Election forecasters wrestle with possibility that their predictions are wrong

I phoned The Economist’s G. Elliot Morris to hear his thoughts. Is he worried about what might happen next week if Trump manages to win against all odds? “That’s something I think about a lot,” Morris told me. “If we are wrong this time, the perception that polls are unfixable or our analyses are crap would be quite damaging. I’m concerned about that.” Morris is of the mindset that what happened in 2016 was “more of a perceived error than an actual one,” noting that the models did allow for a Trump victory. And he’s confident in The Economist’s model…

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I also reached out to FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver who also stressed that in 2016 he and his colleagues did say Trump had a chance of winning. “We warned folks that Trump could win and a lot of people didn’t heed that warning,” Silver said. Regarding this year’s modeling, he explained, “We’re not going out on any sort of limb here. We’re just stating the obvious. Biden’s pretty far ahead in polls and the candidate who’s ahead in polls by a margin like that usually wins.”

Asked if he is worried people might be hesitant to trust models like his in the future if Trump does win, which his model again allows for, Silver replied, “I don’t really give a s**t because I can’t do anything about the election outcome. Obviously I can predict that some people might get disillusioned, etc. But it’s not something within my control.” Silver added, “So if the 10% chance comes though … that’s going to happen every once in a while. It’s supposed to happen! And there’s not much we can do about it.”

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