Silver "The fundraising data, on the other hand, points toward a massive Democratic landslide."
Last edited Fri Oct 19, 2018, 07:46 PM - Edit history (1)
Many people misremember Nate Silver as having completely missed the 2016 Presidential election.
While it true that his model on the electoral college gave Clinton a 71% chance of winning his prediction on the popular vote was basically spot on:
Clinton 48.5 (538) versus 48.2 (actual)
Trump 44.9 (538) versus 46.1 (actual)
The spread 3.6% versus 2.1%
Polling needs repeated historical patterns in order to establish points of references for turnout by party, age, ethnic, education and so on.
Primary elections are more difficult than General elections. Off year elections more difficult than General and state projections more difficult than national.
When 538 sees a variable in a particular state move they adjust the model. For example if they see a report of 100k new voter registrations among young Latinos in Florida then the model would be adjusted.
Now Nate Silver sees something (or two things) that he has never seen before stating that he needs to "underscore how much of an outlier the Democratic advantage is relative to historical norms and how that could represent a challenge for our forecast."
First the data he is looking at and then his analysis:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-democrats-unprecedented-fundraising-edge-is-scary-for-republicans-and-for-our-model/
It would be one thing if Democrats were raising money only in a few high-profile races — say, for example, in Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s Senate race in Texas. But that’s precisely not what is happening. Instead, the Democrats’ fundraising advantage is widespread. They’re raising money almost everywhere they need it in the House.
. . .
But while Democrats’ numbers have held steady or improved from the high levels they had in 2016, Republican numbers have collapsed. The 17 GOP candidates that we project will raise at least $2 million this year is down from 64 in 2016. (All figures are adjusted for inflation.)
The data shows two things, 1) a healthy and steady increase in Democratic fundraising and 2) a significant collapse in Republican fund raising.
Its the kind of significant change you might expect to see if College educated Republican women in the suburbs started walking away from Republicans in significant numbers.
It is the kind of thing we are seeing consistently on an anecdotal basis, here is today's example:
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/10/17/fed-up-with-trump-a-gop-womens-pac-is-backing-dems-in-two-key-michigan-races
A Michigan Republican Women's PAC is spending $ 50k to run ads to support 2 Democratic candidates.
Here is Silver's analysis
If Democrats beat their projections on Nov. 6 — say, they win 63 House seats, equalling the number that Republicans won in 2010, an unlikely-but-not-impossible scenario — we may look back on these fundraising numbers as the canary in the coal mine. That data, plus Democrats’ very strong performances in special elections, could look like tangible signs of a Democratic turnout surge that pollsters and pundits perhaps won’t have paid enough attention to.
. . .
For the most part, the various indicators we use in our House forecast tell a consistent story. The generic congressional ballot, district-by-district polling and the past electoral history of midterm years under unpopular presidents are all consistent with a Democratic edge of somewhere between 6 and 10 percentage points in the House popular vote, and with Democrats being reasonably solid but not overwhelming favorites to win a majority of seats. The fundraising data, on the other hand, points toward a massive Democratic landslide.
As a first approximation, the correct approach with data that looks like an outlier is to average it together with the other indicators — not to throw it out. (More often than you might think, the seeming “outlier” proves to be correct and it’s the other data that was off.) And that’s more or less what our model does. But the fundraising data contributes uncertainty to our forecast in a way that our top line probabilities may not capture well.
There are increasing anecdotal examples that something unusual is happening that undermines the historical turnout model.
But there is also increasing data that something very unusual is happening. When you meet a Republican woman in a check out line and she says she is voting for Democrats that is anecdotal. When Republican Woman's Pac starts spending money for ads that is not anecdotal, that is a data point.
Today an AZ poll shows Sinema up by 8%. Outlier? Well it is a B+ rated (538 pollster) who is operated by Republicans. And their poll a month ago showed only 5% lead, so poll to poll, company to company, Sinema is going up
https://www.dataorbital.com/the-blog/new-survey-sinema-leads-mcsally-in-latest-survey
https://www.dataorbital.com/the-blog/sinema-with-lead-toss-up-arizona-senate-race
The bottom line is: There are huge things happening that make it very difficult to predict turnout and makes polling more unreliable than it would normally be. That isn't because we want it to be that way, that is what the data is showing: Nate Silver says Republicans and pollsters should be "scared".
The House is looking very good.
The Senate is still in play.
We have two more weeks to get out the vote. Thanks to all of those who are giving up their spare time to get 100 extra people to the polls. You may be motivated by conviction but the data is showing that you are apart of something very very big that should be scaring Republicans down to their shoes.
= new reply since forum marked as read
K&R
And put a scare into the GOP.
Sure, it's still important, but it's only one part of a whole.
Having said that, it's nice to hear anyway. 
Having tons of money certainly doesn't hurt our chances.
I see how hard people are working for the Democratic Party.
I see what you need to do to get past all of the lies.
Check facts...State the truth
The 45 support base can be thinned out, worn down, and broken.
People need to see what it is they are looking at and know it is either the truth or manure.
