Nate Silver’s essay discusses the limitations of gut instincts in election predictions, emphasizing that while polls in battleground states show a tight race, no one should trust their “gut” predictions. Silver’s “gut” leans toward Trump, but he stresses that polls are complex and often subject to errors like nonresponse bias. Both Trump and Harris could overperform based on various polling dynamics. He also warns of potential polling herding, which could lead to a larger-than-expected victory for either candidate. Ultimately, the outcome remains highly uncertain.

    • WoahWoah@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      Nate Silver’s model, which is literally the first linked model in the article you shared, has Harris up by 1.5% in national polling. The margin of error is 3%. That’s called being “well within the margin of error.”

      The same model has Trump with a 5.9% higher chance than Harris of winning the electoral college.

      • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org
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        19 hours ago

        National polling isn’t the same as a poll designed to predict the popular vote. Biden won in 2020 by 7 MILLION votes. Even Clinton beat Trump by nearly 3 million votes. The popular vote and the election results are decided by completely different factors, pollsters aren’t soliciting people outside of swing states right now because nobody gives a fuck what a random Californian or Missourian thinks at the moment.

        • WoahWoah@lemmy.worldOP
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          16 hours ago

          What are you even talking about? Yes, Biden led in the popular vote by seven million, by over 4%. He actually win, i.e. in the EC, by about 80,000 votes. Harris is currently polling significantly worse than Biden across both categories.