• 538 releases 2018 House forecast.
    58 replies, posted
Forecast -> 2018 House Forecast | FiveThirtyEight Article explaining how to read it and what changes were made from 2016. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2018-house-forecast-methodology/ Overview The principles behind the House forecast should be familiar to FiveThirtyEight readers. It takes lots of polls, performs various types of adjustments to them, and then blends them with other kinds of empirically useful indicators (what we sometimes call “the fundamentals”) to forecast each race. Then it accounts for the uncertainty in the forecast and simulates the election thousands of times. 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. 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. Nonetheless, if you’re used to the taste of our presidential forecasts, the House model will have a different flavor to it in two important respects: As compared with the presidential model, the House model is less polling-centric. Instead, it uses a broader consensus of indicators. That’s partly out of necessity: House districts don’t get much polling, and the polling they do get often isn’t much good. It’s also partly out of opportunity: With 435 separate races every other year, it’s possible to make fairly robust empirical assessments of which factors really predict House races well and which don’t. House races are far more localized than presidential races, and this is reflected in the design of the model. In presidential elections, outcomes are extremely correlated from state to state. It wasn’t a surprise that President Trump won Michigan given that he also won demographically similar states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, for instance. Sometimes that sort of thing happens in congressional elections too; although Democrats are favored in our initial forecast, even a relatively minor polling error could tilt the race back toward Republicans. Nonetheless, about three-quarters of the uncertainty in the House forecasts comes from local, district-by-district factors. If the presidential model is laser-focused on how the polls are changing from day to day and what they say about the Electoral College, the House model’s approach is more diffuse, with the goal being to shine some light into the darker corners of the electoral landscape. I'm going to be f5ing this for weeks to come.
fuck their website is suddenly unloadable (I wonder why...)
For non Americans, here's an easy way to see how bad gerrymandering is. Look how many states are totally GOP dominated except for one or two districts which are totally Dem controlled.
I am expecting it to say that Hillary is going to win.
It's beginning to look a lot like a blue wave
I really hope this turns out to be accurate. I have serious doubts the country can survive as a democracy with another two years of unquestioned Republican control. Not that we'll be gone in two years, just that the damage will be irreparable by that point. It might be already - things are looking rather like Rome circa 100BCE, and not in a good way. I'd like it even more if we get a blue senate on top of the house, but that's not a high probability last I checked. Can always hope.
Please learn how statistics work Calling a victory for her wasn't unsupported. It was a statistical possibility. Why do people have SUCH a hard time with statistics? This isn't aimed at you, just generally, people seem to readily demonstrate they don't understand the very concept of statistics.
That's not an indication of gerrymandering, it's an indication of population density. Democrats tend to live in cities and republicans tend to live in large wide open areas in the country. Republicans districts are geographically larger because it takes more land to get a sufficient number of people in one district while democrats live in smaller districts However, because of this population density problem, republicans account for a smaller percentage of overall voters but their representation counts for more: a voter in rural Montana has more say in the presidency and their congressman than a voter in Los Angeles.
Just waiting for Russian interference, the current GOP has sent a message that they will sweep it under the rug if it benefits them.
Just bad luck with the senate class up for election this year, 25 seats Dems are defending to the GOP's 9, and most of those are in red states not budged by the blue wave. Red seats that could flip blue are in Nevada, Arizona, and Tennessee. If the blue wave is extremely strong Texas, about it.
Just remember that 75% is not 100%
I don't have a hard time with statistics - it was just a joke. Jeez, you're no fun.
I wasn't jumping on you. People often make dumb statements in earnest about statistics. You made a joke that was hard to tell was a joke.
Look at this district map https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Alabama_Congressional_Districts%2C_113th_Congress.tif/lossy-page1-620px-Alabama_Congressional_Districts%2C_113th_Congress.tif.jpg The 7th district goes Dem every time because they reached up and put the three biggest blue cities there, and the rest of the district is in the black belt.
Fair enough, mate. I know what you're getting at - I had to explain what 'per capita' meant for the 19th time on this forum last week and I agree that it can get very frustrating.
Not fully the case. Alabama for instance has one 100% dem district - it's the one where a huge amount of black people live. All the other districts are gerrymandered to that the black vote is diluted and suppressed so the white vote has more power.
Bruh after 2016 I will never forget that 90% != 100%.
Just remember that the "blue wave" is composed of voters. We need every single person we can to get out into the polls this November. This is the most important electoral cycle of our lives -- the survival of our democracy is at stake. Do not get complacent. Vote. Make everybody you know vote. Offer people rides.
Unless there is someone I know is a huge asshole, I'm voting D all the way down this year. I've never done that before but the Republican party had abdicated anything resembling just, moral, or even effective governance. They need to be removed from any and all seats of power and kept away from that power until their leadership and base comes back from the edge of madness.
https://i.imgur.com/jiKQD0J.png This is cute
All y'all need to vote. Simple as that.
https://i.imgur.com/Wm0sz8S.png What a shame
Devin Nunes is at 49/50.
He won't be chairing the Intel Committee though if the House flips
If anyone honestly believes that the Republicans are gonna sit down and allow the Democrats to retake the House and/or Senate, you're fooling yourselves. It's still important to vote for accountability reasons, but I won't be surprised if the Republicans ultimately cheat their way to a miraculous, narrow victory. They're in too deep this time to allow the opposing party any semblance of power.
at this point though Republicans have shown themselves to be complete fucking morons when the law actually gets involved, to the point that i fully expect some dumbfuck congressman to just plain forget a whole folder of evidence and tapes when he goes for lunch
I'm worried that pretty soon law and order won't apply to them altogether. They've already been incredibly incompetent in regards to the whole Trump investigation/Russian treason, and yet there has been little to no repercussions, and at this rate, may very well be no serious repercussions. Unless Mueller pulls some serious magic off, or the American people finally wake up, I just don't see democracy lasting much longer in the United States. Sure there will still be superficial elections, but we may be looking at Putin's variety of "democracy" in the near future.
Mueller is going to not publicly release anything before the midterms specifically to not influence it. Pre 60s Democrats and current Republicans have trampled on democracy since 1865, but Dems are winning in so many areas I'm hopeful Russia won't have the ability to mess with so many simultaneous elections.
Russia doesn't have to personally have a hand in messing with the upcoming elections when there is no bi-partisan oversight any longer. We had eight years of Obama, eight years in which it would have been very difficult to mess with the election and do so quietly. Although it's virtually fact that they messed with last election; because it was in fact the Republicans that won, the Russian's have faced no direct repercussions. If Hillary had managed to win, it'd be a very different story. Now that the Republicans are back in office, and hold a firm majority of seats in the House and Senate(something Bush lacked, and yet he still cheated in both and got away with it); they themselves can fuck with the election unscathed, no Putin assistance required. They currently hold Florida,
If the GOP holds both houses, well, there is the nuclear option. Maybe all the 16 year olds that watched Trump get elected will vote this time to avoid that.
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