• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Control

Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

While I am sure there was some of that, I think the biggest thing was a proven track record. While I am not happy at this latest projection of his, I can't argue against it based on anything more concrete than I have my doubts this far out. I still have a great deal of respect for his ability and models.

Perhaps we have a different way of looking at this. My base assumption is people are often selfish, deceitful, manipulating creatures. As such I rarely take at face value that social science results are merely promoted on the basis of sound reasoning and data (including this thread). While some were much more willing to like Nate because of his approach with data (frequently these were people on the periphery or inside the social sciences), I think that was in the minority.

He has a pretty good track record, but as Democrats are much more willing to point out now, his legislative branch predictions had some issues. I was interested that there was much less play about Silver's Senate race predictions, and his follow-up response to issues with his model, than the Presidential race. Few were willing to go out and tease out his statements that his model relies on a multitude of polling data, and that some of these races had far less substantial polls than desired. What seemed to matter to these people more was that at least the President's race was covered to their liking, and​ it got to turn Republican nay-sayers sour.

That being said, a substantial portion of people looking at polling data of any sort will often revert to basic cliched responses, because it either validates or contradicts one's hopes, aspirations, and expectations.
 
Last edited:
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Everybody is talking about a Franken blowout in MN but I just don't see it that way. It was a close race in '08 and I really think it's going to be close again.

We'll see who he's up against. Here's the list:

Declared[edit]
Jim Abeler, State Representative[13]
Chris Dahlberg, St. Louis County commissioner[14]
Mike McFadden, financial executive[15]
Monti Moreno, bison farmer, former hair salon owner and candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1996[16]
Julianne Ortman, State Senator[17]
Phillip Parrish, U.S. Navy reservist[18]

Potential[edit]
Laura Brod, former State Representative[20]
Chip Cravaack, former U.S. Representative[21]
Bill Guidera, finance chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota[22]
Rich Stanek, Hennepin County Sheriff[20]

United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2014 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Well if Republicans don't have a system in place to stop felons from voting this time around, they almost deserve to lose on grounds of incompetence.

It'll be hard for them to restrict voting. Both houses of the legislature and the Governor's office are controlled by Democrats.

And since about half of the felons that voted last time admitted to voting for Norm Coleman....nice try at a talking point, but it's wrong.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

The right wing is not interested in math or facts. I"m not saying this is true of conservatives; but it is certainly true of the base of the Republican party.
The Republicans count votes the same way Democrats do.

There was a piece on RedState before the 12 election which confidently predicted that Romney would win in a blowout. The article chained a bunch of anecdotal evidence, non-sequiturs, and circular "unskewed polls" logic to arrive at that conclusion. I had been a member of RedState for almost two years at that point. I pointed out the succinctly and politely, that the analysis was flawed because it failed to account for the increased number of Republican leaning voters who self identify as independent. Romney might still win in a close election, but there was no evidence to support an upcoming Romney blowout.
The same thing happens of at DailyKos. A bad prediction however does not indicate an adversity to math or facts.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

:agree: This far out these predictions mean nothing. I predict they will change several more times. :lol:
Well, I would not say they mean nothing, however I do believe they will change somewhat.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Perhaps we have a different way of looking at this. My base assumption is people are often selfish, deceitful, manipulating creatures. As such I rarely take at face value that social science results are merely promoted on the basis of sound reasoning and data (including this thread). While some were much more willing to like Nate because of his approach with data (frequently these were people on the periphery or inside the social sciences), I think that was in the minority.

He has a pretty good track record, but as Democrats are much more willing to point out now, his legislative branch predictions had some issues. I was interested that there was much less play about Silver's Senate race predictions, and his follow-up response to issues with his model, than the Presidential race. Few were willing to go out and tease out his statements that his model relies on a multitude of polling data, and that some of these races had far less substantial polls than desired. What seemed to matter to these people more was that at least the President's race was covered to their liking, and​ it got to turn Republican nay-sayers sour.

That being said, a substantial portion of people looking at polling data of any sort will often revert to basic cliched responses, because it either validates or contradicts one's hopes, aspirations, and expectations.
I don't think that selection bias is distributed evenly by ideology.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

I don't think that selection bias is distributed evenly by ideology.

Imagine that. Somebody's got faith that their side's feces smells closer to berries than the other side.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Imagine that. Somebody's got faith that their side's feces smells closer to berries than the other side.

Nah, I just don't believe in blind adherence to false equivalences. I like math.

Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use: Shanto Iyenga Kyu S Hahn 09

Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to rate major news outlets including the three network newscasts, the weekly news magazines, NPR, and PBS as biased​

Why is talk radio dominated by conservatives? Why did Air America fail? To my knowledge, no one has ever produced a correlation between radio owners and ideology. But there have been consistent findings which find that conservatives and liberals are motivated by different things (fear vs empathy) and have different propensities to self censorship.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Well well. This after he also pointed out that it was entitlement spending that was driving our deficit. I wonder how long ole Nate has left as a left wing darling?

Nate Silver wasn't a "left-wing darling." He's simply an extremely accurate statistician. The only reason he was a "left-wing darling" in 2012 was because Republicans spent months screaming that he was completely wrong, which it turns out he wasn't.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

The right wing is not interested in math or facts. I"m not saying this is true of conservatives; but it is certainly true of the base of the Republican party.

There was a piece on RedState before the 12 election which confidently predicted that Romney would win in a blowout. The article chained a bunch of anecdotal evidence, non-sequiturs, and circular "unskewed polls" logic to arrive at that conclusion. I had been a member of RedState for almost two years at that point. I pointed out the succinctly and politely, that the analysis was flawed because it failed to account for the increased number of Republican leaning voters who self identify as independent. Romney might still win in a close election, but there was no evidence to support an upcoming Romney blowout.

I was promptly banned from Red State with a viscerally hateful post from the moderator Moe Lane; who accused me among other things of attempting to suppress the Republican vote with propaganda. After the election I attempted to get my account reinstated, as I had done nothing remotely inflammatory, and everything I posted was obviously factually accurate. They never responded.

And perusing through RedState, it again seems like Moe Lane is the resident "expert" on predicting elections.

I do mathy things for a living. If I was ever that wrong, about anything... it would not only be humiliating; it would be career ending. But that's not the way it works in the far right. In the far right, the career ending mistake is to be factually correct on an unpopular truth.

That sounds about par for the course for Red State.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

It'll be hard for them to restrict voting. Both houses of the legislature and the Governor's office are controlled by Democrats.

And since about half of the felons that voted last time admitted to voting for Norm Coleman....nice try at a talking point, but it's wrong.


That's funny. That means that more than half voted against him. So I gather you are angry that felons voted against Norm Coleman?
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

That's funny. That means that more than half voted against him. So I gather you are angry that felons voted against Norm Coleman?

?????
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

That's funny. That means that more than half voted against him. So I gather you are angry that felons voted against Norm Coleman?

I don't care who they voted for, the point is that it wasn't a big deciding factor.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

What do conservatives hate math or math done correctly? Is that the new meme.... "Conservatives - war on women, dispersers of mathematics." :roll:

If conservatives loved math done correctly, he'd be a conservative darling too.

But conservatives railed against his math during the election, called him biased. Went to "unskewed polls" to make themselves feel better. See, these are the real opinions! Never seeming to understand that unskewedpolls.com merely took existing polling and added an arbitrary number of points towards (R).
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Well well. This after he also pointed out that it was entitlement spending that was driving our deficit. I wonder how long ole Nate has left as a left wing darling?

A few weeks ago I posted my prediction of a 50-50 split in the Senate, which I am sticking with. However, I don't see a GOP 51-49 split as out of the question. I believe it is very possible.
 
Re: FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecast: GOP Is Slight Favorite in Race for Senate Contro

Well, it looks like Silver has done the math and noted he is already losing his most-favored status. :lol:


FiveThirtyEight was an independent blog prior to joining The New York Times on Aug. 25, 2010. Mr. Krugman referred to FiveThirtyEight or Nate Silver on seven occasions during its independent period. Four of these mentions were favorable, two were neutral, and one was unfavorable.

During FiveThirtyEight’s tenure with The New York Times, Mr. Krugman referred to FiveThirtyEight or to Nate Silver 21 times. Over all, 15 of these references were favorable, as compared to five neutral references and one unfavorable one.

But Mr. Krugman’s views of FiveThirtyEight have changed since it re-launched March 17 under the auspices of ESPN. The columnist has mentioned FiveThirtyEight four times in just nine days, all in negative contexts....

While it can be easy to extrapolate a spurious trend from a limited number of data points, the differences are highly statistically significant. At his current pace, Mr. Krugman will write 425 more blog posts about FiveThirtyEight between now and the 2016 presidential election.

He's got a pretty little bar chart and everything :)
 
Back
Top Bottom