Let's be honest though, the number of likely outcomes was low enough that simply picking the correct one isn't too impressive.
Edit: I meant to say that the prediction itself was unspectacular, however I respect the meticulous-ness of his process.
Edit: I meant to say that the prediction itself was unspectacular, however I respect the meticulous-ness of his process.
Are you referring to "Obama wins" as a potential coin flip? Because Silver's prediction was more nuanced than that.
Are you talking about his predictions for the 50 states, which represented a potential (albeit naive) 2^50 combinations? Because he called some very close states, including a Florida election that he forecasted as an Obama victory by hundredths of a percent.
Or are you just trolling?
So there's the pundit response or the data response.
The pundit response: "this election is a toss-up!" In which case we'll just reject your assertion outright.
No one really buys the pundit response, though! Okay, the data response to your assertion: pollster.com kind of rejects this if you scroll right on the top row of charts.[0] Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina all polled closely, bumping us to 2^8 = 256 possible outcomes.
This ignores the absurd accuracy of Silver's predictions. My favorite is his prediction for Florida:
https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/status/26583576993401241...
Florida sat at 49.8% to 49.4% for the majority of the night until it recently opened up to a chasm-sized 49.9/49.2 for Obama. Silver had it at 49.79/49.72 for Obama.
So...yeah. If you look at his predictions it's not just monkeys on a typewriter. His results are incredibly accurate from a discrete or a continuous point of view.
[0] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster#2012-presidenti...
An average of the polls going into the election put 2 of the three that you name as "highly uncertain" at likely polling within 3%. According to the average of polling data at http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Nov06.html all of Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North Carolina should also be on your list of "highly uncertain states". So now you have 128 potentially reasonable combinations by your criteria.
(Admittedly the one that happened is in the top 4 outcomes. But a naive analysis would not have seen that Florida would be a photo finish while North Carolina would not. However Nate's analysis clearly did see that.)
This election is not a validation of Silver's models because this particular election did not need a model.
The number of outcomes is very high on a parlay bet like this.
There was not anything wildly unexpected that happened, and therefore his predictions being correct seems unspectacular.
That either takes massive balls, or he was actually on to something.
One successful or unsuccessful outcome is not evidence that the model works or doesn't work, but this is how probabilities work.