Share this page!

Nate Silver Profile picture
Twitter logo
May 20 • 3 tweets • 1 min read
Here, using 2020 Census data, is the FiveThirtyEight urbanization index. It measures how many people live within 5 miles of the average resident in the state. (The Urbanization Index is the natural logarithm of this number.)
We think this is much better than traditional population density metrics. For instance, Nevada has relatively low population density because it has a lot of empty space. But it is quite urban: nearly everyone lives in Las Vegas or Reno/Tahoe/Sparks.
Also note that Pennsylvania and Michigan are *considerably* more urban than Wisconsin. If current trends continue and Democrats derive more and more of their vote from urban areas, they have a better chance of salvaging PA/MI than WI.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Nate Silver

Nate Silver Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @NateSilver538

Nate Silver Profile picture
May 19
Seeing a lot of this sort of sentiment. "Well, there's been no big poll shift after the Roe leak, which means no big effect on public opinion". But I think it's misguided for a couple of reasons. 🧵
1. Polling is noisy, and the generic ballot is particularly noisy. If e.g. Roe shifts the political environments toward Ds by a net of 2 points, that's a fairly big deal; could save them a couple of key Senate seats. But that could take a while to show up in our averages.
2. You wouldn't necessarily expect the shift to show up all at once. Roe *hasn't* been overturned, *yet*. (I presume it will be.) High-info voters know about the leak, but lower-info voters might not, and they're more likely to be swing voters.
Read 6 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
Apr 28
Folks, it's not that hard, the left has moved to the left in the US *and* the right has moved to the right.
You can, of course, complicate the story as much as you want, including by noting that the *Democratic Party* is not synonymous with the left and the Republican Party is not synonymous with the right and the *GOP* has probably radicalized more than the Democratic Party.
But what Elon is encountering on Twitter is not the Democratic Party but left-leaning "thought leaders" (e.g. media, academics, experts, activists) and the leftmost of those folks have moved to the left especially in the *public* sphere (maybe privately not as much).
Read 5 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
Apr 9
Very very bad when the range of final polls is this tight. Almost certainly a sign of herding (pollsters trying to avoid standing out rather than reporting what their data actually shows).
Tweet I was responding to got revised (@Taniel is an excellent follow BTW) but this is still a very tight range of results that likely reflects herding.
How'd the French polls do? Not terribly: they got the order of Macron and Le Pen correct in 1st and 2nd. But some pretty bad misses on other candidates. Pretty much everyone had Mélenchon between 16-18% and he finished with 22% instead, nearly reaching the runoff. Image
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
Apr 9
Inspired by the recent @Herring_NBA @ZachLowe_NBA All-Defense podcast, a 🧵 on why advanced NBA metrics (and in particular 538's RAPTOR) like Nikola Jokic's *defense* quite a bit.
First, rebounding. Defensive rebounding is an important part of defense. Jokic is second in the league in defensive rebounding %.
But, also, a higher percentage of Jokic's rebounds are *contested* rebounds than for other top rebounders. So these aren't empty, Westbrook-esque rebounds. Contested defensive rebounds are fairly valuable and he has a lot of them.
Read 11 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
Jan 21
It seems to me like the "right" way to frame the critique of Biden's legislative agenda is not that it's too ambitious or too left-wing per se but that voters want him to address *acute* problems whereas something like BBB tends to address *chronic* ones.
"Theats to democracy" is a more complicated case in that there are both chronic and (extremely!) acute problems. But the legislation proposed to date has also tended to be geared toward addressing the chronic ones.
That said, this is tricky for any presidental agenda, since acute problems are often dealt with more through executive action or are beyond the powers of the president to solve at all. But I don't think the WH has done a good job of selling why e.g. BBB is an *urgent* priority.
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
Jan 18
This is basically wrong, as a blanket statement. Some ideas championed by progressives are fairly popular in nonpartisan polling (voting rights is one example). Some ideas (such as on educational policy) are fairly unpopular. Some are a mixed bag.
Biden's signature policy priority, Build Back Better, is in the "mixed bag" category. Its popularity is lukewarm, both for the package as a whole and for the child tax credit in particular.

nytimes.com/2022/01/05/ups…

maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/npr-mari…
Democrats' COVID policy is also a mixed bag. Vaccine mandates started out as being modestly popular but have since become modestly unpopular, for example.

monmouth.edu/polling-instit… Image
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(