{"id":6602,"date":"2016-11-14T20:19:57","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T02:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=6602"},"modified":"2016-11-14T20:19:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T02:19:57","slug":"last-time-he-did-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/11\/14\/last-time-he-did-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Time He Did Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

But Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight<\/strong><\/em> is more than willing<\/a> to talk about what went wrong – like any good scientist:<\/p>\n

We also received a lot of criticism from Democratic partisans<\/a> in the closing weeks of the campaign \u2014 more than we did from Trump supporters \u2014 because they thought we didn\u2019t have Clinton as a heavy enough<\/i> favorite. That\u2019s unusual. We\u2019ve forecasted enough races over the years to have taken criticism from almost every side. But in the past, it\u2019s always been the trailing candidate\u2019s supporters who gave us more grief.<\/p>\n

In this respect, there\u2019s another parallel between Trump\u2019s victory on Tuesday, and the United Kingdom\u2019s vote to leave the European Union in June. Brexit polls showed the race almost tied<\/a>, with \u201cRemain\u201d leading by perhaps half a percentage point. In fact, \u201cLeave\u201d won by about 4 percentage points. The polls took a lot of criticism even though they\u2019d shown \u201cLeave\u201d at almost even-money, whereas betting markets \u2014 and the conventional wisdom from London-based reporters \u2014 had \u201cRemain\u201d heavily favored to prevail<\/a>. Londoners may have interpreted the data in selective ways because of the \u201cunthinkability\u201d of Britain\u2019s leaving the EU<\/a> to people in their social circles.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s results were similar. We strongly disagree with the idea that there was a massive polling error. Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors<\/a>, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump<\/a>. We think people should have been better prepared for it. There was widespread complacency about Clinton\u2019s chances in a way that wasn\u2019t justified by a careful analysis of the data and the uncertainties surrounding it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Complacency? Or distaste? Is this a matter of the underdog doing its utmost and coming through in the clutch? I have trouble with such large composite creatures coming up with a coordinated action, although admittedly voting doesn’t require much coordination. Where was the supposed Trump dampening effect, wherein his proponents would be so depressed by the common wisdom that they wouldn’t bother to vote? The progressives were banking heavily on this supposed tendency, and fell hard because of it.<\/p>\n

\"rabbit_of_caerbannog\"<\/a>

Another presumptive champion chokes in the clutch.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

And does this mean next time the presumptive favorite will be posturing as if their throat’s about to be ripped out? On the one hand, it feels like one more slick politician’s trick … and I have trouble getting beyond it. It tends to mask any honest evaluation of the problems the Democratic Party may have; it blames the voters for not showing up, rather than asking whether the Democrats gave voters a reason not to show up. And the longer they delay fixing the problem, the harder it’ll be to fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is more than willing to talk about what went wrong – like any good scientist: We also received a lot of criticism from Democratic partisans in the closing weeks of the campaign \u2014 more than we did from Trump supporters \u2014 because they thought we \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6604,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions\/6604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}