The Art of Elections Forecasting 101
ideonexus writes "Years ago Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, a blog seeking to educate the public about elections forecasting, established his model as one of the most accurate in existence, rising from a fairly unknown statistician working in baseball to one of the most respected names in election forecasting. In this article he describes all the factors that go into his predictions. A fascinating overview of the process of modeling a chaotic system."
Educating the Public? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since the Republican members of the supreme court overturned our campaign finance laws, elections have become an epic bribe-fest where money almost always wins.
You tell me which side is outspending the other 10-1 and I'll tell you who is most likely to win the election.
Let's just save ourselves alot of time and aggravation, and ask the America's 10 most bigoted and bribe-happy billionaires who they would like to win.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if what you say about 10-1 outspending is true (and it probably is), you haven't established causation, only correlation. Wouldn't you expect a better, winning candidate to be able to get more money as well as more votes than the other guy?
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracy = one man one vote.
Capitalism = one dollar one vote.
Only an idiot or a libertarian (but I repeat myself) fails to understand that you can't "vote with your wallet" unless everyone has about the same size wallet.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
Not if the better candidate is advocating against the billionaire's personal interests (such as paying his share of taxes) while the corrupt candidate obeys his billionaire owner.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Libertarians fail in the same way communism fails (in that they are both really good ideas on paper). It does not correlate to the jerk factor. All it takes is one jerk to ruin it for the rest of us... Capitalism has a similar failing but can be blunted 'by the masses' by not buying their junk anymore... Each has its ups and downs. But libertarians fail to realize that 'live and let live' can only be upheld in small communities or someone who enforces it...
Re:It's all about the money (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to have worked for Obama, in spite of the pre-existing campaign finance laws.
Do remember that he was the first (and so far only) Presidential candidate to forgo Federal matching funds for his campaign, since skipping those funds meant he didn't have to abide by the campaign finance limits.
Which left him spending three or four times what his opponent spent...
Re:It's all about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Without checking for sure where the funds came from, I believe it was the 5 bucks here, 10 bucks there from everyone vs 1,000,000 bucks and more from 30 folks that helped with that. Since the Republicans cozy up to the millionaires and billionaires, they needed the campaign finance laws changed so they could get the same amount of money the Democrats were getting.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent, this is true.
It must be remembered, however, that there are other ways to "advertise".
The "incumbent advantage" is an obvious one - it's pretty easy to get your name in the news just by proposing a new law, even if you have no intention of following through on it. And the evening news is just more advertising for a candidate.
Likewise, if a candidate is preferred by the various news organizations, he/she/it tends to get better coverage than a candidate that is actively disliked by the media. Again, free advertising....
Do remember that it's actually pretty hard to limit campaign spending without tripping over the First Amendment (face it, if a candidate is rich enough, he can just buy a TV station and BECOME part of the media)....
Educating the people? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Educating the Public? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that includes "don't vote according to forecasts". I mean, it'd be nice if more people voted for the candidate they actually want instead of the one they think will win.
An educated public would realize that voting for who you want in today's election environment is not optimal strategy.
Re:No they don't. (Score:2, Insightful)
88% of voters made their call when the spending was completely one-sided. Only after the Democratic primary put forth a candidate did they have targeted supportive advertising.
88% of people didn't vote for Governor Walker. So that "one-sided" spending didn't have a one-sided result.
The Governor and friendly PACs had been advertising since before January when they knew the recall was coming.
There are two things to note here. First, if the Democrat side really was that short-sighted, then they deserved to lose. That's more a criticism of your erroneous viewpoint than a criticism of the Democrats. For the second thing to note is that the Democrats have run a heavy campaign against Walker since he started his controversial tactics against the public unions. This wasn't a one-sided fight by any means.
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it was lies with Obama, I think it was something i consider worse: naivete. Obama came in promising everything to everyone and their mother, because that's what populists do. But when he got into office he realized that he couldn't actually do all that he set out to do, and that Bush's policies in many cases were the best choice of a series of bad options. Case in point: he promised on the campaign trail to close Guantanamo Bay prison, and when he came into office he wrote an Executive Order closing it. It hasn't happened. Turns out that those guys over there really were terrorists captured on the battlefield, and that having them in an isolated location with 3 square and free time was a whole lot better than trying them stateside and keeping them in a SuperMax, especially when no state wanted them in their prisons.
My biggest problem is not that Obama is a liar, I really don't think he is. I just think he's a moron who sounds intelligent and is a good speaker. He believes in symbols and high ideals that sound great in a speech, like having no lobbyists in his administration, or trying Khalid Shiek Mohammad in New York, getting justice where the crime was committed. Yet when he tries to implement those ideals and symbols, he always seems surprised by the fact that his lofty ideals and symbolism doesn't work in reality, like the cost of the massive security required to host a civilian trial of KSM in New York, the massive protests and unrest, and potential plots to try and free or martyr KSM would come with that, or the fact despite how people hate lobbyists, they're also the best way to communicate to the interests of large segments of the population. Just about everything associated iwth Obama can be viewed in this context.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:4, Insightful)
A corporation, not being human, has no claim to human rights.
But the people who make up the corporation do, especially when those people have formed the corporation for the explicit purpose of exercising the right to free speech. As did Citizen's United.
The people who make up the corporation have their rights, and they are welcome to exercise those rights to the fullest. However, they don't deserve extra rights just because they have more money.
As an individual, I am allowed to donate $2500 to my favorite candidate. A single cent more and the feds haul me off to jail.
But if I form a corporation, I can donate all the money I want to a super PAC. By forming a corporation, I suddenly have more free speech rights than anyone in the country who don't currently control a corporation.
Sure, there are laws prohibiting super PACs from coordinating with campaigns, but the candidate can just have his lawyer form the super PAC and the communication between them will be protected by the attorney–client privilege. (for the interest of partisanship I won't name that candidate)
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)