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G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
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31 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
πŸ‘‹πŸ‘‹ Here is a short R script that updates our presidential election forecast live on Tuesday night based on the results that are announced so far. (It didn't feel right to keep this private when the rest of our model is public.) Enjoy!

gist.github.com/elliottmorris/…
Yeah, it's pretty cool. You don't have to download any other dependencies at all. The program reads all of the latest data fresh from our site and GitHub repos. Just open up a fresh R window and copy/paste the code.

Just wait until I add the needle, Alex β€” you won’t be so thrilled then
(This is a joke people)

β€’ β€’ β€’

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More from @gelliottmorris

G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
2 Nov
I still can't engage with @NateSilver538 on this site but this tweet misses a v important nuance of the post, which is that a model with fatter tails actually makes our aggregate predictions *worse* for 2008-2016, even though it makes the state-level predictions more inclusive. Image
This might have something to do with the way we parameterized our a correlated error and how relying on the fundamentals helped us shrink toward 50-50 in 2016 -- Nate needed fat tails then to control for poll error but our model hedged by picking up pro-D bias in swing states.
Also, adding fat tails on the order of what Nate uses only pushes our model down to 93% β€” so it's not like a huge difference. The bigger reason there's a gap bt our models is that 538 includes some very R-biased partisan data that's pushing their avgs toward 50-50 in key states
Read 6 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
29 Oct
I wonder what the @FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics averages would show if they excluded polls released by Trump's super PAC (Insider Advantage, Susquehanna) and other ideologically skewed firms with suspect methods (Rasmussen, Trafalgar). This is actually a really big deal.
There is good reason to believe that the way house effects and partisan bias adjustments have been calculated in the past β€” to control for wonky methodologies or campaign internals β€” aren't enough to control for the several GOP firms that are essentially catering to the right.
There is also a point about incentives here, which is that the polls that Trump's Super PAC choses to release are probably intended to raise money and motivate his base, rather than accurately measure the reason. That's even worse than the raw Ras + Trafalgar bias
Read 7 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
12 Oct
There is a large divide between national and state polls right now, with national poll showing an 11 percentage point advantage for Biden (in two-party %) and state polls hovering around +9.
Our election model is based mostly on the latter β€” we only really use national polls to fill in the gaps β€” but I do wonder about what the election would really look like with Biden +11 in state polls too. IA, OH and GA would probably be safely lean D
A 2 point delta nationally is huge in probabilistic terms, esp on election day. It's the difference between FL being 70% Biden and 90%, which might even be enough to push Biden's odds above 95
Read 8 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
12 Oct
Vote-switching accounts for 2/3rds of the swing in Democratic margin from 2016 to 2020, according to these figures.

As we found out after the 2018 midterms, the bigger force driving post-Trump electoral change is modest persuasion, rather than huge differential turnout
choice, persuasion -- tomato tomahto, we're saying the same thing
If you include 2016 third-party voters in the vote choice v turnout calculation, the numbers work out to 89% of the Biden-Trump swing being due to switching among 2016 voters.

Which... hmmm where have I seen that number before... ;)

medium.com/@yghitza_48326…
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
11 Oct
Our model thinks that some of the big swings toward Biden in other models/aggregates is a bit phantom. That's probably bc it relies heavily on state trends (which have been more stable) when data are available and bc of our partisan non-response adjustment projects.economist.com/us-2020-foreca…
I'd be careful with normal polling averages right now. We know that debates tend to cause temporary swings in the polls, and our model is picking up what we'd expect to see under a phantom swings β€” big movement in rdd and phone polls with smaller changes in partisan-weighted data
You can see the diff bt state and national trends at play in PA: If Biden really was up 10-11 nationally, our model thinks we should be seeing a lot more polls around +9-10, but instead we have a load of +5-8s and a few outliers around +11.
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
6 Oct
Trump is #actually pretty bad at politics. That's why his (net) approval rating has been historically stable and almost perennially low, and why he will very likely become the country's next elected one-term president (only the fifth since 1900). He's simply not good at this.
Trump's a minority pres who won the White House by drawing an inside straight in a few important states among a declining voting bloc. Since then, he has needed to expand his base to win re-election. But he has only ever catered to itβ€”every time shrinking his electoral prospects.
If Trump wins again, his victory will be attributable in large part to years of trickery and attacks against higher election turnout. The simple fact of today's GOP is that it is a minority party, in power due only to electoral institutions that disproportionately advantage them.
Read 5 tweets

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