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One thing I’ve been hearing lately is how much the polls in the swing states have tightened after the GOP convention. And how Biden could actually lose. When I dug into it more I saw more of a shift in the real clear politics site but 538 didn’t tighten much at all. At least not by 4 points like the RCP models do.
I really try not to buy into polls that much until October where we have a little more of an understanding of what might happen. But do you trust Nate Silver’s model or the RCP model?
538 has built in corrections for convention bumps. If the polls hold for two weeks it will show up in the 538 model.
Bingo. It makes sense that Trump is closing the gap right now, they just finished the RNC and presidential races tend to tighten as you get closer to Election Day. I would argue the more important takeaway is that Trump may have blown his best chance to make a lead permanent. He’s still behind, even with his convention bump, and he wasn’t able to use that event to build a new message or effectively reach many new supporters, at least not based on the data we have thus far. If the bump fades, which it seems likely to, he’ll go back to being almost as far behind Biden as he was two weeks ago. I’m not going to predict the future, and Trump absolutely can still win, but his campaign team is probably not happy right now. If they were looking for the RNC to be their launching point for a renewed energetic campaign; it wasn’t.
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Isn't the RCP model just a poll average?
Have the polls tightened up? It's only been like two days, but I haven't noticed anything like that offhand, and I tend to skim the polls daily.
But sure, of course Biden could lose. I trust Nate Silver's analysis of the current state of the race, but he'd be the first person to say that he can't predict the future.
I trust the polls. In 2016 the polls were accurate, despite everyone freaking out. I think they had Hillary at a 75% chance of winning. 25% odds isn’t bad it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump won. It’s like rolling a four sided dice and being surprised you got a four.
Liberals are using the polls as cope but the reality is, the odds of Trump winning aren’t necessarily bad and we shouldn’t feel good about it.
The nationwide polls in 2016 were pretty good, the statewide ones sucked. I believe several statewide polls in Wisconsin and michigan had trump down several points outside the margin of error. I’m always more skeptical of those polls than I am the nationwide ones
Well technically the margin of error with statewide polling is 4 points. Which means you have to have up to an 8 point lead to he truly outside of it. Wisconsin had Hillary ahead by 6.5. That was the most extreme shift I saw that actually mattered to the race.
Now we're the polls wrong? I actually don't think so. I just think that they were old and didn't reflect the full extent of the shift to trump. It was really hard to detect. Because the shift only happened in the last few days leading up to trump winning. Some of these polls were data from like late October and crap. It's like the swing voters making up their minds last minute went HARD for trump.
Uh Wisconsin was up 6.5 for Hillary. Michigan like 3. Pennsylvania like 1.5-2.
There were places where the polls were off by like 8-10 points. It was crazy.
The email scandal definitely made things swing for Trump in the end. I think people forget about that. Fox news basically treated it like watergate.
I think the email scandal and everything else are overstated.
My own interpretation is that people just didn't like Hillary and the democrats. I think it's more along the lines of a Michael Moore spiteful knee-jerk decision at the voting booth. The democrats ran a terrible campaign that alienated and demoralized a ton of democratic leaning voters imo.
That’s also true. Hillary is responsible for Trump in so many ways. She started the birther movement, which is what instigated Trump. Her campaigned also elevated Trump in the primaries because she thought he would be easy to beat.
I think he would be the first person to say that he can't predict the future.
Uh yeah. Biden is still ahead but down significantly compared to where he was in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. He was 5-8 points ahead there now he's only 2-5.
Meh. That's based on pretty sparse polling by some pretty marginal pollsters. It could very well be true, but I'll hold off judgement until there's more data.
Fair but if I learned anything from 2016 it's that due to the nature of averages (see other post) it might underestimate the shift to trump.
It’s late August, not November 2nd, so we have the luxury of waiting for more data. No need to draw any conclusion right now. I assume the good pollsters wanted to wait until the RNC was entirely over to put some new stuff in the field, so I expect a lot of data early next week.
I mean sure. But if that's the case why even follow anything now? It all can change. Kinda makes discussion moot.
I trust 538 more. 538 is a data site that features politics; RCP is a politics site that features data. Not saying RCP is wrong necessarily, but if there is a discrepency between the two I will trust 538 first.
538 also rates and weights pollsters based on their methodology and historical performance; as far as i know RCP does not do this.
RCP has a model?
RCP still treats Rasmussen as a polling organization. Why would I trust RCP?
RCP is just giving out raw polling data and making statistics based on that data. 538 is now on the side of predicting the election outcome. Their algorithm accounts for convention bumps (which they and others also say isn't really a thing anymore) as well as many other outside factors so that the prediction stays more consistent. They have a video on their youtube channel where Nate Silver goes into detail about what factors are taken into account in the algorithm and how it relates to the algorithm they used in 2016 (which in hindsight was more accurate than anyone else's).
RCP treats Rasmussen and Trafalgar as legitimate polling and leaves out Polls arbitrarily.
Like you can see this now by the fact that they included the LA Times/Dornsrife poll in 2016 but leave it out in 2020 because it has the opposite of the message they want to push.
Rcp.
Just the data please. I don't need a complex model that might be built on faulty assumptions.
Then again I also took research methods and stats in college so I know how to interpret the data myself and prefer to do my own analyses. For the record I did an analysis yesterday and assuming polling is accurate I given Biden an 82 percent chance of winning if the election were held right now (down from 95 percent in my previous prediction). The key region Biden needs to hold to ensure the greatest probability of winning is the rust belt and Florida.
Of course at the same time his recent decline kinds reminds me of what happened to Clinton leading up to the election so that assumes the polling is accurate.
538 tries to do a lot more in long term predictions and makes these complex models but here's the thing. If his assumptions are wrong his model is wrong. My own models I need to constantly update since I only do snapshots in time based on current polling at the current time and I don't predict long term. Polling fluctuations can change the outcome dramatically. I remember doing 2016 too and I had Clinton ahead massively but by election day I only predicted a 56 percent chance of her winning, so barely better than a coin flip. And then trump won.
I prefer it that way though. I don't think it's really realistic to predict long term with complex models like 538 does. As some people have been saying lately 538 is like astrology for white people. It's all these fancy numbers with tons of commentary that I feel is biased and just makes people feel good.
538 got it's ticket to success for guessing 2012 perfectly. Guess what? 2012 wasn't hard to predict. I got like 49 of the 50 states correct in 2012. Same in 2008. 49/50. In 2016 46/50 but hey no one predicted the rust belt would shift like that. Not even nate. But yeah. Honestly I feel like they get too much clout and are very overrated. I go to rcp and interpret the data myself.
Just the data please. I don't need a complex model that might be built on faulty assumptions.
So one clarification - just listing the polling data is fine (538 does it too), but I hope you don't pay attention to RCP's polling average. That's a model too, albeit a simple one. The idea that you can just average out all your recent polls is also built on a lot of assumptions.
Eh the only real problem with it is that in areas where there isn't a lot of polling there might be a new poll averaged with one from 3 months ago. Still gotta take the data for what it is. Averaging polling isn't really bad and provides a more comprehensive picture than a single poll. Assuming all polls are done well and are recent it should give a more comprehensive picture.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
One thing I’ve been hearing lately is how much the polls in the swing states have tightened after the GOP convention. And how Biden could actually lose. When I dug into it more I saw more of a shift in the real clear politics site but 538 didn’t tighten much at all. At least not by 4 points like the RCP models do.
I really try not to buy into polls that much until October where we have a little more of an understanding of what might happen. But do you trust Nate Silver’s model or the RCP model?
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I trust 538 more, simply because they have invested in building a prediction model based on a ton of stuff that matters in elections, like biases in pollsters and correlations between contests, and they incorporate their margins of error at every point into the resulting simulation which runs races at every probability point to give you a final number of wins and losses for each candidate. RCP, as far as I can tell, just gives you an average of polls. There is no methodology because they don't actually do anything. There are absolutely pollsters that get attention only because they are trying to curry favor with the President, on the hopes that he will tweet about them, which will get them revenue. 538's model would correct for that, and RCP would not (to the best of my knowledge).
Conventions always give a temporary bounce to nominees that dissipate well before election without specific sustained momentum.
538 adjusts for that fact, RCP does not. RCP is also not a model it's a poll aggregate.
The RNC bump coincided with the DNC bump wearing off so that 4% swing was more like a 2% bump dissipating and a 2% bump starting at the same time, but in 2 weeks it won't likely mean much.
Relevant question for anybody out there. Consider the RCP Betting Odds page
Is this trustable? It's an average of multiple betting sites. One would think that betting odds sites would be unbiased because they have a monetary stake in being correct.
Or is it skewed because the Trump follower demographic might be more likely to engage in betting/gambling?
538’s 70-30 split is reflective of the fact that there’s still 2+ months until the election and it’s possible that enough conditions change to make Trump more viable. Whereas other sources like RCP or The Economist are more relevant to where the state of the race is now since they largely just average out poll numbers. So I’d give more credence to 538.
FWIW I think 538 was pretty accurate in 2016 too; their finding that Trump had a roughly 25% chance of victory was probably accurate given that it took a lot of circumstances out of his control to secure him victory (favorable Russian interference, Comey reopening the email investigation, media’s focus on emails, Clinton’s personal unfavorables), and we should take comfort in the fact that so many of these factors don’t reapply this year.
538 for the simple reason that it corrects for different types of polls. For example Trafalgar Group's entire polling model is based on correcting for the dubious assumption that Trump voters are less willing to admit who they're voting for, and RCP lumps them, likely voter polls, and registered voter polls all in the same mix.