Key excerpt (But it's worth reading the full thing):
But the real value-add of the model is not just in calculating who’s ahead in the polling average. Rather, it’s in understanding the uncertainties in the data: how accurate polls are in practice, and how these errors are correlated between the states. The final margins on Tuesday were actually quite close to the polling averages in the swing states, though less so in blue states, as I’ll discuss in a moment. But this was more or less a textbook illustration of the normal-sized polling error that we frequently wrote about [paid only; basically says that the polling errors could be correlated be correlated between states]. When polls miss low on Trump in one key state, they probably also will in most or all of the others.
In fact, because polling errors are highly correlated between states — and because Trump was ahead in 5 of the 7 swing states anyway — a Trump sweep of the swing states was actually our most common scenario, occurring in 20 percent of simulations. Following the same logic, the second most common outcome, happening 14 percent of the time, was a Harris swing state sweep.6
[Interactive table]
Relatedly, the final Electoral College tally will be 312 electoral votes for Trump and 226 for Harris. And Trump @ 312 was by far the most common outcome in our simulations, occurring 6 percent of the time. In fact, Trump 312/Harris 226 is the huge spike you see in our electoral vote distribution chart:
[Interactive graph]
The difference between 20 percent (the share of times Trump won all 7 swing states) and 6 percent (his getting exactly 312 electoral votes) is because sometimes, Trump winning all the swing states was part of a complete landslide where he penetrated further into blue territory. Conditional on winning all 7 swing states, for instance, Trump had a 22 percent chance of also winning New Mexico, a 21 percent chance at Minnesota, 19 percent in New Hampshire, 16 percent in Maine, 11 percent in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, and 10 percent in Virginia. Trump won more than 312 electoral votes in 16 percent of our simulations.
But on Tuesday, there weren’t any upsets in the other states. So not only did Trump win with exactly 312 electoral votes, he also won with the exact map that occurred most often in our simulations, counting all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the congressional districts in Nebraska and Maine.
I don't know of an intuitive test for whether a forecast of a non-repeating event was well-reasoned (see, also, the lively debate over the performance of prediction markets), but this is Silver's initial defense of his 50-50 forecast. I'm unconvinced - if the modal outcome of the model was the actual result of the election, does that vindicate its internal correlations, indict its confidence in its output, both, neither... ? But I don't think it's irreconcilable that the model's modal outcome being real vindicates its internal correlations AND that its certainty was limited by the quality of the available data, so this hasn't lowered my opinion of Silver, either.
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Notes -
Do you have a substantive disagreement with his argument?
If Nate put his money where his mouth was, he'd have lost $100,000. He talks the talk (after it's decided) but doesn't walk the walk when it actually means anything.
https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1842211340720504895
Did the other guy send the contract?
He says so and that Nate later refused to sign.
Did the other guy provide proof that he sent the contract?
A Twitter exchange is in fact a form of contract -- so whether the guy sent Nate a piece of paper saying "I will pay Nate Silver 100K if Florida goes less than R +8, otherwise he will pay me", I think the terms of the bet were pretty clear.
I certainly wouldn't require Nate to pay up based on the Twitter exchange, but that would definitely be the Honourable thing to do -- he can probably afford it based on what he's charging on Substack alone, and it would be great degenerate-gambler PR for him to do so.
...?
If the Twitter exchange is in fact a form of contract, then so is the stipulation of said Twitter exchange for the requisite next step- which includes Nate's condition that the other person send a formal contract via lawyer. If the guy sends a piece of paper saying what you say, it would be failing to meet the conditions of the terms of the Twitter-contract.
Just so -- that's why I wouldn't fault Nate for not paying up. But the whole point of honour culture is that one feels the need to go above and beyond what's legally required, even when it's to one's own detriment. It's not like the bet was unclear or something -- the sporting thing to do would be to chuckle and write a cheque.
If it turns out the other guy had lost instead of winning, would he have paid up?
Getting a lawyer and a contract isn't there as a form of rubber-stamping. It's there to make sure that both parties are cooperating. If the guy sent him a piece of paper without a lawyer, he is refusing to cooperate and Nate shouldn't treat it as a valid contract.
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This is tangential to my main point. Nate's beliefs about the world, if expressed, would've cost him a lot of money. There are probably large numbers of people who trusted Nate's modelling and lost money thinking 'oh well if Nate says it's 50/50 then I can profit from Polymarket being 70/30'.
I think Nate is trying to claw back lost prestige. It reeks of cope to say 'my model exactly predicted the most likely election map' when his model gave it a 6% chance of happening. He struggles to even say what he wanted to happen on election day from the perspective of 'what makes my model look good'. If you're not producing a useful, falsifiable prediction then what is the point?
The important thing is getting it right. I want models that give alpha. If I'm going to pay for a substack, I'd rather pay for someone who got it right - Dominic Cummings who said confidently that Kamala would lose, based on his special polling methods. He actually predicted a Trump victory vs Kamala 311-227 in 2023. He foresaw that Biden would likely become obviously senile, that the Dems needed a better candidate.
https://x.com/Dominic2306/status/1854275006064476410
https://x.com/Dominic2306/status/1854505847440715938
Let's say he had bet $100,000 at 50-50 odds that he wouldn't roll a six on a die. Then he rolls a six. Does that prove something about his beliefs? It's only profitable in expectation. There is no guarantee of making money.
To take the election example, 50-50 means losing half the time. It's only profitable because, when you do win, you win more than you would have otherwise lost.
That is just not possible to get from a single sample. You need to look at his track record over many elections.
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If that is so, I accept this correction in good faith, and I do believe this elaboration of the main argument is substantially stronger. I am not attempting to change your opinion on Nate Silver's accuracy.
I am still curious of if there was ever evidence that Silver's bet was accepted, both for it's own sake in addressing the question and to updating priors, but an argument of 'he would have lost money if he made the bet' is a substantially different argument than 'he refused to respect his own challenge,' and if you did not mean the later interpretation I am grateful for the clarification.
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how does it work?
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To be fair, in the absence of Nate denying it, I don't think he necessarily needs to provide proof.
That would not be fair. In the absence of Nate confirming that he refused to sign a contract, a claim of having sent the contract is just a claim absent further evidence.
My curiosity / eyebrow is raised because Ranger is raising this bet as a character failure on the part of Nate Silver, but the proffered evidence is of the conditional offer of a bet, not that the bet was accepted as offered but that Silver refused to sign it.
This leads to a couple of issues for which more information than has been provided is needed.
-Did the other person actually accept the bet, or are they just claiming so with post-election hindsight? (i.e. is he talking the talk after the election is decided?)
-Did the person try to modify the terms of the bet offered that would render the offer void? (i.e. did he refuse to walk the walk when it mattered?)
-Did the person fail to meet the conditions of the offer of bet? (i.e. did they not have their lawyer do it, but tried to make their own contract- thus invoking the payment risk issue raised?)
I've no particular strong feeling on Nate Silver one way or another, but if someone wants to make a character failure accusation with linked evidence I'd generally prefer the links to be evidence of a character failure.
I disagree. All Nate has to do is say "no you didn't, you fucking liar", and if Keith can't provide evidence of sending him the contract, he's the one that's going to suffer reputational damage. On the other hand, if Nate says that, but Keith promptly provides evidence, this will look even worse for him. Since Nate knows for a fact whether or not he received the contract, his decision on how to react to the claim tells us something about the truth value of the claim that he was sent the contract.
There are also scenarios that would explain a lack of reaction. Maybe after the spat Nate blocked Keith, and has no knowledge that he's now going around claiming that he sent the contract. So while the lack of reaction doesn't outright prove the contract was sent, I maintain that the potential reputational damage that can result from the claim is a weak form of evidence in itself, and thus it is the demand to provide hard evidence that's unfair.
I supposed we will have to agree to disagree that it is unfair to request evidence to substantiate an accusation, particularly when that accusation is a form of argument.
'The accused did not defend themselves' is so flawed a standard for determining truth that Americans prohibit it as a legal standard at a Constitutional level as an element of self-incrimination protections (you cannot be forced to testify, but also your refusal to testify is not itself self-incrimination), and while we are not a court of law it does lead to why it's a poor argument on grounds of reputational damage. Even Nate defending himself in this twitter at this point can inflict reputation damage to Nate- after all, it could be presented / accused as Nate lying / trying to deflect from the poling-result mismatch / doing a condemnable thing in and of itself. General decorum is to not air legal conflicts on your pseudo-business reputational Twitter account, particularly when they are about a prediction that you got wrong- just re-raising the topic is causing reputational harm.
And this is without other possible reasons of reputational harm for not going into detail of why an offer might not have been carried through. Like, say, the fact that Nate Silver is a married men, and married women are often quite willing to have strong words with their husbands when said husbands start offering 5-figure bets. Or maybe his finances are not so liquid and stable as to set a 5-figure risk. Or that he was drunk and not in a good state of mind when he made the offer. Nate is already suffering reputational harm for coming off as a bet-welcher, but he could suffer more reputational harm if he provided more context... and this is regardless of whether there was an actual acceptance-offer made.
It's also a defense that doesn't really acknowledge the shifts in which reputations are being challenged how.
Note here that Nate's reputation isn't regarding whether he would fail to pay a bet. It's not even about if he made a bet. The reputation in question is if Nate's reputation as a political data analyst, i.e. whether his analysis of election, is sound enough to warrant respect.
Whether Nate is willing to actually to make a bet or not isn't actually a failure of his analytic capacity (i.e. whether he should be considered valuable input), it's a failure of an additional standard introduced as a basis of dismissal (if Nate Silver is not willing to go through with a bet, his work can be dismissed). Nate Silver's [Reputation as a political scientist] and [Reputation as a confident better] are two different reputations, which are being conflated to use the one that is easier to condemn [reputation as a betting man] to dismiss the other [reputation as a political scientist].
Since the [reputation as a betting man] is being used as a proxy argument for [Nate Silver's arguments can be dismissed without addressing], the role of evidence is in turn strengthening or weakening the proxy argument. This seems like a reasonable request, but I will admit that is my own opinion.
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