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Comment by gonzo41 | Hacker News Reader

Well nate silver is still trading off his past success. Now 538 says it's a toss up, so what's the point of that site if it offers no new insight.

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To state the obvious---if nobody was doing the math to get the result that (by certain methodologies) it's a toss-up, we wouldn't know it's a toss-up. Should forecasters stop publishing results as soon as the needle hits 50/50?

Also, FYI, 538 is no longer using Silver's model. He took it with him when he left.

538 is now owned by ABC news.

To the point of the article, nobody is polling and reporting on polls out of the goodness of their hearts.

"Everybody loves a horse race" is the maxim which news sites adhere to - news sites are never going to predict a blowout or landslide, because people will feel secure in the outcome and stop reading the news. Every single news site has an incentive to skew more towards calling the race as evenly matched, because that drives page views.

It's a similar talking point to the one about Democratic pollsters not wanting to release their more accurate numbers, because they could lose voter momentum. (Democratic voters love being able to stay home, it seems)

I'm not sure what is the relevance of any of this to my comment. Are you suggesting that the mainstream forecasters (Nate Silver, 538, Economist, etc) are intentionally biasing their models toward a toss-up in order to drive page views?

I find that very unlikely, not least because from their perspective that will probably actually reduce their page views.

A little tangential, but 538 is no longer affiliated with Nate Silver; he sold it to ESPN in 2013.

it’s true that 538 is no longer affiliated with nate silver but he left in 2023, not with the espn sale

I mean what if it is a toss up? Were we talking about a literal, actual coin flipping, calling it as 50-50 is a better insight than calling it as either heads or tails.

Nate Silver and his team are not at 538 any more, they were kicked out by ABC. He's at Silver Bulletin. You're correct he's saying it's a tossup but he seems to be favoring Trump the last few days. And he's also recently writing about fishiness he's seeing when comparing state vs national measures.

> he seems to be favoring Trump the last few days.

"But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine. Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris." - Nate Silver, NYT, last week

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-re...

I'm talking about his Silver Bulletin writings, not things filtered by NYT editors.

which past success? he’s had so many compared to most pundits

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