Article from a few weeks ago, but now that G. Elliott Morris is taking over without Nate’s models, I’m curious what lemmy’s think about political polling analysis from FiveThirtyEight?

  • resonancewright@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    I trust it more, I’d say.

    I knew of Nate Silver back when his claim to fame was as a sabermetrician and the creator of a statistical model used to predict how baseball players would perform in the future based on present and prior statistical data. That was PECOTA. I actually liked PECOTA. In the long run I think you’d call it a useful failure. But Nate’s baseball takes were actually very good and quite objective in nature. And he obviously was very good working with statistics.

    I got amped up when I learned he was taking his skills into the arena of political analysis. If you remember the early years had a mix of success and failure but was usually good enough to draw onlookers. But something went wrong with all that after a few years – Silver started showing bias in favor of candidates that he had consulting deals with. The objectivity just wasn’t there, he was acting as a paid spokesman would. And the quality of his predictions suffered, as did his demeanor after a while. It was disappointing.

    I regard the guy as someone with a deep understanding of political statistics and data who can help paint a very detailed picture, but he displays too much bias to be trusted to remain objective when it matters. It’s kinda like having a defense lawyer. You always know in advance whose side they will take.

    Whoever the new guys is, I guess we’ll see whether he will remain a statistician, or follows Silver into trying his hand at becoming an influencer.