Nate Silver is happy to be wrong: Blowing Trump’s primary win made me humbler, smarter.

The Politico ^ | July 5, 2016 | Glenn Thrush

[2ndDivisionVet]

Nate Silver is giving Donald Trump a 19 percent chance of becoming president – and that makes him a little nervous, as well it should.

(AUDIO-AT-LINK)

No, it’s not because he failed to predict Trump’s albino-swan victory in the Republican primaries (after nailing Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 wins when others were calling both tossups, or worse). It’s because he’s running with the pack, and that makes him suspect something’s a little off.

Silver was at the bar the night before sitting down for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast last week after releasing his general-election forecast showing Hillary Clinton as the prohibitive favorite — and Twitter was, more or less, agreeing with him. This made him happy-queasy, which, best I can tell, is Silver’s natural resting state.

“It makes me a little worried that nobody was like, ‘You are wrong,’” the former Times political sabermetrician and founder of fivethirtyeight.com told me just before we pushed the record button at his office across from New York’s Lincoln Center....

[Jim W N]

Hillary’s going down. I don’t care what all the MSM and experts say. I think she’s going down to Chinatown.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If it’s not close, they can’t cheat.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Nate:
I have four words for you:
Monster Vote
Rebel Alliance
and your algorithms are holier than a slab of Swiss cheese...
because they can not poll nor test the Monster Vote..they only come out when they are really pissed off....and you living in your ivory tower has no idea how pissed off...but trust me...They are there...there are millions of them and the way politics is done in the future will change because Donald J Trump changed the way the game is played!

[CaptainK]

He can’t bring himself to see a Trump victory, which has been his downfall and will continue to be.

[jmaroneps37]

Natey do you really think Comey helped her? If so you’re dumber than a box or rocks.

[Objective Scrutator]

Did Silver predict Brexit correctly? I can only find articles of him saying it’s a toss-up. His first major screwup was the last UK Parliamentary election, IIRC.

Also, keep in mind that one of Hitlerbeast’s main attack lines against Trump is that he is a joke candidate, and if Silver even gave him 40/60 odds it would be seen as going against her message. And we all know what happens to Democrats who don’t fall in line with her, Soetoro being the notable exception.

[sourcery]

He's still not properly taking into account the huge difference in motivation to actually vote between Republicans and Democrats, the fact that we've had a Democrat President for two terms, the extremely high percentage of the electorate who think the country is on the wrong track, Obama's relatively poor job approval by the public (currently below 50%, as it has been for most of Obama's two terms,) the massive increase in the number of voters participating in the GOP primaries and caucuses, and the clear evidence that social mood is turning negative. All of those facts strongly argue that Trump will be the next POTUS. Many of those factors contributed to my making that prediction in August 2015, and all of them are why I now stand by that prediction even more strongly than I did originally.

[jjotto]

Silver just got lucky with an initial foray into politics. A couple of elections happened to coincide with his prejudices. If he can’t give the best odds to some outcome he doesn’t personally agree with, he’s just a shill.

[arthurus]

Nate Silver is betting that the Democrats can control the vote count and can successfully flood the polls with illegal voters and new citizen voters who he is swearing in by the stadiumful just as BJC did in 1996.

[arthurus]

They can cheat in any circumstance and will. No court will allow an election to be nullified and rerun no matter what the level of provable and proved cheating.

[arthurus]

He's still not properly taking into account the huge difference in motivation

Do you suppose George Soros is disenchanted with Mrs Bill? He counts the votes from NY and FL and 9 smaller states. How about all those illegals who will vote in non-ID states? Will they stay home and abjure a nice wad of bills? How about all those new citizens, perhaps a million or two that Hussein is swearing in by the stadiumful and telling them they have to vote?

[Fhios]

But it’s nice to know it’s still all about you Nate.

[sourcery]

George Bush won two elections.

What’s your next argument?

[arthurus]

George Bush is part of the in crowd and the systems were not so well developed as they have become. 2012 was almost surely “stolen” even over and above Romney’s throwing himself to the mat. The Democrats and their wholly owned subsidiary had all their bases covered.

[sourcery]

Your theory cannot account for the election results in 2014.

What’s your next argument?

[CaptainK]

Exactly!

[arthurus]

I don’t think that the Congressional elections in most of the states are rigged and in those states where there is chicanery it appears to be local to big city machines. Now if you ask me how did Brexit come about, then I have no answer for that, or the Mayoral election in St. Petersburg.