Forecasting dealer's choice

Nate Silver's OG pollster ratings, legislative forecasts, public opinion as a triangle, America's changing suburbs, politics and social media, East vs. West Germany

No. 319 | June 14, 2024

🇺🇲 2024

Two big forecast model releases this week: The Economist and 538. The Economist has Trump as the favorite, while 538 has the race has Trump as a very slight favorite as of today.

This is a flip from modeling wars between these two outlets in 2020, when The Economist forecast was far more favorable to Biden then. Of course, some of the personalities behind the models have changed: G. Elliott Morris went to 538, while Nate Silver went off to Substack. But The Economist’s Dan Rosenheck says nothing has fundamentally changed about the current Economist model which shows Trump much more of a favorite then Morris’s 538 model. 

We’ll see what Nate Silver’s model says when it comes out. 

The polls and past election results underlying each forecast model are essentially identical. The differences between them lie in which “fundamentals” the modeler includes and how much weight each assigns to uncertainty (more is better). At the end of the day, trying to say anything about the outcome of the presidential election beyond what the polls show today remains a highly subjective exercise, even when one tries to attach numbers to it. 

While we wait for Nate Silver’s model, he’s resurrected the OG 538 pollster ratings. Echelon Insights is graded A/B. 

Chaz Nuttycombe has state legislative forecasts for 14 more states. with tweaked methodology this week. 

Biden and Trump are the least liked presidential candidates in the last 3 decades.

Split Tickets looks at shifts in the suburbs. 

📊  Public Opinion

The Wall Street Journal re-envisions the political quadrants as a triangle. You can take the quiz to see where you land. I do wonder about the civic axis, though, which seems like an inchoate mix of right-coded patriotism and left-coded trust in institutions.

📰 Media Habits

How Americans’ consumption of politics on social media varies by platform. 

🗺️ Data Visualization

East Germany is still a very different place from the rest of the country. (Full video on X.)