Princeton Election Consortium

20 Comments so far ↓

• A New Jersey Farmer // Sep 13, 2014 at 8:41 am

  Spent some time trolling around the polling and political sites. It’s great to see how you and PEC are making an impact in the way that polling data is interpreted. It’s also interesting to note the arguments that other media types use to dismiss or minimize your hypothesis. The sauce is getting thick.

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  • ArcticStones // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:06 am

    Yep. And Nate Silver’s uncouth attacks have a simple explanation, imho: Nate feels that the pre-eminence of his brand (real or imagined) is threatened.

  • Sam Wang // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:16 am

    That is great to know. At this point I have to keep the message simple and clear: look at polls only, and note that NYT and 538 have a finger on the scale.

    And of course acknowledge the possibility that polls can change.

• aub // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:45 am

  Saw the CNN stuff and you were awesome!! wow

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• Bert // Sep 13, 2014 at 10:50 am

  Your system seems so much more rational to me than Silver’s. If you strictly look at the polls, Kansas seems to favor the Independent and NC the Democrat. The GOP simply won’t have the majority without those to states. If the polls in Kansas and NC start moving in the GOP column, then it will make sense to predict GOP control of the Senate. Until that happens though, Silver
  is being pretty reckless with his prediction.

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  • Frank // Sep 13, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    I’ve never understood why Silver is still sticking with the so-called fundamentals. His predictions in 2012, while it was true overall, wasn’t as closely accurate as PEC and Electoral-Vote.com.

    Is there something about his particular methodology he’s sticking to which he feels gives a more accurate prediction?

  • Andrew // Sep 15, 2014 at 1:02 pm

    @Frank

    Hubris

• SFBay // Sep 13, 2014 at 2:45 pm

  Sam, is there anyway you can link to the video of your interview with Michael? Or maybe go all high tech and imbed it here on PEC?

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  • Froggy // Sep 13, 2014 at 4:16 pm

    Here’s the link (I don’t know how to go about embedding the video, or even if that’s possible here): http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/09/13/exp-smerconish-will-gop-take-senate.cnn.html

• SFBay // Sep 13, 2014 at 4:41 pm

  I just watched the segment on Smerconish’s show. You’re channeling Joe Friday from Dragnet. Just the facts ma’am. Thanks for the clear explanation of you model in 5 minutes or less.

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• Marc // Sep 13, 2014 at 4:52 pm

  Sam, The only thing that matters in the end is the accuracy and earliness of your predictions for the outcome on election day. To the end, continue to be crystal clear and open about your methods and predictions. Focus on that, don’t rise to any bait, and don’t engage others outside of the above.

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  • 538 Refugee // Sep 13, 2014 at 7:08 pm

    IF this holds without much change what will it say about all that campaign spending blitz towards the end of the cycle?

• Billy // Sep 13, 2014 at 7:18 pm

  Love your eyeroll at the mention of the 538 “feud”. CNN and media outlets love to generate controversy, but you want to stay on topic.

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• Art Brown // Sep 14, 2014 at 12:38 am

  Ahh, I see in a previous post you identify the meta-margin as D+I. Maybe you should modify your header accordingly? There seems a significant probability that Mr. Orman decides who is in the majority. Or should I say, like Professor DeLong, Senate Majority Leader Orman?

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• A New Jersey Farmer // Sep 14, 2014 at 9:15 am

  Still concerned about Alaska, though.

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  • Sam Wang // Sep 14, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    Biggest question mark of the campaign, I agree. Probably close, and sparsely polled.

• Amitabh Lath // Sep 14, 2014 at 6:49 pm

  Nice interview. The segment on how Romney’s people were shocked by the results reminded me of the 1988 election. I was fresh in grad school and the MIT student groups for Dukakis had convinced themselves that the polls just had to be wrong, and there was a huge wave of progressive voters who were simply not being sampled.

  They too had numbers and weights and analyses (for instance, Jesse Jackson’s support!) that sure sounded convincing.

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• A New Jersey Farmer // Sep 14, 2014 at 10:25 pm

  The latest polling reports. Look how far out Nate is.

  http://politicalwire.com/archives/2014/09/14/battle_for_the_senate_is_a_toss_up.html

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  • Sam Wang // Sep 14, 2014 at 10:30 pm

    Those all look the same to me.

    If regression toward the mean holds, those probabilities should all move D-ward in the coming weeks. We’ll see.

  • Kenny // Sep 15, 2014 at 7:18 pm

    538 updated this afternoon to Republicans 54.7% (previously 58%).