesday, March 9, 2016

"Virtually no chance..."

Speaking as a Bernie Sanders voter (and not wanting to pull rank on anyone, but I've now voted for him four times in various elections), I'm obviously delighted that America's only socialist senator managed to pull off a win against all the odds in Michigan.  The most important thing is that it keeps him in with some kind of slim chance of winning the Democratic nomination, but there's another aspect of the story that we shouldn't lose sight of.  Have a look at the verdict FiveThirtyEight were offering just a few hours ago...

"According to our final polls-plus forecast, Hillary Clinton has a greater than 99% chance of winning the Michigan primary."

Even more embarrassingly, the site's live-blog was still talking about how boring the evening was and how Clinton was cruising to victory when over a third of precincts were already reporting and she was trailing by thousands of votes.  Just what does it take for the alarm bells to start ringing?

It might be worth bearing this latest howler in mind the next time that Nate Silver or one of his fellow 'mystics' blunder into another country's referendum campaign, and ludicrously declare with over a year still to go that there is "virtually no chance" that one side or another is going to win.  Once they can get their predictions right on home soil with just hours to go, perhaps they can branch out into the much trickier long-term foreign stuff, but they're clearly not there yet.  OK, Silver can claim that he wasn't technically proved wrong about Scotland, but given what we know about how the indyref campaign panned out in the closing weeks and months, it's very difficult to see how he can credibly justify such an extreme statement with the benefit of hindsight.

Uncertainty may be scary to a stats guy, but that's the world we live in.

20 comments:

  1. James, nate has been doing this for a long time and started on sports. Very scientific. Not sure about scotland stuff, but pretty sure that was around the time he had gone with the new york Times. It didn't work out, so he left. This race was very disturbing as it highlited the continued problems that polling is having. Bernie was in bed and his staff was at a bar drinking . even when 50% was in, bernie was thinking it would slip. Hillary people had her up 4 points, public polls 7 to 20. Mostly 19 or 20. The problem is again the volume of polling. Her in mass they were off a lot. Again, the volume now is staggering. It isn't one poll. Its 30 polls all wrong by a lot the same way.as you know I have some theories, and this race bears some out. As a poll guy, we could use your brain on this also as you are so good.fyi: nate is poblano. Kids were for bernie, so they are happy!congrats on the upset win. Biggest since or bigger than gary harts 1984 new Hampshire over Mondale. We were down like 17 in a 6 way race.my second prez race.sorry if tone bad, its 4 am here, long nite...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Its 30 polls all wrong"

      It may be partly that, but a scientific "polls-plus forecast" should be better than human intuition in taking account of (at least) two factors : 1) the possibility of polling error, and 2) the possibility of late swing. In this case, human intuition/judgement was clearly superior to the FiveThirtyEight forecasting model, because we heard time and again that both campaigns thought the race was much closer than the polls suggested, which at the very least implies a less than 99%+ chance of a Clinton win.

      Delete
  2. "... and not wanting to pull rank on anyone, but I've now voted for him four times in various elections"

    Huh? Learn something new every day. I didn't know you were any American citizen, James.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you're a green card holder you can vote in all US elections except the presidential one.

      Jack Beck

      Delete
    2. anon: "If you're a green card holder you can vote in all US elections except the presidential one"

      Nonsense. A resident alien cannot vote in any federal election to include congressional and presidential elections.

      You can only vote in local and state elections IF STATE LAW ALLOWS IT. I can't think offhand which states do allow this. Which states allow this? **

      In any case, Sanders has been a US Senator (mostly as an independent) forever and prior to forever has was a congressman. ONLY a US citizen could have voted for him for these offices.

      ** According to wiki only in Maryland can non citizens vote in certain restricted local elections in a few municipalities, to wit:

      Barnesville, Maryland[49]
      Chevy Chase Section Three, Maryland[50]
      Garrett Park, Maryland[51]
      Martin's Additions, Maryland[52]
      Somerset, Maryland[53]
      Takoma Park, Maryland (since 1993)[54]

      Delete
  3. In fairness to Silver, he later admitted that he wasn't happy about his Scottish "prediction", as he had made the comment without doing much research.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nate-silver-scotland-independence-prediction

    ReplyDelete
  4. As I followed the 2008 campaign, it does seem to me that in some Southern States Hillary Clinton is getting the vote Obama got in that year and Sanders in getting her vote.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. In 2008 he was getting the working man / white vote or whatever you want to call it. Now it is somewhat reversed. Very confusing.

      Delete
  5. I wasn't aware you lived in the United States of Americ-awesome.

    Aldo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You don't need to live in America to vote there (just as you don't need to live in UK to vote in UK elections).

      Delete
  6. I'm not sure why Silver / 538 can place such confidence in American primary polls, which aren't much better than useless. Just this morning I have seen two polls for the Ohio Democratic primary (next Tuesday). Same fieldwork dates, same candidates. One had Clinton leading 63-33 and the other her leading 52-43. Okay, that's the same "outcome", but there's an absurdly big difference between the two.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For info, the 52-43 Ohio poll was a Quinnipac poll of likely Dem voters between 2nd and 7th March. 63-33 was a CNN/ORC poll of likely Dem voters between 2nd and 6th March.

      Delete
    2. I can't really speak for poblano but I am sure would say that he has models and now he needs to fix them. If you follow him , he comments a lot and issues a lot of explanations about limitations. He doesn't believe in copping out , feels that is you are going to be scientific , you have to follow the model. If wrong, make better model. In fairness, there wasn't a 2008 primary in Michigan. Procedure dispute. Last real one was 1992.

      Delete
  7. James, Do you think there is a chance that there might be a third candidate in the presidential race ever again?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it's pretty likely this year if Donald Trump doesn't get the Republican nomination. He's such a narcissist that he's never going to be able to just leave it at that.

      Delete
    2. As for pulling rank, despite what one anon and that Glasgow ranked think, it is your frickin blog! If people don't want your opinion or stories, there are like 8 billion other sites.

      Delete
    3. Trump may run as an independent IF he has say, 1200 delegates (37 short of a majority) on the first ballot, and subsequent to that his delegates desert him and give the nod to an establishment pol (delegates are bound to their candidate only on the first ballot).

      In those circumstances, who is going to just leave it at that, especially when the whole thing was engineered? I'll tell you - know one. Yet that is the establishment's dingbat plan.

      Unless there's a miracle and Cruz can somehow overcome the deficit by winning enough of the winner-take-all states on the 15th and beyond, Trump is going to be the nominee.

      Trump is winning this thing for a reason, and it isn't because his supporters are deluded or stupid, or cult followers, or narrow nationalists. Trump is currently getting pummeled daily in every media outlet, in paid advertising, and by the establishment, in a way that makes indyref's project fear output look like a series of salivating love letters.

      Delete
  8. So Hilary lost in a State where she had won in the past if my memory is correct. I love it when the voters stick twa fingers up at the pollsters!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope. 2008 was not a real primary. Only Hillary and Kucinich and gravel? Were on ballot, but no one campaigner as they had jumped up on the date. Ignore that. That did make this harder to judge. Last real primary in Mich was clinton over Jerry Brown in 1992. Clinton was pro trade deal. And won.

      Delete