'I'm glad we didn't predict something as crazy as a Trump nomination,' data journalist says
Nate Silver, founder and head stat-master of ESPN’s data-driven FiveThirtyEight, explained how the site failed to predict Donald Trump would win the Republican Party presidential nomination — saying it resulted from a reliance on using history as a guide.
“I’m glad we didn’t predict something as crazy as a Trump nomination,” said Silver, speaking at the Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit in New York Thursday. He labeled the candidate a “demagogue” who has risen to power by fostering cultural resentment against Muslims, Mexicans and sometimes women and black people, as he previously wrote in a May 4 post admitting FiveThirtyEight got it wrong on Trump.
There’s been some schadenfreude over FiveThirtyEight’s missed calls this election cycle. Famously, Silver correctly called the results of the 2008 presidential election in 49 of 50 states — and all 50 states in 2012 — by crunching reams of data. Silver dismissed critics who have singled out FiveThirtyEight for incorrect predictions of late: “The consumer understands our brand. I don’t care if media columnists understand our brand.”
FiveThirtyEight, according to Silver, had always said Trump could win the nomination “but we gave it a low probability.” The site had the odds of his primary win at 50:1, then 5:1 before he became the odds-on favorite recently. “I don’t think it’s any kind of existential crisis,” he said. “We live in an uncertain world.”
One of Silver’s main takeaways from the real-estate mogul/reality TV star’s ascendancy is that the conventional wisdom that parties generally get to anoint a candidate was wrong. The Republican Party’s nomination process was a “clusterf—,” he said. (Or, he added, one could call it a “Dumpster fire.”)
“When you have something this crazy happen in American politics, it’s worth reflecting on our assumptions about politics that are no longer true,” said Silver. Trump has deviated from the Republican line on numerous issues, and “we thought based on history that candidates like Trump that go against their party platform are not very electable historically.”
At this point, Silver puts the odds of Hillary Clinton beating Trump in the general election at 75%. But he’s not ruling out a Trump victory. “Sometimes I hear commentary, ‘It’s impossible for Trump to win.’ That’s B.S.,” he said.
Silver argues that FiveThirtyEight’s brand of journalism provides more transparency than traditional news organizations, because the site provides odds. (He noted that FiveThirtyEight was the first to predict that the NBA’s Golden State Warriors would win a record-breaking 73 games this season.) “We’re more honest. We give people a number” for the probability of an event happening, he said.
In the past year, FiveThirtyEight’s audience has more than tripled, growing from 3.6 million unique visitors in March 2015 to 11.5 million this past March. Clearly, that’s been fueled by interest in the “nutty” election season, Silver conceded, but he pointed out the site covers more than just politics, with stories spanning sports, culture, social justice and entertainment.
ESPN hired Silver after it acquired FiveThirtyEight.com from the New York Times in 2013. In the first few months, “the traffic frankly was not very good” on the site, he said, “but ESPN made a long-term commitment, and as a result we’ve been able to improve the growth.” FiveThirtyEight now has about 30 journalists on staff, and has embarked on several video projects, including a series about whether Howard Dean’s 2004 election-rally scream was what actually killed his chances (the data showed his campaign was already on the decline).
Silver, who was interviewed by Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Andrew Wallenstein, said FiveThirtyEight is not a huge fan of highly distributed publishing a la BuzzFeed and said the site can succeed without scaling to billions of views. “We’re emphatically medium-size,” Silver said. “Being the second-best BuzzFeed, when your content is not as fun or interesting as BuzzFeed? That’s not where I’d want to be.”
Pictured above: Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Andrew Wallenstein (left) and FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver
These are all rednecked Hillary-bashing right wing talkshow parrot posts. Some of these people actually get paid for posting this garbage.
GOP is now investigating how to get The Donald to step down.
Your recent calls show you’re SLATING your polls toward Hillary .. and you’ll get it wrong again because WE THE PEOPLE will take our country back from the Washington Criminals.
Mr Silver got it wrong because his own leftist biases clouded his work ethic.
Smell that? Smells like Nate Silver’s owes money in unpaid Taxes. Since we all know now none of the accusations the media has portrayed Trump as are true, there’s really only one reason so many of the establishment types are fighting him – they owe money as they’ve been cheating the system, lying there way through the ranks, and are solely greedy warmongers.
So look at Nate, your time is almost up :^)
When you’re doing political polling (or commenting on your work) rule number one is to leave your personal political opinions outside.
Trump may be everything but a demagogue…………This journalist must be confused with Hillary Clinton. Check your facts, Mister!
@reading comprehension Your reply is hilarious as you obviously have no reading comprehension skills. Who claimed $Hillary was being tried for Treason, I certainly never did. Nor do I watch anything right-wing or anything “reality” show or even close. Yes, I have read lots from Nate Silver and his organization and they have been wrong several times, way off wrong. A contested Democratic Primary is just applying basic math based on how close Sanders and Hillary have been to each other and the remaining delegates left to doll out. Hillary will have an extremely tough if not impossible time getting to the magic number she needs to clench the nomination. I am predicting a contested Democratic Primary.
FiveThirtyEight is a sad, pathetic addition to sad, pathetic ESPN. If the score is 100-80 with 5 seconds to go, there is a 95 percent change of a victory according to FiveThirtyEight, and ESPN actually publishes this garbage.
I’m Jeb Bush and I approve the this comment.
@reading comprehension: Thank you so much for being intelligent and clearly well read, for i am now feeling deluged by the stupidity all around me. As I write this, Chris Matthews is interviewing a right wing woman in the tv background and this woman is saying that Hillary will not make a good president because she was the victim of a cheating husband. Astonished, Chris interrupted to ask this woman what any of this had to do with Hillary’s character and leadership and the woman said [PROUDLY TOO] that if Hillary couldn’t handle a cheating husband, then she wouldn’t be able to handle world leaders. I am too astonished to even believe that someone could be that stupid, yet this person was actually on on tv talking politics with the world. What happened and when did it happen that Joe the Plumber now has the nuclear codes.
is that Nate got lucky early on and has been riding that initial successes for a while. He has clearly lost his mojo…
You’re clearly someone that doesn’t understand statistics and probabilities. You’re looking at one call that wasn’t even a true miss, it was just something they said was very unlikely, and you’re discounting the VAST MAJORITY of other races that they accurately projected. The thing about projections is that they can change over time, like a hand of poker or blackjack where your odds of success change with each card that falls. Anyone would be thrilled to have the success rate that Nate has had, when OBJECTIVELY looking at all their correct projections and few misses. Of course, internet commenters always think they’re so well-informed and intelligent. I’m sure you could make better projections in your sleep.
Silver is missing a lot lately. Predicted Hillary’s chances of winning Indiana Primary at 90% lol. Why risk HRC against Trump? Sanders performs better in every poll and he’s not currently under investigation by the FBI for TREASON.
your comment makes me despise susan sarandon, et. al that much MORE. bernie is NOT the GOD he’s being portrayed as.
Who has ever tried to portray Bernie Sanders as a God? Not Bernie, not his wife, not his supporters. We understand he is not a perfect candidate either, but he is head and shoulders above anyone else in the race.
Exactly. But Silver’s game is a shell game, all they do is assign a percentage to things that could happen. Heads they win, tails you lose. Always an excuse handy for why they were wrong. I smell a contested Democratic Primary.
lol if you guys expect them to be perfect then you don’t understand probabilities. That is NOT how this all works. And Hilary isn’t under investigation for Treason, despite what right-wing cable news tells you. You people… you should have a reality show. Wait, I forgot you already did. Honey Boo Boo & Quack dynasty! Absolutely RIVETING television.
Good luck with that contested convention… if you actually read their blog & listened to their podcasts, they admitted that the polling data for Indiana was weak / dubious and they were not that confident in their projection. You guys are hilarious with your armchair quarterbacking, like YOU are more intelligent than they are, or could do better. Where’s your probability website? Where are all your projections?