Makes you wonder with all of Palantir's massive data-mining if Thiel knew something the public didn't.
This is the classic gambler's approach to betting. Attempt to reduce the odds to a reasonable level where you can minimize losses and maximize your profits.
If you were paying attention to more objective polls, you would've known the mainstream media polls they were using were off. So much so, that Clinton started campaigning in red states and there were reports she wanted to make this a "historic" win. As in, it's not good enough to just win, she wanted to rub it in the faces of the Republicans (you know, because that's always good for bringing the country together - right?) when she did win.
- So he knew the polls were off.
- Then he probably knew there was a feeling of unrest considering the numbers Trump was getting. Not just in the primaries where he set several records for turnout and delegates.
- Then he probably heard about the Allan Lichtman's prediction that Trump would win based on the enthusiasm he saw in the primaries. It was greater for Trump then it was for Clinton. Add in the margin of victory in the primaries was greater for Trump then Clinton and he said because of that, the real voter enthusiasm is with Trump, not Clinton.
So here you have three things most people on the Left didn't want to hear. He also could probably see the media had gone 110% to shill for Clinton. Tamping down her email scandals, promoting the polls that say she's way ahead. If you listen to say Rush Limbaugh, or Hannity or Beck, you'd know it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns.
So he hedged his bet and put his money on Trump given the above information.
This is my thinking as well. Towards the end Nate Silver kept upping Trump's chances and other pollsters were baffled by Nate's changes. Nate kept arguing that due to curring polling methods, current models, the lack of young turnout, and a lot of disenfranchised voters coming out that Trump was doing better than he seemed. There was no "liberal media conspiracy" but the model changes you needed to make in what was an extremely oddball election year. Note, the pollsters that got Trump wrong got the last few elections right or wrong but within a respectable margin of error, so from a question of bias, the conspiracy theories just don't hold. Same with the Brexit, the pollsters just didn't see that silent majority voting yes.
Nate obviously didn't change his model enough but he certainly saw the winds of change here and clearly other people like Thiel did too. Also, being a libertarian there's really no reason for him to support a Democrat anyway, so if he's going to play this game he's going to pick the GOP candidate.
>He also could probably see the media had gone 110% to shill for Clinton.
I didn't see this. Instead, I certainly saw the media play both sides as being less terrible than they truly were. I think there's a narrative of "oh they're just like each other so it'll be tight" and promoting a moral equivalence of "questionable email server use is just as bad as saying celebrity lets you grab women by their crotches with impunity" that sells ad impressions.
I'd wager its not an 'if' but a certainty that he knew something few others did.
You didn't need Palantir to see the Trump result coming.
As I mentioned above, I was disappointed that he couldn't resist inserting petty personal insults about Trump into his articles. He was clearly invested in the outcome of the election, which isn't what you want from an analyst.
While he wasn't as bad as the NYTimes, and he hedged his language, he was pretty firm in claiming a likely Clinton victory for the 3 months before the election.
So I was honestly a bit surprised when Trump started winning, and then won decisively. I'm always interested in the areas where reality breaks models, where practice differs from theory, and this is an overt example.
Secondly, Trump won the nomination with a huge number of votes.
Thirdly, Brexit happened despite opinion polling being the other way.
Then I started paying close attention to crowd sizes at Trump rallies and when Hillary appeared in public. The crowds never got smaller for Trump despite the press and stories around him. I looked at Nate Silver's analysis and guessed the firewall could be breached. Yet the betting markets had incredibly long odds on Trump; so I bet. Modestly since I'm no (b|m)illionaire.
I didn't read much of what Nate Silver wrote, but I did listen to the podcast. Clearly, he would have preferred a Hillary win, but I'm not sure it biased the forecasts (he's said it's just an algorithm he wrote and they just plug in the polls). He and his team said many times, just because Hillary was ahead it wasn't a guarantee. Since the election they've said it's very difficult to convey probability to people and they're trying to get better at that. He also pointed out that he was less confident of Hillary than most other sources (even if they had her ahead). They were very clear that they had no expectations of correctly guessing all 51 states because it was so close. I'm not sure if this was because if him calling Trump wrong in the primaries or if he was objectively looking at the numbers.
Yes. At the time I placed my bet on a Trump win I simultaneously bet on Hillary with an amount that would cover my Trump bet. Thus Hillary win would have meant that I had neither lost nor gained money.
Also, Trump was offering hope, Clinton was offering nothing but staying the same.
I get the sense that the American economy is bad for most people, Trump talked about that, he said it was a problem. If you were watching mainstream news all you heard was about how great everything is and how it should stay the same.... That is simply not what many people think or feel.
Sadly, its only going to get worse now.
People dont like being told what to do. They are sick and tired of public servants who have transmogrified into Lord- of-the-Manor type personalities and not just in America. Watch out as more establishment candidates fail across the world in the next couple of years.
But something else: with about a century of polling history my thesis is that wariness has set in and people are playing a more crafty game. They refrain from speaking their minds to pollsters especially if their positions are unpopular or contentious; there is nothing to be gained from honesty to strangers. This is the real cause of poll failures.
But then when I hear the popular vote, I SMH. Hillary should have won if every vote counted equally. It would have been a nail-biter since she re-surged at the end.
There should be nothing between each person, their vote and the total count which is the voice of the people. No delegates, no electoral colleges, no State borders, no nothing. Anything else is not a pure democracy.
We failed democracy.
This is the very definition of rigging.
The democratic primary was rigged to favor Hillary (the establishment), and Bernie lost. The national election was rigged to "balance" the voice of States and Trump won. That is the only reason. It's also the only reason Bush won in 2000.
The system is already adapted so it works best for "us" except where us is these bubbles of people.
If we were to make "us" all of us, then what we need is pure democracy. Otherwise it's the Divided States of America. Every election the State borders could not be more prominent.
I was making the distinction between a representative democracy (where we elect representatives to make day-to-day decisions for us, such as the President, Senators, and Representatives.) and pure democracy (where each of us would have to vote on every decision). The Electoral College is something else all together.
Your phrase "every election" indicates to me that you're in favor of representative democracy (as am I). I don't think pure democracy scales.
Have I understood you correctly?
Whenever we are measuring voice or volume, any "system" is rigging. That's the only point I am making.
Gerrymandering, a Senate who can say "Fuck you" to a supreme court nomination for a year, The person with the most votes not winning, brutal assaults on voter rights, etc...
> Every election the State borders could not be more prominent
A popular vote system for president would change that.
It's actually hard to say. Voter turnout would be radically different. Republicans in California now have a voice, Democrats in Texas do too.
> Republicans in California now have a voice, Democrats in Texas do too.
This sounds better to me. It sounds like how it ought to be.
If Hillary lost the popular vote, then I'd be content. It's just hard to fathom how "less popular candidate won" and "democracy" can be talking about the same thing (America).
Why do you assume pure democracy is desirable? Do you also prefer every law to be voted on by the entire population (it's a valid point of view, albeit one I disagree with)?
The whole point of a republic is to temper the will of the mob. Our electoral college — which represents the fact that the United States are a federal republic — forces candidates to campaign across the states, and the spend the most time in precisely those states which are most evenly-split (the swing states, which is another way of saying the political centre).
Eliminating the Electoral College — as, sadly, many wish to do — would do irreparable harm to the United States, perhaps even more severe than popular election of senators.
Your support for the electoral college is still support for all votes not being equal at the voter level. My claim is that there is nothing more important than the voices being equal if we are to claim we are a unity of equal people. Any system on top of that is a filter, and is tampering with what is most important. Why must entire States be colored red or blue. That's a filter, and an act of muddling. We're dividing States when what we need to be is United.
Even if we elected by popular vote, candidates will still have to campaign and they will still have to go somewhere. Their strategy can be State based, and certainly their choices may differ without this "system" but even with the system in place they are choosing specific States over others. I don't see how these specific States deserve more attention than those that are completely ignored. For there still are States completely ignored with the Electoral College.