Nate Silver says Dems could retake House, or not: 'Both extremely possible'

The Hill ^ | 4 Nov 2018 | MEGAN KELLER

[mandaladon]

FiveThirtyEight's election forecaster Nate Silver said Sunday that the House could end up in Democrat or Republican hands in Tuesday's election, though polling predicts that Democrats will flip the chamber.

"So in the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning," Silver told ABC's "This Week."

However, he noted that "polls aren't always right."

"The range of outcomes in the House is really wide," he explained. "Our range which covers 80 percent of outcomes goes from, on the low end, about 15 Democratic pickups, all the way to low to mid 50s, 52 or 53."

"Most of those are under 23, which is how many seats they would need to win to take the House," he said."

"But no one should be surprised if they only win 19 seats and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats," Silver added. "Those are both extremely possible, based on how accurate polls are in the real world."

However, most also predicted that President Trump would lose in the 2016 elections to Hillary Clinton. The morning of election day two years ago, FiveThirtyEight gave Clinton a 71 percent chance of becoming president.

[BunnySlippers]

Well, he’s made sure no one can claim he was WRONG this time.

[SMGFan]

And just like that, an 80 percent chance for Democratic takeover of the House goes to 50-50. Nate Silver’s polling operation can’t survive a second embarrassment of the magnitude he suffered in 2016

https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1059147114826162177

I wish I could forgive you from not knowing how math works, but some things are truly unpardonable.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1059149034693316608

[hinckley buzzard]

Usually true because the “party in power” becomes complacent. I don’t see that happening this year. GOP voters don’t seem to be sitting back and letting nature take its course.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

Commitment. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made as a pundit or a pollster or a prognosticator.

[LambSlave]

I read that to say most of his outcomes are for less than a 23 seat pick-up, so why is he pushing the 80% number...:^).

Think of it this way, I run the model ten times. I get 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 48, 52, 58. I take 80% of these (e.g. throw out the two outliers-- the 10 and the 58). Most of the results (6/8) are under 23.

[nobamanomore]

You can’t miss if you play both sides

[TECTopcat]

reminds me of race track touts that show how they have the winner after the race in one of their longshot bets if not their top picks. Stock newsletters do it too, it will say bullish but with possible selloff, then when the market corrects it says they warned of dropped.

Watch Silver’s numbers as votes come in, he shifted to Trump winning when votes came in , in 2016.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

At least he is being honest now. He really does not know. Some of these house races have no reliable or recent polling.

[SMGFan]

But who should we trust in 2020?

few here were willing to believe GOP would lose .. history be damned! Cook , Sabato, 538 etc were wrong on HRC 2016