{"id":3075,"date":"2010-10-25T16:49:33","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T20:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3075"},"modified":"2010-10-26T09:44:45","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T13:44:45","slug":"has-nate-silver-lost-his-mind-on-ny-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/10\/25\/has-nate-silver-lost-his-mind-on-ny-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Nate Silver lost his mind on NY-19?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I admit it, the blog title is deliberately provocative.\u00a0 A fairer question would be:<\/p>\n

Are the statistical pundits — people who claim to be predicting the 2010 election results based on facts and statistical models, rather than raw opini0n — full of beans?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reason that this matters is that more and more of the political narrative is being shaped by supposedly impartial statistical models that push well beyond simple polling.<\/p>\n

This has been a persistent thread here on the In Box the past few days, as I’ve continued to stumble across instances where supposedly stat-based analyses seem, frankly, improbable.<\/p>\n

The case in point today is New York’s 19th congressional district, currently represented by Democratic incumbent John Hall.<\/p>\n

This is, by any estimation, a close race, which the most recent poll describes as “a virtual tie.”<\/p>\n

The Monmouth University Poll finds the incumbent Democrat with 49% of the vote and the Republican with 48% among likely voters in this district.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, every poll conducted during this election season in NY-19 has landed well within the margin of error, with most finding the race to be perfectly deadlocked.<\/p>\n

Nate Silver’s big picture analysis<\/a>, as he acknowledges, includes a fairly subjective range of factors, including “polling, expert forecasts, fundraising data, past election returns and other indicators.”<\/p>\n

Throw in all those kitchen-sink variables — “other indicators”? — and Silver predicts the Republican will pull off a 50.4-47.2% win.<\/p>\n

That’s still pretty reasonable, right?<\/p>\n

Especially because Silver acknowledges in the fine print that this prognostication includes a huge +-6.4% margin of error.<\/p>\n

Which means that he, too, is basically saying that the race is too close for his measuring stick to give us a clear picture.<\/p>\n

Now here’s where things get funky.<\/p>\n

Using all those variables, Silver then runs “100,000 simulations” and comes up with the prediction that the Republican has nearly a 72% chance of winning.<\/p>\n

That’s right.\u00a0 When Silver’s tea leaves settle at the bottom of the cup, his model shows that the Republican is approaching a lock on this race.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m not a statistician.<\/p>\n

And I know that there are some general rules in politics that pundits use to frame these predictions.<\/p>\n

There is a conventional wisdom, for example, that incumbents polling under 50% are in serious trouble, and that the vote often breaks a bit toward the challenger.<\/p>\n

But this race also has some significant factors that break the other way, including a deeply unpopular Republican, Carl Paladino, at the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n

Also, the Democrats have a powerful GOTV machine in New York, and they have the fact that this is, bluntly, a downstate New York district.<\/p>\n

Does this mean I think Hall is a lock?\u00a0 Heck, no.\u00a0 I have no idea what’s going to happen in this race.<\/p>\n

But do I believe that the Republican has a 72% chance of winning? Also, no.<\/p>\n

As much as I respect Silver’s track record over the years, I just don’t buy it.<\/p>\n

I would love to see him show his work on a prediction like this, so that we can peak inside the statistical models that are framing this year’s mid-term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I admit it, the blog title is deliberately provocative.\u00a0 A fairer question would be: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[886],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3076,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions\/3076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}