00:12:26 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Nate Silver
[00:12:26] S3: But that's not nothing. The point is that's far from trivial. [00:12:29] S2: No, we've had to learn these details about these very red states. Like, oh, South Carolina was a Trump plus 18 state. That's what I'm a little bit more skeptical. [00:12:36] S1: About, right? [00:12:37] S2: But the vicissitudes between what differentiates Kansas from Nebraska and things like that, if the national environment... Is as polls say it is. Yeah. Democrats are ahead by about nine points on the generic ballot, which are national polls, essentially. [00:12:51] S1: Right. [00:12:52] S2: At nine points, Republicans, there's too much of a headwind for Republicans. [00:12:57] S1: Right. [00:12:57] S2: And like, you know, you can predict exactly which winning tickets Democrats would draw. But the GOP has to be that spread. [00:13:05] S1: Right.
00:13:05 · Nate Silver, Nate Silver
[00:13:05] S1: Right. [00:13:05] S2: Or it just gets too difficult. difficult and like i think part of the problem with mental models versus actual models right people say well i can easily see this case where there's a bust again in the polls in the midwest right and i can see this case where sure the polls are basically right and polls are a little cautious and democrats have a sweep right and people kind of like wait those 50 50 but first of all there are the messy middle in between stories and like if you have a lead in the polls then you kind of muddle through half the time right it's like an nfl game where you have a field goal lead at halftime and then lots of penalties and turnovers, right? And you wind up winning by a field goal, right? So it's ugly, but Democrats tend to win the ugly races. And like, there is more evidence, including non-polling evidence consistent with the Democrats have a big night story. Like if you just talked about the things we already talked about in the first 15 minutes about gas and Trump approval ratings and Iran and all that stuff, right? You know, it's not a case where you have this clash really between indicators.
00:14:18 · Tracy Alloway, Nate Silver, Joe Weisenthal
[00:14:18] S0: I feel like we've been talking about this for many, many years now, but there's this persistent tension between all the consumer sentiment surveys where people report how they're feeling about the economy. Those have been very bad for many years now versus the actual numbers in the economy on consumer spending and other things that look pretty good. Do you have a story you tell yourself as a forecaster, a story to explain that discrepancy? [00:14:46] S2: Slightly hot take. I think some of the consumer confidence polling is not very good. You know, the good thing about election polls— I don't think. [00:14:53] S0: That's a hot take, by the way. Like, we've been talking about it for a while. [00:14:55] S3: The pollsters are not good. They're not doing best practices at polling. [00:14:59] S2: We had an article that's been published by a guest author named Joel Wertheimer, who. [00:15:03] S3: Oh, Joel's been on our podcast.
00:15:03 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway
[00:15:03] S3: Oh, Joel's been on our podcast. [00:15:04] S2: He's great. Yeah, and clearly, I think the University of Michigan survey changed the composition to online in a way that just has, like, way too many Democrats in the sample. So, like, ironically, like— Ironically, like— The complaint that people make about election pollsters, which is more or less false, we can talk about that more, is kind of true of these consumer sentiment surveys that like, for better or worse, election polls get a dose of reality every two years. Election polls are made in an environment where pollsters are actively fearful of missing, particularly missing high on Democrats, right? So that's why like, that's why people talk about like, what's the difference between like polls and prediction markets? Polls kind of are prediction markets, right? or polling averages are at least, right? [00:15:47] S1: Okay. [00:15:47] S2: A poll is a data-informed opinion at this point, right? [00:15:55] S0: Because you have to weight it. [00:15:56] S3: The pollster has to do so much modeling, right? Is this what you're getting at? [00:16:00] S2: So like Marist released a poll of Maine last week, and the top line number, let me see if I'm getting this right in my head, said Troy Jackson, the Democrat in Maine, is up nine points, which would be a very good result for Democrats. The average, our average, had been like D plus three in that state, right? That's their registered voter poll. They applied a likely voter model that brought that lead down to plus two.
00:16:00 · Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver
[00:16:00] S2: So like Marist released a poll of Maine last week, and the top line number, let me see if I'm getting this right in my head, said Troy Jackson, the Democrat in Maine, is up nine points, which would be a very good result for Democrats. The average, our average, had been like D plus three in that state, right? That's their registered voter poll. They applied a likely voter model that brought that lead down to plus two. [00:16:21] S0: People self-correct for the Democratic. [00:16:24] S2: Bias, right? Yeah, there's no way. First of all, the math, just I don't want to get too deep in the weeds, even though it's odd lots. Like the math doesn't, the math doesn't make sense, right? They decided what result they felt comfortable with and reverse engineered. [00:16:36] S3: You see, we just, okay, we don't have to get into the math. But what you're saying is they had a poll that said Troy Jackson was up 9%. But in our likely voter model, it's 2%. And what Nate Silver is saying is like, I don't know how you got from nine to two. [00:16:51] S2: No. And the governor's race went from 11 to zero. Like the math literally doesn't add up. And like, so it's like, okay, so this is your poll and this is your opinion. [00:16:59] S0: Yeah. [00:16:59] S2: Is the way I see it. And like, and we're aggregating opinions. And so like on the one hand, when you see a poll like that, I'm like, I have existential doubt about the accuracy of polling for sure. [00:17:08] S1: Right.
00:17:08 · Nate Silver, Nate Silver, Joe Weisenthal
[00:17:08] S1: Right. [00:17:08] S2: On the other hand, if you have a model that's like a consensus model, thermometer that looks at the correlations and translates poles into probabilities. Like, that's really what Flipper, my model, is doing. And, like, so, like, oh, actually, I kind of like that from a modeling standpoint because it proves the kind of underlying hypothesis that, like, polsters are rational actors and, therefore, although poles are imprecise instruments, there is a lot of incentive not to systematically miss. I got it. [00:17:39] S3: So what you're saying is because you can look at the math and say, look, You can't really justify turning a plus nine into a plus two as someone who aggregates polls and then creates a model that can give you some sort of confidence that like. [00:17:56] S2: Confidence that the errors in the long run, if you have elections every two or four years, will never have data to prove it. But confident that the errors are symmetric in the forecast. [00:18:05] S3: Yeah, I get exactly what you're saying. So, OK, people don't pick up the phone like they used to. [00:18:10] S1: Yeah.