[Vision2020] Democrats...70% chance of winning the House, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight forecasts

[Ted Moffett]

I just checked Nate Silver's 538.com and it indicates a 74.6 percent
chance?!  This is
quite a bit off a 70 percent chance...

So what is wrong here?  Am I in error?

Anyway, I find it disturbing the odds are not over 90 percent!

Obviously, I continue to be a naïve fool regarding the wisdom of the US
voter!

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****
-----------------------------------

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/

Chance Democrats win control (74.6%)
1 in 4

Chance Republicans keep control (25.4%)
----------------------
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrats-have-about-a-70percent-chance-of-winning-the-house-nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight-forecasts/ar-BBM1zaD?ocid=ientp_edu

Democrats have about a 70% chance of winning the House, Nate Silver's
FiveThirtyEight forecasts

Jacob Pramuk
5 hrs ago


   - Analytics site FiveThirtyEight's models give Democrats about a 70
   percent chance of winning a House majority in November.
   - The outlet projects an average gain of at least 32 seats for the
   party, well above the 23 GOP-held seats needed to win control of the
   chamber.
   - FiveThirtyEight still gives the GOP about a 30 percent chance to keep
   control of the House, and much can change before the Nov. 6 elections.

Democrats have reason for optimism heading into November's midterms,
according to one widely followed election forecaster.

The party has about a 70 percent chance of flipping enough Republican-held
House seats to take a majority in the chamber, according to models from
FiveThirtyEight
<https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/>,
the analytics site run by data guru Nate Silver. The outlet's forecasts
project an average Democratic gain of at least 32 seats, comfortably above
the 23 districts the party needs to gain to win a majority.

The figures reflect a feeling among most election analysts that Democrats
are at least slight favorites to win back the House. The party not in the
White House generally performs well in midterm years. Democrats have tried
to leverage opposition to health care and tax policies pushed by
President *Donald
Trump* and congressional Republicans into electoral success.

Democrats have generally led Republicans in polls measuring which party
voters prefer to hold a majority in Congress. An average of polls measured
by Real Clear Politics
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2018_generic_congressional_vote-6185.html>
puts the Democrats' lead on the generic ballot at 6.8 percent.

Still, FiveThirtyEight gives the GOP about a three in 10 chance of holding
on to its House majority. Also, much can change to affect races during the
nearly three months between now and the Nov. 6 elections — both at the
national level and in individual districts.

Should Democrats take the House, they have more power to stifle Trump's
policy priorities or pursue their own goals, such as changing the
Republican tax plan passed last year. A Democratic House could also become
more vocal about impeaching the president, or push for more investigations
into the Trump administration.

The models use data such as polling, fundraising numbers, historical
election results and race ratings from nonpartisan analysts in every
congressional district. FiveThirtyEight has three different forecasts that
use varying points of data, which give Democrats at least a 68.5 percent
chance and as high as a 75 percent chance of taking the House.

The site also assigns probabilities for candidates winning all 435
individual House races.

While Democrats appear to be favorites to take the House, Silver makes one
significant note in outlining the methodology for FiveThirtyEight's
forecast.

"Our models are probabilistic in nature; we do a lot of thinking about
these probabilities, and the goal is to develop probabilistic estimates
that hold up well under real-world conditions," he writes
<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2018-house-forecast-methodology/>.
"For instance, Democrats' chances of winning the House are between 7 in 10
and 3 in 4 in the various versions of the model upon launch — right about
what Hillary Clinton's chances were on election night two years ago! — so
ignore those probabilities at your peril."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20180816/eefafd56/attachment-0001.html>