
Code for The Economist's election model for 2020 - person_of_color
https://github.com/TheEconomist/us-potus-model
======
manuelfcreis
There was quite a big argument between Nate Silver, from 538, and G. Elliott
Morris, the author of this model, which was quite an entertaining read if
you’re into statistical drama.

A piece of it:

[https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1294263127668924416...](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1294263127668924416?s=20)

~~~
mdoms
Nate Silver got lucky one time and has been coasting on it since. The man has
no credibility.

~~~
fabian2k
Some of the other models for the last election were really bad. Giving
something like a 95-98% chance to Hillary was arguably a fundamental failure.
I found it very odd how they arrived at those numbers by e.g. treating every
state as a separate chance while mostly ignoring that those results are not
uncorrelated.

I think he does a better job at emphasizing the uncertainty while still
showing that polls can be pretty reliable.

~~~
throwaway2245
I'd argue that 538's model likely overestimates uncertainty, because it is a
benefit to them both ways.

Either they spin it that they were perfectly correct in those 95% of cases
where they get it right, or they spin it that they were the least wrong (and
therefore the most correct) in the other 5% of cases where everyone gets it
wrong.

~~~
chalst
At no point did 538 make such a high forecast: their highest forecast was 88%.

There's a joke that you should always express 60% confidence in your
predictions, since if the prediction pans out, you can claim to be right, but
if it fails, you can bring attention to the "two times out of five wrong"
part.

~~~
throwaway2245
Yes - thanks for explaining this better.

------
lordnacho
Doesn't this suffer from low n? There's only been so many presidential
elections, and there's only been so many in a similar environment, whatever
you think the relevant factors are.

Then there's the one - off problem of evaluating how good the prediction was.
If you think it's 95+ for one side then yes, you're embarrassed when it goes
the other way. If you think it's 75 then you should be wrong one out of four
anyway, but people will still think you messed up.

Impressive work regardless, I always enjoy these stats things.

~~~
Tarq0n
Not at all. These models all have a multilevel structure, accounting for
election level data, district data and poll data. The main source of
uncertainty is probably how hard representative polling is, not to mention the
polls are carried out by many different organizations.

~~~
manquer
The logistical challenges are considerable factor this election. Many people
may want to vote for say Biden, but their ballots could be disregarded.

Even without the political fight over USPS funding, it is going to be
extremely hard for them to turn around in < 1 week as required in many states,
there are also the issue with votes that which are postmarked earlier but
delivered later than election date( this is with good reason as you don't want
results delayed if you wait for votes to come in)

I am not sure how anyone, without detailed data access to postal operations
can accurately predict how much of this going to be a problem.

------
shoo
The Economist's weekly US election podcast "Checks & Balance" interviewed
Elliott Morris about election modelling & this model:

[https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/06/12/modelled-
citiz...](https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/06/12/modelled-citizens-how-
useful-is-polling-in-predicting-the-result-of-the-us-presidential-election)

The podcast is for a general audience so it doesn't go into details of
statistical modelling used in this model, but it does touch on polling,
failures of polling to accurately predict results.

------
jeffbee
Models are great but doesn't this all hinge on quality of the data inputs? In
2016 polls fielded the day before the election had Clinton up by 10 points in
Wisconsin. Why did the polls and the election differ so greatly?

Here's the last poll Google collected in Wisconsin in 2016:
[https://datastudio.google.com/s/kcPRGFaMaO0](https://datastudio.google.com/s/kcPRGFaMaO0)

~~~
comicjk
Note that these polls are of Likely Voters. A big source of systematic error
in 2016 state polls was Likely Voter models, used to weight raw poll results
by voting propensity. In the Midwest in 2016, lots of people without college
degrees said they preferred Trump - but based on previous elections, pollsters
expected few would vote. This kind of shift is hard to predict - pollsters do
not intend to make the same mistake again, but they might make another.
(National polls are much less noisy because these kinds of regional errors
often cancel out when averaged over the country.)

~~~
jeffbee
So do 538 and The Economist try to take these polls, back out their biases,
and reapply different ones? Or, to borrow a phrase from Trump, "unskew" them?

~~~
comicjk
No, these models weight the polls by quality (variously judged), they don't
reweight by voter. This weighted average of polls is then used, along with
factors like time until the election and economic conditions, to give a
probability distribution over election outcomes (which no poll can give you,
no matter how you weight it).

"Unskewing" polls dates back to 2012 (Dean Chambers and UnskewedPolls.com). He
was doing what you describe - applying his own likely voter model to all
polls, based on party affiliation. It did not work. Better to use each
pollster's likely voter model as it is, since then you have an ensemble and
possible cancelation of error.

------
scruffyherder
These models are stupid, many people cannot say what they want for fear of
reprisals.

The only question is which way does the majority lean, while the edges pull
further apart.

~~~
optimalsolver
Is the popular vote the best way to determine that?

~~~
scruffyherder
Not in America, it’s a republic, not a democracy.

------
gridlockd
There's a variable missing from these models which probably wasn't all that
relevant until Donald Trump showed up:

How many people are going to lie about or refuse to admit voting for a
candidate like Donald Trump?

I would expect this bias to be greater today than in 2016.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
I see no reason to believe this to br greater today than in 2016. And I
believe the 2016 data did not show _any_ of it.

More polls have also moved from live interviews to automated system, where
it's less likely that anyone will be "shy".

~~~
gridlockd
In 2016 Trump polled way worse than he performed in key states.

People are also more paranoid today than in 2016. If the communists take over,
you do not want to be on some voted—nazi list.

~~~
jcranmer
> In 2016 Trump polled way worse than he performed in key states.

That's not really true. The state-level polls were generally within normal
polling error, although there was a systematic error due to educational
attainment. In 2020, more pollsters have incorporated educational attainment
into their weighting, so this source of error should be reduced.

------
thedudeabides5
Maybe Nate is just way less confident after getting caught w his pants down in
2016.

------
BoiledCabbage
I say this with all seriousness, the main flaw I see is the models not
accounting for the levels of voter suppression being applied this year.

One party is on record as saying that their own successful efforts in voter
suppression last election won them the rust belt and as a result the
presidency.

After seeing it being so successful at tipping the scales last time it appears
it will be even more heavily relied on this year.

There are the most recent familiar hints in the news regarding mail in
ballots, but so many more examples since the overturning of the voting rights
act. How this isn't more of a scandal our democracy is frankly shocking.

It's extremely difficult to talk about this in a purely non-partisan way
because there really a case of "both sides are doing it". One party is
effectively utilizing this to obtain, maintain and increase their hold on govt
positions.

> None of this is a coincidence. Republicans responded to the election of
> Barack Obama in 2008 not by trying to broaden their own base or appeal to a
> changing nation, but by modernizing voter suppression tactics out of the old
> Jim Crow playbook. Chief Justice John Roberts’s shameful 5-4 decision in
> 2013’s Shelby County v Holder ripped the heart out of the prime enforcement
> mechanism of the Voting Rights Act. Roberts argued that the South had
> changed, and such protections were no longer necessary. 1965, Roberts
> suggested, was a long time ago, in a different nation, across a changed
> South. The tens of thousands of Georgians whose voting precincts were
> closed, forcing them to endure six-hour lines to vote during a pandemic
> would like a word with him Roberts’s calamitous ignorance has done grievous
> damage.

"Crosscheck" app/system which is frequently run against democratic counties
was found to have a 200 to 1 false positive to true negative rate. It's still
being heavily pushed.

> Crosscheck is a national database designed to check for voters who are
> registered in more than one state by comparing names and dates of birth.
> Researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard
> University, and Microsoft found that for every legitimate instance of double
> registration it finds, Crosscheck's algorithm returns approximately 200
> false positives.[108] Kobach has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil
> Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights organizations for trying to
> restrict voting rights in Kansas.

> Often, voter fraud is cited as a justification for such measures, even when
> the incidence of voter fraud is low. In Iowa, lawmakers passed a strict
> voter ID law with the potential to disenfranchise 260,000 voters. Out of 1.6
> million votes cast in Iowa in 2016, there were only 10 allegations of voter
> fraud; none were cases of impersonation that a voter ID law could have
> prevented. Only one person, a Republican voter, was convicted. Iowa
> Secretary of State Paul Pate, the architect of the bill, admitted, "We've
> not experienced widespread voter fraud in Iowa."

We're reaching a very concerning threshold of election integrity that is being
under appreciated. Our image of ourselves versus our reality is starting to
diverge drastically.

[https://time.com/5852837/voter-suppression-obstacles-just-
am...](https://time.com/5852837/voter-suppression-obstacles-just-america/)

[https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659784277/republican-voter-
su...](https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659784277/republican-voter-suppression-
efforts-are-targeting-minorities-journalist-says)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-
ackno...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-acknowledge-
leveraging-voter-id-laws-for-political-gain.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States)

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/new-postal-
service-p...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/new-postal-service-plan-
is-setting-off-election-alarms/amp)

~~~
jl6
> on record as saying that their own successful efforts in voter suppression
> last election won them the rust belt and as a result the presidency

Do you have a link to the record where that party says this?

~~~
BoiledCabbage
Will pull up the quote I remember, but a few additional examples showing it is
by design beginning early last decade. And well known what the effects are,
and it's intentional to win elections.

From 2012:

> House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R), who said even more clearly in a 2012
> speech that voter ID would help Romney carry his state.

> "Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of
> Pennsylvania: done," Turzai said while listing his legislature's
> accomplishments.

From 2016:

> "We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November '16 election,"
> Schimel told conservative host Vicki McKenna on WISN (1130 AM) on Thursday.

>"How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Senator (Ron)
Johnson was going to win re-election or President Trump was going to win
Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and
honest and have integrity?"

It is well established that voter ID is not preventing any form of widespread
in person voter fraud because there is essentially none. Even the president's
own commission couldn't find anything of note. But it is extremely effective
at suppressing voting of certain groups. For example Texas where valid forms
of Id were military Id and concealed carry permits (thinks more likely held by
republicans), but invalid forms were state employee photo IDs and university
photo IDs (things more likely to be held by those voting democratic).

From prior studies voter roll purges like Crosscheck, eliminate 200 false
positives from voter rolls for every 1 true positive. So instead of stopping
it, it was rolled out nation wide.[3]

Or just check out wikipedia.[4]

[1]
[https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/13/atto...](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/13/attorney-
general-brad-schimel-suggests-donald-trump-won-wisconsin-because-states-voter-
id-law/514628002/)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/04/07/re...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/04/07/republicans-should-really-stop-admitting-that-voter-id-
helps-them-win/)

[3]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/20/this-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/20/this-
anti-voter-fraud-program-gets-it-wrong-over-99-of-the-time-the-gop-wants-to-
take-it-nationwide/)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States)

~~~
defertoreptar
I understand that you equate voter ID with voter suppression. However, when
you say someone's "on the record," you ought to use their own words. Those
politicians went on the record for supporting voter ID.

~~~
rfw300
I suppose if you want to give them credit for dogwhistling rather than just
saying it straight up, that’s one thing. But in the face of such thoroughly
established research about the low incidence of voter fraud, one is left with
the conclusion that those still hawking the theory are either deluded or
malicious.

~~~
refurb
I love the term "dogwhistle". It basically translates into "even though you
didn't say X, I know you actually meant X".

Absurd. Maybe we should just call it "mind-reading"?

------
schalab
I am reminded of a story in Three men in a boat.

A couple go out on a picnic with a young man. The moment they set out, the
young man begins predicting rain. The couple begin to hate him for his gloomy
disposition. They meet an old man on the road. He scrounges up his face, looks
up at the sky, and says there wont be any rain. He has seen many days like
this in his long life and it usually clears up. The couple cheer up at once
and praise him for his wisdom.

No sooner had they set up their picnic, then it begins raining heavily. On the
drive back completely drenched, they look at the young man with anger. Like
somehow he was responsible for the rain. They think of the old man fondly,
"well atleast he tried".

Thats human psychology.

~~~
the8472
Unlike rain there can be a causal relation between predictions to election
results. I.e. voters (and campaigners) can react to predictions.

~~~
chrisdsaldivar
This actually happened in the 1988 Mexican election. The PRI was losing the
vote and their opposition was predicted to win using live vote tabulation.
They hid the results by saying the system crashed and then declared themselves
as winning. This kept many people from bothering to even vote.

However, they went much further and burned legitimate ballots and even made
fake ones.

The difference here is the PRI actively used (fake) predictions to discourage
voters.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Mexican_general_electio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Mexican_general_election)

~~~
benrbray
The most recent season of Narcos: Mexico has an entertaining dramatization of
this event!

~~~
corpMaverick
Recently someone asked if the fraud of 88 had been as depicted in the series.
This was my response. Which I think it is important since there are not many
testimonies of what really happened.

"It definitely didn't happened the way it was portrayed in the series. I saw
it first hand.

The election was managed from Gobernacion (Ministry of Interior) which was
subservient to the PRI. We didn't have the same controls as we have today. The
PRI had representatives in every little town in the whole country. My father
was one of these and I accompanied him that day. The evening on the election
day, they gather all the booths in the region at the mayors office. They had a
team of people changing the paper votes. Removing some and adding some and
changing the minutes accordingly. The PRI already had this election fixing
infrastructure. In 1988, they had already been in power for 59 years. They
knew how to fix the election. They had it down to a science. But in 1988 my
father told me that this was the first time they had to do it because they may
lose. All years before that, they did it just to get better participation
numbers.

The PRI was a state Party. For many, many years it had complete control of
every town, every state, every district. All the Governors, representatives,
senators, mayors, judges in the country belonged to the PRI. May be some
Narcos helped in some regions. But the PRI didn't really needed them. They had
comprehensive control of the national territory. And they were able to
manipulates the votes, specially in the rural areas.

The way it is portrayed in the series is really stupid. Gobernacion was in
complete control of the computer systems, they didn't need a Narco to tell
them how to break it.

TLDR; The fraud happened but it wasn't organized by the Narcos. At most they
had a minor involvement."

