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==References==
==References==
* Bassey Etim, [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/blogging-in-a-post-campaign-world/ "Blogging in a Post-Campaign World"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', March 22, 2009.
* Bassey Etim, [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/blogging-in-a-post-campaign-world/ "Blogging in a Post-Campaign World"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', March 22, 2009.
* Bobbie Johnson, "America's hottest pollster gives his final verdict as US elections reach climax," [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/03/nate-silver-fivethirtyeight ''[[The Guardian|Guardian.co.uk]],'' November 3, 2008].
* Bobbie Johnson, "America's hottest pollster gives his final verdict as US elections reach climax," [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/03/nate-silver-fivethirtyeight], ''[[The Guardian|Guardian.co.uk]],'' November 3, 2008.
* Steve Myers, "FiveThirtyEight Combines Polls, Reporting and Baseball," [http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/92357/fivethirtyeight-combines-polls-reporting-and-baseball/ ''[[Poynter Institute|Poynter]],'' October 30, 2008].
* Steve Myers, "FiveThirtyEight Combines Polls, Reporting and Baseball," [http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/92357/fivethirtyeight-combines-polls-reporting-and-baseball/ ''[[Poynter Institute|Poynter]],'' October 30, 2008].
* David Rothschild, "Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and their Biases," ''[[Public Opinion Quarterly]]'', 73, No. 5 (2009): 895-916.
* David Rothschild, "Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and their Biases," ''[[Public Opinion Quarterly]]'', 73, No. 5 (2009): 895-916.

Revision as of 07:42, 29 December 2011

FiveThirtyEight
Type of site
Opinion poll analysis, political blog
Available inEnglish
OwnerNate Silver
Created byNate Silver
URLfivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional

FiveThirtyEight is a polling aggregation website with a blog created by Nate Silver. Sometimes colloquially referred to as 538 dot com or just 538, the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college.[1] Established on March 7, 2008 as FiveThirtyEight.com, in August 2010 the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and was renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus.

During the presidential primaries and general election of 2008, the site compiled polling data through a unique methodology derived from Silver's experience in baseball sabermetrics to "balance out the polls with comparative demographic data"[2] and "weighting each poll based on the pollster's historical track record, sample size, and recentness of the poll".[3]

For the 2008 Presidential Election, FiveThirtyEight.com also used computer models to simulate the election 10,000 times per day in order to provide a continually up-to-date assessment of probability for electoral outcomes. The method proved to be highly accurate, as Silver correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states in the presidential election, as well as every Senate race in 2008.

After the 2008 election, the site published articles – typically creating or analyzing statistical information – on a wide variety of topics in current politics and political news. These included a monthly update on the prospects for turnover in the U.S. Senate; federal economic policies; Congressional support for legislation; public support for health care reform, global warming legislation, gay rights; elections around the world; marijuana legalization; and numerous other topics.

On June 3, 2010, Nate Silver announced that in early August the blog would be "relaunched under a NYTimes.com domain".[4][5][6] The transition took place on August 25, 2010, with the publication of Silver's first FiveThirtyEight blog article online in The New York Times.[7]

History

When Silver started FiveThirtyEight.com in early March 2008 he initially published under the name "Poblano", the same name that he had used when publishing a diary on the political blog Daily Kos since November 2007. Writing as Poblano on Daily Kos, he had gained a following especially for his primary election forecast on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008.[8] From that primary election day, which included contests in 24 states plus American Samoa, "Poblano" predicted that Barack Obama would come away with 859 delegates, and Hillary Clinton 829; in the actual contests, Obama won 847 delegates and Clinton 834. Based on this result, New York Times op-ed columnist William Kristol cited "Poblano" thus: "And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio".[9]

FiveThirtyEight.com gained further national attention for beating out most pollsters' projections in the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic party primaries on May 6, 2008. As Mark Blumenthal wrote in National Journal, “Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data.... Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina.... But a funny thing happened. The model got it right”.[10] Silver relied on demographic data and on the history of voting in other states during the 2008 Democratic primary elections. “I think it is interesting and, in a lot of ways, I’m not surprised that his predictions came closer to the result than the pollsters did”, said Brian F. Schaffner, research director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.[11]

On May 30, 2008, Silver revealed his true identity for the first time to his FiveThirtyEight.com readers.[12] After that date, he published just four more diaries on Daily Kos.[13]

As the primary season was coming to an end, Silver began to build a model for the general election race. This model, too, relied in part on demographic information but mainly involved a complex method of aggregating polling results. On June 13, Rasmussen Reports began partnering with FiveThirtyEight.com in order to include this unique methodology for generating poll averages in their "Balance of Power Calculator".[14][15] At the same time, FiveThirtyEight.com's daily "Today's Polls" column began to be mirrored on "The Plank," a blog published by The New Republic.[16]

By June 25, 2008, entering "FiveThirtyEight" in a Google search generated a list of more than 150,000 articles that mentioned FiveThirtyEight.com; by October 13 the same search yielded more than 400,000 articles; by November 5, more than 580,000. By December 29, 2008, after the excitement of the election had died down, this search still yielded 480,000 articles; then interest in the site gradually rebuilt so that by August 14, 2009, it yielded 496,000; by September 27 it yielded 512,000; by November 17 (roughly a year after the 2008 election), 568,000.

By early October 2008, FiveThirtyEight.com approached 2.5 million visitors per week, while averaging approximately 400,000 per weekday.[17] During October 2008 the site received 3.63 million unique visitors, 20.57 million site visits, and 32.18 million page views.[18] On Election Day, November 4, 2008, the site had nearly 5 million page views.[19]

2008 U.S. elections

Methods

Weighting of polls

One unique aspect of the site is Silver’s efforts to rank pollsters by accuracy, weight their polls accordingly, and then supplement those polls with his own electoral projections based on demographics and prior voting patterns. “I did think there was room for a more sophisticated way of handling these things,” Silver said.[11][20]

FiveThirtyEight.com weighs pollster's historical track record through a complex methodology[21] and assigns them a value to indicate "Pollster-Introduced Error (PIE)".

FiveThirtyEight.com's projections for the presidential (top) and Senate (bottom) races on 4 November 2008

Polls on FiveThirtyEight.com are weighted using a half-life of thirty days using the formula 0.5P/30 where 'P' is the number of days transpired since the median date that the poll was in the field. The formula is based on an analysis of 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008 state-by-state polling data.[22]

Smoothing the poll results

At base Silver's method is similar to other analysts' approaches to taking advantage of the multiple polls that are conducted within each state: he averaged the polling results. But especially in the early months of the election season polling in many states is sparse and episodic. The "average" of polls over an extended period (perhaps several weeks) would not reveal the true state of voter preferences at the present time, nor provide an accurate forecast of the future. One approach to this problem was followed by Pollster.com: if enough polls were available, it computed a locally weighted moving average or LOESS.

However, while adopting such an approach in his own analysis, Silver reasoned that there was additional information available in polls from "similar" states that might help to fill the gaps in information about the trends in a given state. Accordingly, he adapted an approach that he had previously used in his baseball forecasting: using nearest neighbor analysis he first identified "most similar states" and then factored into his electoral projections for a given state the polling information from "similar states". He carried this approach one step further by also factoring national polling trends into the estimates for a given state. Thus, his projections were not simply based on the polling trends in a given state.

Furthermore, a basic intuition that Silver drew from his analysis of the 2008 Democratic party primary elections was that the voting history of a state or Congressional district provided clues to current voting. This is what allowed him to beat all the pollsters in his forecasts in the Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, for example.[23] Using such information allowed Silver to come up with estimates of the vote preferences even in states for which there were few if any polls. For his general election projections for each state, in addition to relying in the available polls in a given state and "similar states," Silver estimated a "538 regression" using historical voting information along with demographic characteristics of the states to create an estimate that he treated as a separate poll (equivalent to the actually available polls from that state). This approach helped to stabilize his projections, because if there were few if any polls in a given state, the state forecast was largely determined by the 538 regression estimate.

Additional aspects of the methodology are described in a detailed FAQ on the FiveThirtyEight.com website.[24]

Senate races

In July 2008, the site began to report projections of 2008 U.S. Senate races. Special procedures were developed relying on both polls and demographic analysis. The projections were updated on a weekly basis.

Swing state analysis

The site presents an analysis of the swing states, focusing on so-called "Tipping Point States".[25] 'Tipping Point States' are those states that tip the outcome of the election from one candidate to the other. In each simulation run, the winner's states won are lined up in reverse order of victory margin by percentage. A simple algorithm selects the minimum closest states that, if switched to the loser's side, would change the election outcome, then weights that run's significance based on the margin of victory in the popular vote. Thus, the closer the popular vote, the fewer the number of tipping point states and the greater the significance of that run in assessing tipping point importance. For example, the 2004 election's sole tipping point state was Ohio by this method, while 1960's were Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey — even though Hawaii was the closest state race.

Final projections of 2008 election

In the final update of his presidential forecast model at midday of November 4, 2008, Silver projected a popular vote victory by 6.1 percentage points for Barack Obama and electoral vote totals of 349 (based on a probabilistic projection) or 353 (based on fixed projections of each state).[26] Silver's predictions matched the actual results everywhere except in Indiana and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska, which awards an electoral vote separately from the rest of the state. His projected national popular vote differential was below the actual figure of 7.2 points.

The forecasts for the Senate proved to be correct for every race. But the near stalemate in Minnesota led to a recount that was settled only on June 30, 2009. In Alaska, after a protracted counting of ballots, on November 19 Republican incumbent Ted Stevens conceded the seat to Democrat Mark Begich, an outcome that Silver had forecast on election day.[27] And in Georgia, a run-off election on December 2 led to the re-election of Republican Saxby Chambliss, a result that was also consistent with Silver's original projection.

The ground game and "On the Road"

During the 2008 electoral campaign, Sean Quinn, a second contributor, drew on his knowledge and experience with campaign organizations to evaluate the ground game and "get out the vote" strategies of the McCain and Obama campaign teams. A poker player, Quinn drew an analogy between Barack Obama's electoral strategy and a poker player having multiple "outs" for winning a hand.[28]

In September, Quinn launched a series of essays under the name On the Road.[29] Quinn traveled from state to state telling the story of the campaign from the electoral battleground, drawing on observations and interviews with grassroots campaign workers.

After the 2008 U.S. election

Focus

During the first two months after the election, no major innovations in content were introduced. A substantial percentage of the articles focused on Senatorial races: the runoff in Georgia, won by Saxby Chambliss; recounts of votes in Alaska (won by Mark Begich), and Minnesota (Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman); and the appointments of Senatorial replacements in Colorado, New York, and Illinois.

After President Obama's inauguration, Sean Quinn reported that he was moving to Washington, D.C., to continue political writing from that locale.[30] On February 4, 2009, he became the first blogger to join the White House press corps.[31] After that time, however, he contributed only a handful of articles to FiveThirtyEight.com.

During the post-2008 election period Silver devoted attention to developing some tools for the analysis of forthcoming 2010 Congressional elections,[32] as well as discussing policy issues and the policy agenda for the Obama administration, especially economic policies.[33] He developed a list of 2010 Senate races in which he makes monthly updates of predicted party turnover.[34]

Later, Silver adapted his methods to address a variety of issues of the day, including health care reform, climate change, unemployment, and popular support for same-sex marriage.[35] He wrote a series of columns investigating the credibility of polls by Strategic Vision, LLC (of Georgia), presenting an analysis that Silver said produced strong indirect evidence of fraud.[36][37] FiveThirtyEight devoted more than a dozen articles to the Iranian presidential election in June 2009, assessing of the quality of the vote counting. International affairs columnist Renard Sexton began the series with an analysis of polling leading up to the election;[38] then posts by Nate Silver, Andrew Gelman and Sexton analyzed the reported returns and political implications.[39]

FiveThirtyEight covered the November 3, 2009, elections in the United States in detail.[40] FiveThirtyEight writers Schaller, Gelman, and Silver also gave extensive coverage to the January 19, 2010 Massachusetts special election to the U.S. Senate. The "538 model" once again aggregated the disparate polls to correctly predict that the Republican Scott Brown would win.[41]

In spring of 2010, FiveThirtyEight turned a focus on the United Kingdom General Election scheduled for May 6, with a series of more than forty articles on the subject that culminated in projections of the number of seats that the three major parties were expected to win.[42] Following a number of preview posts in January,[43] and February,[44]

Renard Sexton examined subjects such as the UK polling industry[45] and the 'surge' of the third-party Liberal Democrats,[46] while Nate Silver, Sexton and Dan Berman[47] developed a seat projection model. The UK election was the first time the FiveThirtyEight team did an election night 'liveblog' of a non-US election.[48]

In April 2010, the Guardian Newspaper published Silver's predictions for the 2010 United Kingdom General Election. The majority of polling organisations in the UK use the concept of uniform swing to predict the outcome of elections. However, by applying his own methodology, Silver produced very different results, which suggested that a Conservative victory might have been the most likely outcome.[49] After a series of articles, including critiques and responses to other electoral analysts, his "final projection" was published on the eve of the election.[50] In the end, Silver's projections were off the mark, particularly compared with those of some other organizations, and Silver wrote a post mortem on his blog.[51] Silver examined the pitfalls of the forecasting process,[52] while Sexton discussed the final government agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.[53]

Transparency in pollster ratings

On June 6, 2010, FiveThirtyEight posted pollster rankings that updated and elaborated Silver's efforts from the 2008 election. Silver expanded the database to more than 4,700 election polls and developed a model for rating the polls that was more sophisticated than his original rankings.[54] The new ratings came under criticism by Taegan Goddard in an article in his blog Political Wire on June 9 titled "Where's the Transparency in Pollster Rankings?"[55]

Silver responded on 538: "Where's the transparency? Well, it's here [citing his June 6 article], in an article that contains 4,807 words and 18 footnotes. Literally every detail of how the pollster ratings are calculated is explained. It's also here [referring to another article], in the form our Pollster Scorecards, a feature which we'll continue to roll out over the coming weeks for each of the major polling firms, and which will explain in some detail how we arrive at the particular rating that we did for each one".[56]

As for why the complete 538 polling database had not been released publicly, Silver responded: "The principal reason is because I don't know that I'm legally entitled to do so. The polling database was compiled from approximately eight or ten distinct data sources, which were disclosed in a comment which I posted shortly after the pollster ratings were released, and which are detailed again at the end of this article. These include some subscription services, and others from websites that are direct competitors of this one. Although polls contained in these databases are ultimately a matter of the public record and clearly we feel as though we have every right to use them for research purposes, I don't know what rights we might have to re-publish their data in full".

Silver also commented on the fact that the 538 ratings had contributed to Markos Moulitsas's decision to end Daily Kos's use of Research 2000 as its pollster.[57]

Subsequently, on June 11, Mark Blumenthal also commented on the question of transparency in an article in the National Journal titled "Transparency In Rating: Nate Silver's Impressive Ranking Of Pollsters' Accuracy Is Less Impressive In Making Clear What Data Is Used".[58] He noted that in the case of Research 2000 there were some discrepancies between what Silver reported and what the pollster itself reported. Other researchers questioned aspects of the methodology.[59]

On June 16, 2010, Silver announced on his blog that he is willing to give all pollsters who he had included in his rating a list of their polls that he had in his archive, along with the key information that he used (poll marginals, sample size, dates of administration); and he encouraged the pollsters to examine the lists and the results to compare them with the pollster's own record and make corrections.[60]

Partnership with The New York Times

On June 3, 2010, The New York Times and Nate Silver announced that FiveThirtyEight had formed a partnership under which the blog would be hosted by the Times for a period of three years.[61] In legal terms, FiveThirtyEight granted a "license" to the Times to publish the blog. The blog would be listed under the "Politics" tab of the News section of the Times.[62] FiveThirtyEight would thus be subject to and benefit from editing and technical production by the Times, while FiveThirtyEight would be responsible for creating the content.

Silver received bids from several major media entities before selecting the Times.[63] Under terms of the agreement, Silver would also write monthly articles for the print version of both the newspaper and the Sunday magazine.[64] Silver did not move his blog to the highest bidder, because he was concerned with maintaining his own voice while gaining the exposure and technical support that a larger media company could provide. "There's a bit of a Groucho Marx quality to it [Silver has said].... You shouldn’t want to belong to any media brand that seems desperate to have you as a member, even though they'll probably offer the most cash".[65]

The first column of the renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus appeared in The Times on August 25, 2010, with the introduction of U.S. Senate election forecasts. At the same time Silver published a brief history of the blog.[66] All columns from the original FiveThirtyEight.com were also archived for public access.[67]

Writers

When the transition to The New York Times was announced, Silver listed his staff of writers for the first time.[68] However, of the seven listed writers, only three of them had published on 538/New York Times by late December 2010: Nate Silver, Renard Sexton, and Hale Stewart. Andrew Gelman contributed again in early 2011.[69] Brian McCabe published his first article in January 2011.[70] Why other writers played only a limited role in FiveThirtyEight/NYT was explained in February 2011 as follows:[71]

"Before his partnership with the Times, Silver had five contributors who wrote about half the posts on the site. Now none of those contributors write regularly for the blog, meaning Silver writes about 85 percent of the posts with occasional guest contributions. The Times, Silver said, wasn’t comfortable allowing some of the contributors to continue writing because of their tone or political affiliations.

'That is one of the challenges — getting people that meet the Times’ standards of what it means to be a journalist. You can’t have too many conflicts of interest and you really have to write in a way that comes across as being not overly opinionated,' Silver said. 'I disagree with some of the decisions the Times made as far as what they considered disqualifying, but the fact is they do have a standard which is both high and in some ways kind of quirky'.

[Jim] Roberts, [Assistant Managing Editor of the Times], "explained that the Times decided contributor Ed Kilgore would stop writing for FiveThirtyEight because his work would have violated the Times’ ethics policy. Kilgore is also managing editor of The Democratic Strategist – 'a partisan connection that was a bit too close for comfort, Roberts said'.

Two of the contributors who used to write regularly for FiveThirtyEight — Renard Sexton who covered international politics and Hale Stewart who covered economics — have both written some pieces for the blog since the switch. But they’re doing so less frequently, Silver said, because the Times already has reporters who write about the same topics.

'One of the things that I have to think about now that I didn’t have to think about before is how FiveThirtyEight’s coverage relates to everything else The New York Times is doing,' said Silver, who hopes to add other contributors to balance out the workload and give him time to work on longer-term projects.

On the one hand, that can create opportunities to write about subjects that I might have skipped before. But in other circumstances, there can be issues with duplication or redundancy'”.

Beginning in 2011, one writer who emerged as a regular contributor was Micah Cohen. Cohen provided a periodic "Reads and Reactions" column in which he summarized Silver's article for the previous couple of weeks, as well as reactions to it in the media and other blogs, and suggested some additional readings related to the subject of Silver's columns. Silver identified Cohen as "my news assistant".[72] Cohen also contributed additional columns on occasion.[73]

On September 12, 2011, Silver introduced another writer: "FiveThirtyEight extends a hearty welcome to John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, who will be writing a series of posts for this site over the next month. Mr. Sides is also the founder of the outstanding blog The Monkey Cage,[74] which was named the 2010 Blog of the Year by The Week magazine".[75]

Beyond electoral politics

Sports

While politics and elections remained the main focus of FiveThirtyEight, the blog also sometimes addressed sports, including American college athletic conference realignment,[76] professional tennis,[77] the 2011 NCAA Men's Basketball "March Madness",[78] the B.C.S. rankings in NCAA college football,[79][80] NBA Basketball,[81] and Major League Baseball matters ranging from Derek Jeter's 2011 performance[82] to 2011 attendance at the New York Mets' Citi Field.[83]

Economics and hurricanes

In addition, FiveThirtyEight sometimes turned its attention to other topics, such as the economics of blogging,[84] the financial ratings by Standard & Poors,[85] economists' tendency to underpredict unemployment levels,[86] and the economic impact and media coverage of Hurricane Irene (2011).[87][88]

Occupy Wall Street protests
Adapted from a FiveThirtyEight graph published in the New York Times (original.)

FiveThirtyEight published a graph showing different growth curves of the news stories covering Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests. Silver pointed out that conflicts with the police caused the sharpest increases in news coverage of the protests.[89] And he assessed the geography of the protests by analyzing news reports of the size and location of events across the United States.[90]

2010 U.S. mid-term elections

Shortly after 538 relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state Governorships. Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling.

U.S. Senate

Stimulated by the surprising win of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown in the special election in January 2010, Silver launched the first iteration of his Senate prediction model a few days later, using objective indicators including polling to project each state outcome in November. This model incorporated some elements of the 2008 presidential model.[91] It was first published in full form in The New York Times on August 25, 2010.[92] It relied basically on aggregating of public polls for each Senate race, with some adjustment for national trends in recognition of a correlation in poll movement across state lines, i.e., each race cannot be interpreted as entirely independent of all others.

In addition to making projections of the outcomes of each Senate race, FiveThirtyEight tracked the expected national outcome of the partisan division of the Senate. Just before election day (October 31), the FiveThirtyEight Senate projection was for the new Senate to have 52 Democrats and 48 Republicans. (The model did not address the possibility of party switching by elected candidates after November 2.)

Of the 37 Senate seats contested in the November 2, 2010 elections, 36 were resolved by November 4, including very close outcomes in several states. Of these 36, the FiveThirtyEight model had correctly predicted the winner in 34. One of the two misses was in Colorado, in which the incumbent Michael Bennet (D) outpolled the challenger Ken Buck (R) by less than 1 percentage point. The 538 model had forecast that Buck would win by 1 percentage point. The second miss was in Nevada, in which the incumbent Harry Reid beat challenger Sharron Angle by 5.5 percentage points, whereas the 538 model had forecast Angle to win by 3.0 percentage points. Silver has speculated the error was due at least in part to the fact that polling organizations underrepresented Hispanic voters by not interviewing in Spanish.[93]

In the remaining contest for U.S. Senate, in Alaska, the electoral outcome was not yet determined as of November 4, pending a count of the write-in ballots, but in the end the FiveThirtyEight forecast of GOP nominee Joe Miller as winner ultimately proved to be wrong, as write-in candidate, incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, prevailed.

The 538 model had forecast a net pickup of 7 seats by the Republicans in the Senate, but the outcome was a pickup of 6 seats.

U.S. House of Representatives

The model for projecting the outcome of the House of Representatives was more complicated than those for the Senate and governorships. For one thing, House races are more subject to the force of national trends and events than are the other two. One way to account for this was to take into account trends in the "generic Congressional ballot."[94] Use of such a macrolevel indicator, as well as macroeconomic indicators, is a common approach taken by political scientists to project House elections.[95]

Furthermore, there was much less available public polling for individual House districts than there is for Senate or gubernatorial races. By the end of the 2010 election season, public polls were available for only about 25% of the districts. This is one reason why some analysts rely principally on making global or macro-level projections of the number of seats to be won by each party rather than trying to forecast the outcome in every individual district. Silver's FiveThirtyEight model, however, while weighting the generic partisan division as one factor, focused on developing estimates for each district. For this purpose he used information on past voting in the district (the Cook PVI), the quality of the candidates (in particular whether one was an incumbent), fundraising by each candidate, "expert ratings" of the races,[96] public polls of the given race (if they were available), and, in the absence of public polls a cautious use of private polls (i.e., polls conducted by or for partisan organizations or a candidate's own campaign organization).

In response to some concerns that he was hedging his projection, Silver contended that in his model the uncertainty of the outcome was a feature, not a flaw.[97] In comparison with previous Congressional elections, a far larger number of seats were being contested or were "in play" in 2010. While his model, which relied on simulating the election outcomes 100,000 times generated a projected "most likely" net gain of 53 seats by the Republicans (two days before the election), he emphasized that the 95% confidence interval was ± 29-30: "Tonight, our forecast shows Republicans gaining 53 seats — the same as in recent days, and exactly the same answer you get if you plug the generic ballot average into the simple formula. Our model also thinks the spread of potential outcomes is exceptionally wide: its 95 percent confidence interval runs from a 23-seat Republican gain to an 81-seat one".[98]

On election eve, he reported his final forecast as follows:

Our forecasting model, which is based on a consensus of indicators including generic ballot polling, polling of local districts, expert forecasts, and fund-raising data, now predicts an average Republican net gain of 54 seats (up one from 53 seats in last night’s forecast), and a median net Republican gain of 55 seats. These figures would exceed the 52 seats that Republicans won from Democrats in the 1994 midterms.[99]

In final vote tallys as of December 10, 2010, the Republicans had a net gain of 63 seats in the House, 8 more than the total predicted on election eve though still within the reported confidence interval.[100]

State governorships

The FiveThirtyEight model for state governors' races also relied basically on aggregating and projecting public polls in each race. However, Silver reported that gubernatorial elections in each state were somewhat more independent of what happened in other states than were either Senate or House of Representatives elections. That is, these races were somewhat more local and less national in focus.

Just before election day (October 31), the FiveThirtyEight projection was that there would be 30 Republican governors in office (counting states where there was no gubernatorial election in 2010), 19 Democratic governors, and 1 (actually 0.8) Other (Lincoln Chaffee, who was leading in the polls running as an Independent in Rhode Island).

Of the 37 gubernatorial races, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36. Only in Illinois, in which the Democratic candidate Pat Quinn defeated the Republican Bill Brady 46.6% to 46.1%, was the FiveThirtyEight prediction wrong – by just half a percentage point.

2012 U.S. presidential election

While FiveThirtyEight devoted a lot of time to coverage of the 2012 Republican party primaries throughout 2011, its first effort to handicap the 2012 Presidential general election was published a year in advance of the election: "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election" in The New York Times Magazine.[101] Accompanying the online release of this article, Silver also published online "Choose Obama’s Re-Election Adventure," an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables: President Obama's favorability ratings, the rate of GDP growth, and how conservative the Republican opponent would be.[102] This article was criticized in an online article in Bloomberg News by Ron Klain[103] a political advisor to Barack Obama, which stimulated a response by Silver[104] followed by another article by Klain.[105][106]

Primary elections

On December 13, 2011, Silver published his first version of a primary election forecast for the Republican Party Iowa Caucuses.[107] In this article he also described the basic methodology for forecasting the primaries; his approach relied solely on an adjusted average of state-level polls, and not on any other information about the campaign or on national polls.

Recognition

  • In September 2008, FiveThirtyEight became the first blog ever selected as a Notable Narrative by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. According to the Foundation, "In his posts, former economic analyst and baseball-stats wunderkind Nate Silver explains the presidential race, using the dramatic tension inherent in the run-up to Election Day to drive his narrative. Come November 5, we will have a winner and a loser, but in the meantime, Silver spins his story from the myriad polls that confound us lesser mortals".[108]
  • The New York Times described FiveThirtyEight.com in November 2008 as "one of the breakout online stars of the year".[109]
  • Huffington Post columnist Jason Linkins named FiveThirtyEight.com as No. 1 of "Ten Things that Managed to Not Suck in 2008, Media Edition".[110]
  • FiveThirtyEight.com is the 2008 Weblog Award Winner for "Best Political Coverage".[111]
  • FiveThirtyEight.com earned a 2009 "Bloggie" as the "Best Weblog about Politics" in the 9th Annual Weblog Awards.[112]
  • In April 2009 Nate Silver was named "Blogger of the Year" in the 6th Annual Opinion Awards of The Week, for his work on FiveThirtyEight.com.[113]
  • In September 2009, FiveThirtyEight.com's predictive model was featured as the cover story in STATS: The Magazine for Students of Statistics.[114]
  • In November 2009, FiveThirtyEight.com was named one of "Our Favorite Blogs of 2009" ("Fifty blogs we just can't get enough of") by PC Magazine.[115]
  • In December 2009, FiveThirtyEight was recognized by The New York Times Magazine in its "Ninth Annual Year in Ideas" for conducting "Forensic Polling Analysis" detective work on the possible falsification of polling data by a major polling firm.[116][117]
  • In November 2010, Editor-in-Chief of Politico John F. Harris, writing in Forbes Magazine, listed Nate Silver as one of seven bloggers among "The Most Powerful People on Earth": "The New York Times recently began hosting Nate Silver's delightfully granular blog about the numbers that underlie politics".[118]
  • In June 2011, Time's "The Best Blogs of 2011" named FiveThirtyEight one of its Essential Blogs: "In 2010, political-numbers man Nate Silver moved his independent blog onto the big-time platform that is the New York Times' site. The new version of Five Thirty Eight has a more corporate look and feel, but the appeal — Silver's clever analysis of poll data and other information relating to political horse races — remains the same. And the Times' tougher moderation of comments has improved the quality dramatically. With Election Day 2012 on the horizon, this blog is going to get more essential in the months to come".[119]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Silver, Nate (7 August 2008). "Frequently Asked Questions". FiveThirtyEight.com. Retrieved 4 November 2008.
  2. ^ Andrew Romano, "Making His Pitches: Nate Silver, an all-star in the world of baseball stats, may be the political arena's next big draw," Newsweek, June 16, 2008.
  3. ^ "FAQ and Statement of Methodology FiveThirtyEight.com". FiveThirtyEight.com. June 9, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
  4. ^ Silver, Nate (June 3, 2010). "FiveThirtyEight to Partner with New York Times". FiveThirtyEight.com. Retrieved June 3, 2010.
  5. ^ "The New York Times Will Incorporate the Blog FiveThirtyEight into the Politics Section of NYTimes.com," MarketWatch, June 3, 2010.
  6. ^ Brian Stelter, "Times to Host Blog on Politics and Polls," The New York Times, June 3, 2010.
  7. ^ Nate Silver, "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats," The New York Times, August 15, 2010.
  8. ^ See "Super Tuesday Preview, 1/31/08," DailyKos.com and "Final Super Tuesday Projection, 2/5/08," DailyKos.com.
  9. ^ William Kristol, "Obama's Path to Victory", The New York Times, February 11, 2008. Also see Mark Blumenthal, "Regression Analysis of the Democratic Race," Pollster.com, February 12, 2008.
  10. ^ Mark Blumenthal, "The Poblano Model," National Journal, May 8, 2008.
  11. ^ a b Bialik, Carl (June 2, 2008). "Baseball Analyst Draws Fans by Crunching Election Numbers". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
  12. ^ Nate Silver, "No, I'm Not Chuck Todd", FiveThirtyEight.com, May 30, 2008.
  13. ^ Poblano's diaries and comments can be found by searching the archive of Daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/user/poblano.
  14. ^ Rasmussen Reports
  15. ^ "Rasmussen Reports to Partner with FiveThirtyEight.com". Rasmussen Reports. June 13, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-20. [dead link]
  16. ^ The first such cross-posting was Nate Silver, "Today's Polls: The Bounce Hits the Badger State," The New Republic, June 12, 2008.
  17. ^ Quinn, Sean (October 3, 2008). "On the Road: St. Louis County, Missouri". FiveThirtyEight.com.
  18. ^ Quinn, Sean (November 3, 2008). "Site Note". FiveThirtyEight.com.
  19. ^ Stephanie Clifford, "This Math Whiz Called It for Obama Months Ago," The New York Times, November 10, 2008.
  20. ^ An accessible description and evaluation of FiveThirtyEight's methodology for the 2008 general election was published in September 2009 by Adam Felder, "Case Study: The FiveThirtyEight.com Predictive Model of the 2008 Presidential Election," STATS: The Magazine for Students of Statistics, No. 50 (2009).
  21. ^ FiveThirtyEight:Pollster Ratings v 3.0
  22. ^ ElectoralVote.com
  23. ^ Mark Blumenthal, "The Poblano Model," National Journal, May 8, 2008.
  24. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions, Last revised 8/7/2008, FiveThirtyEight.com.
  25. ^ FiveThirtyEight FAQ Page: Swing State Analysis
  26. ^ Nate Silver, "Today's Polls and Final Election Projection: Obama 349, McCain 189," FiveThirtyEight.com. November 4, 2008. Retrieved on 5 November 2008.
  27. ^ "Stevens Concedes Alaska Senate Race," CNN.com, November 19, 2008.
  28. ^ Froeb, Ian (October 6, 2008). "Two of a Kind: Clayton High grad Sean Quinn and poker buddy/baseball stat head Nate Silver crunch the Electoral College numbers on FiveThirtyEight.com". Riverfront Times.
  29. ^ Quinn, Sean. "Articles labeled "On the Road"". FiveThirtyEight.com.
  30. ^ Sean Quinn, "The End of the Beginning", FiveThirtyEight.com, January 22, 2009.
  31. ^ Sean Quinn, "Obama Hits the Road to Sell Stimulus, Steps Up Pressure on Key Senators," FiveThirtyEight.com, February 4, 2009.
  32. ^ For example, Nate Silver, "Appointed Senators Rarely Win Re-Election," FiveThirtyEight.com, December 11, 2008; and Nate Silver, "Daddy, Where Do Senators Come From?" FiveThirtyEight.com, January 9, 2009.
  33. ^ For example, Nate Silver, "Obama's Agenda & The Difference Between Tactics & Strategy", FiveThirtyEight.com, November 25, 2008; and "What Are the Chances of a Depression?" FiveThirtyEight.com, January 8, 2009.
  34. ^ For example, Nate Silver, "Senate Rankings: January, 2009 Edition," FiveThirtyEight.com, January 6, 2009.
  35. ^ Alex Cardno, "Interview with Nate Silver," Financial Times, September 18, 2009.
  36. ^ "Polling Firm’s Reprimand Rattles News Media", The New York Times
  37. ^ See these articles and the links that they contain: "Are Oklahoma Students Really This Dumb? Or Is Strategic Vision Really This Stupid?" FiveThirtyEight.com, September 29, 2009; Nate Silver, "Real Oklahoma Students Ace Citizenship Exam; Strategic Vision Survey Was Likely Fabricated," FiveThirtyEight.com, November 8, 2009; Nate Silver, "Strategic Vision Polls Exhibit Unusual Patterns, Possibly Indicating Fraud," FiveThirtyEight.com, September 25, 2009; Nate Silver, "An Open Letter to Strategic Vision CEO David Johnson," FiveThirtyEight.com, September 29, 2009; Nate Silver, "Skipping Elections, Strategic Vision Has Not Polled Since Controversy Arose," FiveThirtyEight.com, November 6, 2009. Also see Carl Bialik, "Polling Controversy Raises Questions of Disclosure," WallStreetJournal.com, October 7, 2009. Also note that several national firms use the name "Strategic Vision"; only one has been releasing political polling results to the media.
  38. ^ Renard Sexton, "Polling and Voting in Iran's Friday Election"
  39. ^ The series of Iran-related posts can be found here: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/iran.
  40. ^ For example, Nate Silver, "Election Night Overview," FiveThirtyEight.com, November 3, 2009; and Nate Silver, "Independent Voters and Empty Explanations," FiveThirtyEight.com, November 5, 2009.
  41. ^ Nate Silver, "538 Model Posits Brown as 3:1 Favorite," FiveThirtyEight.com, January 18, 2010.
  42. ^ For example, Nate Silver, "UK Seats Projection: Tories 299, Labour 199, LibDems 120," FiveThirtyEight.com, April 29, 2010.
  43. ^ Renard Sexton, "A Hung Parliament? (From the Gallows, Perhaps?)" FiveThirtyEight.com, January 18, 2010.
  44. ^ Renard Sexton, "Instant Run-Off Proposed by Brown," FiveThirtyEight.com, February 7, 2010
  45. ^ Renard Sexton, "Getting It "Right" on the UK Numbers," FiveThirtyEight.com April 3, 2010; Renard Sexton, "Selection Bias in UK Polling (Part 1): Cell phones" FivethirtyEight.com, April 18, 2010; Renard Sexton, "Selection Bias in UK Polling (Part 2): Internet Polling" FiveThirtyEight.com, April 18, 2010
  46. ^ Renard Sexton, "Is the Lib Dem Surge for Real?," four part series
  47. ^ Berman first worked with FiveThirtyEight.com when he made some provocative discoveries of anomalies in the reported results of the 2009 Election in Iran. See James F. Smith, "Statistics ace raises doubt, fans anger on Iran's vote," Boston Globe, June 25, 2009.
  48. ^ Nate Silver, Renard Sexton, Dan Berman, Thomas Dollar, "Liveblog: UK Election Returns" [1]
  49. ^ Burkeman, Oliver (April 27, 2010). "Baseball nerd who predicted Obama's win foresees Labour meltdown". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 19, 2010..
  50. ^ Nate Silver, "Final UK Projection: Conservatives 312, Labour 204, LibDems 103," FiveThirtyEight.com, May 5, 2010.
  51. ^ Nate Silver, "U.K. Forecasting Retrospective," FiveThirtyEight.com, May 11, 2010.
  52. ^ Nate Silver, "UK Forecasting Retrospective"
  53. ^ Renard Sexton "Con-Lib Pact Brings Cameron to PM's Chair" [2].
  54. ^ Nate Silver, "Pollster Raings 4.0: Reaults," FiveThirtyEight.com, June 6, 2010.
  55. ^ Taegan Goddard, "Where's the Transparency in Pollster Rankings, Political Wire, June 9, 2010.
  56. ^ Nate Silver, "On Transparency, Hypocrisy, and Research 2000," FiveThirtyEight.com, June 9, 2010.
  57. ^ DailyKos.com, 9 June 2010.
  58. ^ Blumenthal, Transparency In Rating.
  59. ^ "Murray: Are Nate Silver's Pollster Ratings 'Done Right'?," June 18, 2010.
  60. ^ Nate Silver, "FiveThirtyEight Establishes Process for Pollsters to Review its Database of Their Polls," FiveThirtyEight.com, June 16, 2010.
  61. ^ Brian Stelter, "The Times to Host Political Polling Site FiveThirtyEight," The New York Times, June 3, 2010.
  62. ^ Megan Garber, "Articles of Incorporation: Nate Silver and Jim Roberts on the NYT's Absorption of FiveThirtyEight," NiemanJournalismLab, June 3, 2010. [retrieved 6-03-2010].
  63. ^ See Garber, cited above, as well as Frank DiGiacomo, "Getting with the Times: Nate Silver's Hip FiveThirtyEight Blog Joins the New York Times," New York Daily News, June 8, 2010.
  64. ^ Nate Silver, "FiveThirtyEight to Partner with New York Times," FiveThirtyEight.com, June 3, 2010.
  65. ^ David Carr, "News Trends Tilt Toward Niche Sites," The New York Times, September 11, 2011.
  66. ^ Nate Silver, "Welcome (and Welcome Back) to FiveThirtyEight," The New York Times, August 25, 2010.
  67. ^ FiveThirtyEight.com archive
  68. ^ Contributing writers to FiveThirtyEight
  69. ^ Andrew Gelman, "All Politics Is Local? The Debate and the Graphs," FiveThirtyEight/NYT, January 3, 2011.
  70. ^ Brian J. McCabe, "Grading New York Restaurants: What's in an A?" FiveThirtyEight/NYT, January 19, 2011.
  71. ^ Mallary Jean Tenore, "FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver adjusts to New York Times, 6 months after joining the newsroom," Poynter.org, February 22, 2011 [retrieved 22 February 2011].
  72. ^ Nate Silver, "New Hampshire's Contrarian Streak," The New York Times, October 11, 2011.
  73. ^ For example, "A Look at PolitiFact Grades," The New York Times, September 23, 2011.
  74. ^ The Monkey Cage blog.
  75. ^ John Sides, "Social Status and How the Elected Vote," The New York Times, September 12, 2011.
  76. ^ Nate Silver, "The Geography of College Football Fans (and Realignment Chaos)," The New York Times, September 19, 2011.
  77. ^ Nate Silver, "Can Federer Win Another Slam Title?" The New York Times, September 12, 2011.
  78. ^ For one of several articles see Nate Silver, "In Tournament of Upsets, V.C.U. Has Overcome Longest Odds," The New York Times, March 28, 2011.
  79. ^ Nate Silver, "Who's No. 1?" The New York Times, 19 November 2010.
  80. ^ Nate Silver, "Popularity and Pedigree Matter in the B.C.S.," The New York Times, 27 August 2011.
  81. ^ Nate Silver, "Deal for Anthony May Limit Knicks’ Upside," The New York Times, February 22, 2011; and "Calling Foul on N.B.A.’s Claims of Financial Distress," The New York Times, 5 July 2011.
  82. ^ Nate Silver, "Derek Jeter and the Curse of Age," The New York Times," May 7, 2011.
  83. ^ Nate Silver, "As Mets' Image Slumps, So Does Attendance," The New York Times, May 31, 2011.
  84. ^ Nate Silver, "The Economics of Blogging and The Huffington Post," The New York Times, February 12, 2011.
  85. ^ Nate Silver, "Why S.&P.’s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous," The New York Times, 8 August 2011.
  86. ^ Nate Silver, "In Jobs Data, ‘Surprises’ Mean Bad News," The New York Times, September 6, 2011.
  87. ^ Nate Silver, "A New York Hurricane Could Be a Multibillion-Dollar Catastrophe," The New York Times, 26 August 2011.
  88. ^ Nate Silver, "How Irene Lived Up to the Hype," The New York Times, 29 August 2011.
  89. ^ Nate Silver (October 7, 2011) "Police Clashes Spur Coverage of Wall Street Protests" The New York Times FiveThirtyEight blog (original)
  90. ^ Nate Silver, "The Geography of Occupying Wall Street (and Everywhere Else)," The New York Times, October 17, 2011.
  91. ^ Nate Silver, "Senate Rankings: Post-Masspocalypse Edition," FiveThirtyEight.com, January 22, 2010 and "Methodology," The New York Times, August 25, 2010.
  92. ^ 2010 Senate model on NYT.
  93. ^ Nate Silver, "Did Polls Underestimate Democrats’ Latino Vote?" FiveThirtyEight/NYT, November 3, 2010.
  94. ^ Polling organizations frequently ask a question along this line, in which no actual candidate names are listed:" "If an election to the United States House of Representatives were held today, would you be more likely to vote for a Republican or a Democrat?"
  95. ^ See, for example, Alan I. Abramowitz, "What to Expect in 2010 Predicting House Seats from Gallup’s Final Likely Voter Poll," Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, September 16, 2010; and Joseph Bafumi, Robert S. Erikson, and Christopher Wlezien, "Forecasting the House of Representatives' Seat Division in the 2010 Midterm Election," Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 2010.
  96. ^ For example, he considers the ratings by Charlie Cook and Congressional Quarterly.
  97. ^ Nate Silver, "Consensus Points to 50-Seat G.O.P. Gain in House, but May Understate Uncertainty," FiveThirtyEight/New York Times, October 16, 2010; and "For Democrats, Losing the House Is Not Inevitable (Just Very Likely), FiveThirtyEight/New York Times, October 27, 2010.
  98. ^ Nate Silver, "Agreeing to Disagree: Size of Republican Gain Hard to Predict", FiveThirtyEight/NewYorkTimes, November 1, 2010.
  99. ^ Nate Silver, "House Forecast: G.O.P. Plus 54-55 Seats; Significantly Larger or Smaller Gains Possible," FiveThirtyEight/NYT, November 1, 2010.
  100. ^ Micah Cohen, "38 Days Later," FiveThirtyEight/NYT, December 10, 2010.
  101. ^ Nate Silver, "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election," The New York Times Magazine, November 6, 2011.
  102. ^ Nate Silver, "Choose Obama’s Re-Election Adventure," The New York Times, November 3, 2012.
  103. ^ Ron Klain, "Why Data Wonks Are Wrong About Presidential Elections," Bloomberg, November 14, 2011.
  104. ^ Nate Silver, "A 'Radical Centrist' View on Election Forecasting," The New York Times," November 16, 2011.
  105. ^ Ron Klain, "Respectfully, Silver Is Still Wrong," Bloomberg News, November 17, 2011.
  106. ^ For a further bibliography on other responses to this article, see Micah Cohen, "Reads and Reactions," The New York Times," November 19, 2011.
  107. ^ Nate Silver, "A First Iowa Forecast: Race Is Still Wide Open," The New York Times, December 13, 2011.
  108. ^ Narrative by numbers: FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right. Author: Nate Silver.
  109. ^ Clifford, Stephanie (2008-11-09). "Finding Fame With a Prescient Call for Obama". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-10. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |company= ignored (help)
  110. ^ Jason Linkins, "2008: The Year in Media Highlights," Huffingtonpost.com, December 24, 2008.
  111. ^ 2008 Weblog Award
  112. ^ 9th Annual Weblog Awards
  113. ^ 6th Annual Opinion Awards
  114. ^ Adam Felder, "Case Study: The FiveThirtyEight.com Predictive Model of the 2008 Presidential Election," STATS: The Magazine of Statistics, Issue No. 50 (September 2009).
  115. ^ PCMag.com
  116. ^ NY Times Magazine "Forensic Polling Analysis"
  117. ^ The first of a series of articles challenged Strategic Vision LLC to reveal key information: Nate Silver, "A Few More Questions for a Sketchy Pollster," FiveThirtyEight.com, September 24, 2009.
  118. ^ John F. Harris, "The Most Powerful People On Earth: My Picks: Bloggers," Forbes Magazine, November 22, 2010 (retrieved online at Forbes.com).
  119. ^ Time's Best Blogs of 2011.

References

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