
Live Presidential Forecast - tomp
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president?1
======
mcphilip
It's looking like it might be a Brexit moment for the USA. The filter bubble
echo chamber of social media and 24/7 coverage of celebrities stumping for
Clinton is going to leave a lot of people shocked tomorrow when/if it's
officially given to Trump.

~~~
chiaro
To be fair, the polls were consistently in the opposite direction. 538 had
clinton at 70%, PEC at 99%, everyone else somewhere in between. It's a black
swan event, bubble or no.

~~~
trhway
LA times had it for trump. They had their own weighting. Their results when
adjusted for commonly accepted weighting matched the common poll average. So
it is in the weighting.

~~~
chiaro
No they didn't:

>Our final map has Clinton winning with 352 electoral votes. Compare your
picks with ours.

[http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-
trai...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-
updates-here-s-our-final-electoral-map-of-the-1478473458-htmlstory.html)

~~~
trhway
Your link doesn't work for me. If you look at their Daybreak poll
[http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-
dashboard/](http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/) you
can see that they had Trump at 46.8 and Hillary at 43.6

------
threesixandnine
At this time we still cannot be sure who will win but all this to me looks
like a big fuck you. It looks like a middle finger and it shows how
disconnected media moguls, establishment, bureaucracy and "righteous"
leftists-democracts are with the people on the ground.

It went so far that people who would vote for Trump lied in polls just so that
they don't receive strange looks or something worse. That is the fear above
mentioned "establishment" instilled into people. And it's not just US...

The meltdown of the "media" and shock is just pure funny.

Let's forget about all the controversy around Clinton family. I will just
leave this[0] here.

[0][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582795/Hillary-
Cl...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582795/Hillary-Clintons-
Bosnia-sniper-story-exposed.html)

~~~
ant6n
Bernie was leftist. Clinton, not so much.

It's strange, as an outside observe I see hate spewed against giant swaths of
the population (the 'establishment', the 'leftists', the muslims, the
hispanics, the blacks or whatever) from Trump supporters. But those same
people keep complaining about the hate they perceive from the left or
whatever.

It's bizarre. Are people supposed to embrace the racism, sexism and bigotry?

~~~
m_mueller
I think people have more problems with a candidate trying to shut down
uncomfortable opinions through the back door than with a candidate who's
openly sexist and xenophobic.

~~~
ant6n
On the face of it, this statement makes no sense. Would you mind to elaborate?

~~~
flukus
Anyone supporting trump is getting labeled a racist, misogynist, xenophobe.
We've seen what happens to to people like Thiel and Eich, people try to get
them black balled from the industry because they dare to disagree.

Then someone openly flouting this "PC ideology" you've been getting
increasingly frustrated by comes along they look quite appealing.

~~~
551199
“The Advocate, a magazine that once raised me as a gay innovator, even
published an article saying as of now I am, and I quote, ‘not a gay man’
because I don’t agree with their politics,” he announced. “The lie behind the
buzzword of diversity could not be made more clear. If you don’t conform, then
you don’t count as diverse. No matter what your personal background.” -Peter
Thiel

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-
LJqPQEJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-LJqPQEJ4)

~~~
m_mueller
Thank you for the link, that press conference is quite fascinating.

------
Rexxar
Nice but the three top gauges are moving suspiciously fast. Do they add a
little random the the real number to give a sort of error margin visualisation
?

~~~
the_duke
I just checked.

They gauges moving around is definitely random.

The updates are done with a "president.json" file, fetched every 15 seconds,
but the timestamp in the json data only changes every 30-180 seconds.

So all of the movement is just random jitter to make it engaging.

Maybe a bit disingenuous.

(Note: I first thought they might be using websockets, but no WS connection is
made on the page. Only a ajax fetch of president.json)

~~~
yankyou
I'd venture further to say it's a perversion of "news" for a news site to be
injecting garbage into the data for entertainment purposes.

~~~
scrollaway
Jitter is a visualization of uncertainty. Rather than display a range, it
displays a needle moving within that range.

It's only misleading developers, who will think that data is being streamed
rather than fetched once. Other than that it's a clever (and yes,
entertaining) way of displaying margins of error.

Can I offer that, of all the things in news and dataviz to shit on, this isn't
one of them? I mean, really, an "abuse of our attention" \- what?

~~~
the_duke
Yeah, I thought about it a little, and I guess you are right.

Only a dev would think about the possibility of a statistical model updated
with a second(s) granularity.

And be disappointed (I was) that it's actually just updated every few minutes
with a fetched JSON file, rather than some fancy instant updates pushed down
via a websocket connection. :D

~~~
fghgfdfg
I think you're actually completely wrong about that. I think most people will
assume it's an actual update when the animation moves. It's the devs that will
stop to think if they're actually doing that or not, and have the knowledge to
check for themselves.

------
andr
There is a proliferation of predictive models and their outcomes vary widely.
LA Times consistently predicted a Trump win, FiveThirtyEight was down to a
coin toss a few times, while The New York Times was persistently pro-Hillary.
While those models were meant to help people make sense of the large number of
individual polls, now we need models to make sense of the models.

~~~
dj-wonk
Yes, and this is a good thing.

It is better than what we do, informally. We all use models (of some sort)
when we process information; e.g. I discount certain publications and value
others. But few people actually make their models explicit and ask others to
critique them.

Making a model public and explicit is a great first step. Building more models
on top is a good thing, not a bad thing.

------
Animats
Dow futures down 752. Canada's immigration site down.

The Trump transition team, in rented office space in Washington, just became
very important. They're Trump's HR department, and have to recruit the several
thousand people the President gets to appoint. Because Trump isn't tightly
connected to the "Republican establishment", the usual suspects aren't in line
for those jobs. So where do they come from? Business?

Will Peter Thiel go to Washington? Secretary of Commerce, perhaps?

------
keithnz
Why isn't the president decided by the percentage of votes? Seems to me, there
are a lot voters whose vote essentially are useless?

I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation,
but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?

~~~
castratikron
It was originally designed to stop stupid people from throwing the election.
We'll see tonight if it still works.

~~~
75j
Which stupid people are you referring to?

~~~
mch82
Intelligence isn't the deciding factor. Rather people judged by the electoral
college to be unfit to serve as President.

------
protomyth
I leave work and I see Clinton is the probable winner. I drive home, get some
dinner, and I get a text from the WSJ that stock futures are crashing because
Trump might win?!? What the friggin hell pollsters? I get the feeling some
explaining on the part of the newspapers and new networks is in order.

~~~
tedunangst
Well, the reason we still have the election instead of just polling people is
because the polls aren't always accurate.

~~~
Jtsummers
Polls don't tell you who will vote.

60% of a state may be for one candidate, but if only 80% of them go out to
vote, the other candidate will win.

That's what we're seeing here today.

~~~
tedunangst
80% turnout. Hahaha.

~~~
Jtsummers
Fair, that would be way too high. I was really meaning to reference relative
turnout for each candidate. That is, which party or candidate is better at
actually getting their voters to do their job and vote.

------
Arkaad
Wouldn't that influence the voters?

~~~
refurb
Not sure why you're getting downvoted.

I know in Canada they have a media blackout for each timezone until polls
close (or are almost closed). The assumption is people will change their vote
based on early counts.

However, that may have changed with the internet since you can't stop anyone
from getting early results.

Edit: yup, looks like Canada stopped that back in 2014 [1]

[1][http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-reforms-include-
end...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-reforms-include-end-to-
blackout-on-early-results-1.2521981)

~~~
wyldfire
> The assumption is people will change their vote based on early counts.

I think the most likely problem is not votes being swayed by popularity --
probaly moreso is turnout being impacted by a large lead.

~~~
refurb
Agreed. Seeing that the person you'd vote for is so far behind that it's not
worth voting at all.

~~~
Arkaad
Do you mean Gary Johnson and Jill Stein?

------
andars
Here is a survey of some extremely unlikely but entertaining outcomes.

1) Neither candidate gets 270, McMullin gets at least 1, either from Utah or a
faithless elector. The "never trump" republicans in the House elect McMullin
over Trump. End result: Evan McMullin as president

2) Same as 1), but with Gary Johnson

3) Majority in electoral vote, but some faithless electors withhold their
vote. I'd actually very much like to see this happen, as it would be far more
interesting to see the House have to decide on this.

4) Tie, deadlock in House and Senate. End result: Paul Ryan as president

~~~
humanrebar
Republicans would never choose a pro-choice president. Gary Johnson is not an
option.

~~~
andars
Last year, I would have agreed with you. However, I have wholesale lost all
faith in my ability to understand how politics works. I would have said that
this country would never elect Donald Trump, reality TV star (I understand
other things as well), as president of the United States.

------
ajhofmann
Aside from the obviously fake jittering gauges, it seems like whenever I reset
the page the pointer goes to about 68% and then after 5-10 seconds jumps to
77%. Not sure if it's caching a number and then updating or supposed to make
me stay on the page.

------
_RPM
Why is voting actually hard to do? Even though we're so encouraged to vote,
there is a lot of red tape. For example, depending on your street address, you
may have to vote at a garden variety pick of a building. At my university, I
couldn't vote in building A because my apartment was on street X. I ultimately
was not able to vote today because it was actually _hard_ to vote.

~~~
coderdude
Freedom isn't easy.

Jokes aside, you're overstating the difficulty to vote. You couldn't vote
today because you couldn't pick the building to vote at?

~~~
afterburner
It's hard in the US.

------
davidw
I need a drink. Or three :-/

~~~
Grazester
I knew if I started I would not be able to stop!!

------
cruisestacy
Watch live streaming:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60wDzZt8yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60wDzZt8yg)

~~~
the_duke
Off topic, but I might as well say it here:

I just tuned in to CNN: I think the way they cover the results is ridiculous.

They just babble off random, pointless numbers without pause, with their fancy
interactive maps in the background.

They announce small changes with a sensationalism that's almost pathetic (KEY
RACE ALERT! ALL OFF A SUDDEN Clinton takes the lead in Florida!! (by 20k
votes... with a vote count of 30%).

Very little actual, substantive discussion of key results to watch out for, of
key states, ...

One of the biggest news channels in the world should be able to do a bit
better than that, IMO.

~~~
lucio
Their function is to entertain, information is an afterthought. It is not a
managerial decision, all TV is directed by ratings, "entertainment" is what
people want, so "entertainment" is what they give to them.

~~~
the_duke
NBC news has reasonable coverage.

Even Fox does it better. (As unbelievable as that is...)

There's a reason I picked on CNN specifically.

~~~
walrus01
Watch the CBC News live stream with Peter Mansbridge, it's quite calm,
rational and hype free.

------
boulos
Sigh. Since nobody has mentioned it (yet), but we wouldn't be having this
conversation if we had Runoff Voting ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)).

------
evantahler
This is very cool. I'd love to see a tech write up later this month... and
some stats!

~~~
the_duke
It sure looks good.

I hope there's a solid statistical model behind it too though.

~~~
evantahler
Yeah... the jitter being fake (and fast?) seems unnecessary per your other
comment.

If the jitter was an actual uncertainty measure or something... or less
fast...

~~~
isseu
it has a some random movement

------
sbuttgereit
It's interesting looking at the way some of the prediction markets behaved
through this cycle. Up until results started coming in, sites like
predictit.org were all "predicting" overwhelming Clinton victory. That so far
has clearly not panned out.

I think it says that these prediction markets aren't so good at actually
predicting anything: all they really do is sort of act as a barometer of how
media narratives influence popular thought on certain subjects. I do expect
that they will correlate with outcomes better than 50/50... but not so much so
that the "wisdom of crowds" line is really justified.

------
Analemma_
Ask HN: who's hiring overseas?

------
0xmohit
Honest question: Doesn't it get difficult to decide who to vote when you have
such choices?

~~~
protomyth
I voted 3rd party to try to get the Libertarians above the % threshold on
matching funds. It worked in 1992 but was squandered in 1996 by Perot's party.
I was hoping it might work again with a party not built around one man. Sadly,
the Libertarians did everything in their power to screw this one up too.

~~~
themantalope
Libertarians had a real chance to stand out as a actual alternate response to
the static and predictable policy stances of the Dems and Repubs. However,
Gary Johnson struck out badly on several occasions, especially when it came to
his knowledge of international politics. And that weird interview when his
tongue just stopped working for 30 seconds but he kept on talking.

~~~
protomyth
Yep, they could picked much better. Plus, his VP did him no favors.

------
mattnumbe
I feel that I'm an educated person, and I try to keep up with politics in
America, but I really don't understand our system. How can some states be
called with less than 20% of the votes being counted?

~~~
positr0n
I believe each individual network calls them at their own discretion. It's not
an official "call" by the government or anything.

As to why so early, they have enough confidence in exit polls and other
previous polls to say that, for example, Hillary is not going to win Oklahoma.

~~~
shostack
Is there any research on this news impacting voter participation? Ie if they
feel their party is losing do they throw in the towel even though they still
might have had a chance?

~~~
positr0n
I have never seen a state called for a candidate until after the polls have
closed. Probably for that reason.

~~~
cstejerean
Sure, it won't impact the election in that state because it's polls are
closed. But in theory it could affect the election on the west coast were
polls are still open.

------
ChuckMcM
One thing is for certain, political strategy is never going to be the same.

------
AKifer
Makes me laughing all these predictions and poll pre-election giving an
advantage to Hillary, and suddenly the odds were flipping around. This gives a
clear lessons to all these politicians who used to manipulate the media and
the statistics. I feel sad for all these people who did their best to stop the
big wave. Trump literally won the silent majority.

------
SuperManfred
The season finale of the USA, representative democracy is in a bubble and the
bust is inevitable.

~~~
andars
Meh. The United States has been through some pretty rough times. It is, of
course, impossible to predict the future by looking at the past, but it seems
unlikely that this is anywhere near the "season finale".

~~~
ant6n
Definitively season finale. But it's already renewed for another season.

------
551199
Florida for Trump.

Trump is the new President!

Have a look at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald) to
see what kind of people voted for Trump. MAGA!

Edit: Downvote all you want doesn't change the outcome :)

~~~
up_so_floating
I went to a Trump rally recently and found it truly unbelievable. Thousands of
people, all demographics seemingly represented, lined up for hours despite the
cold, dark night and horrible parking conditions. Trump was over two hours
late, and the rally did not end until past 1am, but the energy and general
goodwill towards each other persisted the entire time.

~~~
551199
Yes! It doesn't matter what sex, color, sexual orientation or if we agree with
everything - we are UNITED! This is a movement. Establishment vs anti-
Establishment. People over globalism.

~~~
wyldfire
"People over globalism" sounds like code for "protectionism". You can't give
everyone back their large-wage-unskilled-labor jobs with tariffs.

"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto."

-Thomas Jefferson

~~~
551199
Look I know where you a coming from but the way the country is lead doesn't
really help average joes.

When manufacturing and other jobs are outsourced who are going to buy the
goods when your citizens can't afford them? You have people out of jobs
instead of them producing stuff and creating more business.

~~~
matwood
> When manufacturing and other jobs are outsourced who are going to buy the
> goods when your citizens can't afford them?

The problem with manufacturing is it is not really outsourced, but automated.
Unions helped to push out the jobs that were left by making it hard to compete
wage wise. It's why you see plants opening in the south where there are no
unions.

~~~
551199
Sure, but we are going to have a big problem with people not working before we
get full automation.

Some people are fit to manual jobs rather than programming. There has to be
some kind of solution.

~~~
matwood
I'm really coming around to some sort of basic income. We are quickly
approaching a time where there are just not enough jobs. How we get from here
to letting people live jobless is going to be a challenge.

------
emp_zealoth
I like how none of the charts actually match another

------
fgandiya
Any suggestions on a country to start a career in tech. I was considering the
US, but now I'm changing my mind.

~~~
joeguilmette
The internet. Live somewhere cheap that you enjoy. Southeast Asia and Eastern
Europe are favorites.

------
angerman
According to the nytimes it looks like the following right now:

\- President: Democrats (72%), \- Senate (76%) and House (>95%): Republicans

Is this a good outcome for a democracy? And if so, why? Wouldn't this mean
that the system is effectively gridlocked?

~~~
jdavis703
Ideally politicians would be adults and work out deals, like in the old days.
Or maybe this is why most democracies have parliamentary systems.

~~~
andars
I'm not convinced that such "old days" ever existed. I'm open to the idea, but
the more I learn of history, the more it seems like the deals were the
exception, not the rule. The system was designed from the beginning to make
things difficult.

~~~
flukus
Maybe survivorship bias? We hear about the deals that were made but not all
the ones that fell through.

~~~
andars
I think you are onto something with this.

I like to consider all the compromises in the antebellum United States. They
show up in the history books as great legislative successes, but in the end, a
half century of dispute came down to a war.

------
0xmohit
So America is going to be great again. Congratulations!

------
satysin
5am here in the UK. This is just insane to watch.

------
the_duke
If any mod is reading this, I think it may be smart to close this thread down,
since it will spiral into political drama very soon.

(I assume their will be a post discussing the result...)

~~~
75j
This thread is very civil so far.

I complained recently that political discussions are too easily suppressed on
HN, and dang's response was that they inevitably veer into flame wars, and
that preemptively flagging political threads is necessary / ok. I hope this
thread continues to disprove that, since HN is an important place for
political discussion to be happening.

~~~
the_duke
I love rational political discourse, but there are plenty of places where you
can discuss those things on the web.

I rather enjoy that the mods apparently want to keep those topics a bit out of
the limelight and focus on technical subjects.

------
Damian_Reloaded
Well I think I've lost the little shatters of respect I had left for the
United States. I do wish you can get out of this mess unharmed though.

------
miguelrochefort
Trump wins. GG.

~~~
adamconroy
the necks got off their sundecks it seems

~~~
up_so_floating
This sort of rhetoric is precisely what inspires people to vote for Trump.

~~~
Mikeb85
Among other things... There's real dissatisfaction among the working class
which inspired people to support both Bernie and Trump, and to vote against
the status quo.

~~~
ohwello
I'm not satisfied being in the top decile of historical human well-being,
let's shake things up and take a shot at some reversion to the mean.

~~~
tomp
But the problem is, they remember that they used to live better just a few
years ago, while simultaneously seeing others (political and financial elites)
getting richer and richer. That gives even myself a fundamental feeling of
unfairness, even though as a programmer I'm far from Trump's target
demographic (although still working class).

~~~
ohwello
Real wages had been rising, we'll see what happens next.

