Nate Silver on why 2020 isn't 2016

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2020

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As you may have heard, there's a pretty important election coming up. That means it's time to bring back the one and only Nate Silver. Silver, the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, boasts one of the best election forecasting records of any analyst in the last 15 years. His forecasting models successfully predicted the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 US presidential election and all 50 states in 2012. And in 2016, Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gave Donald Trump a 28 percent chance of victory — a significantly higher percentage than virtually any other prominent analyst at the time. He knows what he’s talking about, and it shows in this conversation. We discuss: What went wrong with the polls in 2016 — and whether pollsters today have corrected for those mistakes Why a 2016-sized polling error in 2020 would still hand Joe Biden the election Why the 2020 race has been so incredibly steady despite a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and the biggest national protest movement in US history The possibility of a Biden landslide The not-so-small chance that Biden could win Texas and Georgia The massive Republican advantage in the Senate, House, and Electoral College — and how that affects our national politics Why the Senate would still advantage Republicans, even if Democrats added five blue states. Whether the Bernie Sanders left took the wrong lessons from 2016 Why Biden’s unorthodox 2020 campaign strategy has been so successful Whether Sanders would be doing just as well against Trump as Biden is doing How a more generic, non-Trump Republican would be faring against Biden Why Silver is generally optimistic that we will avoid an electoral crisis on November 3 And much more. References: “How FiveThirtyEight’s 2020 Presidential Forecast Works — And What’s Different Because Of COVID-19." Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight "The Senate’s Rural Skew Makes It Very Hard For Democrats To Win The Supreme Court." Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman "Toby Ord on existential risk, Donald Trump, and thinking in probabilities." The Ezra Klein Show "The Real Story of 2016" by Nate Silver Book recommendations: The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom The Precipice by Toby Ord Credits: Producer/Audio engineer - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas. New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere) Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A 2016 error would not be quite enough, right?
0:06.0	If the polls missed by exactly the same margin, exactly the same states, then instead of
0:10.6	losing those three key brush belt states by one point, by and would win them by one or
0:15.1	two points.
0:16.1	Hello and welcome to this grand show on the Vox Media podcast network.
0:31.1	We are just days out from the 2020 election, which has to go any number of ways.
0:37.1	And so what has almost become a pre-election tradition here at the show?
0:40.9	I wanted to have Nate Silver back on to talk through what we know about it now, what we
0:46.2	think may come true on the day and how we should understand the overall context in which
0:51.4	this election is playing out.
0:52.8	Nate, of course, is the founder and editor-in-chief of 538.
0:57.0	He is a man who brought forecast modeling to political journalism.
1:00.4	And he's also just somebody who, because of the work he does on these models, ends up diving
1:05.2	into the guts of what matters and what doesn't about elections, what is true and what is
1:09.4	not at a level of empirical rigor that view can match.
1:13.9	And I always think that the secret of him is that he's not just able to do that numbers
1:16.8	work, but he's great at communicating what those numbers actually mean, talking through
1:21.3	what it would mean to think about this stuff in a more disciplined way and to take probabilities
1:25.7	and uncertainty more seriously.
1:27.9	So I won't spend too much time on the intro here because this is a great conversation.
1:30.9	As always, my email is or canjoadvox.com here is Nate Silver.
1:34.5	Nate Silver, welcome back to the show.
	...

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