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A note on fivethirtyeight.com:
current event and sporting news through the usage of opinion polling and
statistical models.1 Editor Nate Silver had his rise to fame after correctly
Fivethirtyeight.com closely covered the 2016 election and used the same
predictive model used in the 2012 election. Nate Silver goes into much detail
about the inner workings of the model here2. To summarize his explanation: the
model works by compiling and then weighting by accuracy many state and
national polls. Each poll is then adjusted for various biases and demonstrated
inaccuracies. Then the polls are compiled into two (or in this case three, one for
Silvers model did not predict a Trump victory, but it did give Trump one of , if
1
"FiveThirtyEight." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 May 2017. Web. 30 May
2017.
2
Silver, Nate. "A User's Guide To FiveThirtyEights 2016 General Election
Nonetheless, because of his models failure to predict correctly and the general
shock of the electorate, Silver wrote a series of eleven articles examining what
On the night of November 8th, the majority of the American electorate found itself dazed
and confused. Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the electoral college, 306 to 232. The
vast majority of predictive models had Hillary Clinton with above an 85% chance of winning
and most mainstream media outlets discussed the coming election with even more certainty.3
How could this happen? What brought about this gross error in predictive confidence? And
Lets begin by looking at what was most likely the tipping point of the election: the
October 28 release of then FBI Director James Comeys letter to congress stating that more
investigation into Hillary Clinton and her use of unsecured email servers was warranted.
Previous to this release, Clinton led in most national polls by three to five percentage points and
led in fivethirtyeight.coms modeling by six percentage points.4 Then, if we take another look at
fivethirtyeight.coms forecast seven days later (this takes into account the polls published
post-letter) we have a different story entirely. Trumps numbers were higher than at any other
point during the campaign in both the vast majority of national polls and fivethirtyeight.coms
3
Katz, Josh. "2016 Election Forecast: Who Will Be President?" The New York Times.
4
Silver, Nate. "The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election." FiveThirtyEight.
election night, Trump had close victories in the following swing states: Florida, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Once again, polls after October 28 gave Trump his
On the 29th, the day after the letter was released, the print version of The New York
Times was entirely comprised of stories about Comeys letter, headlined by NEW EMAILS
JOLT CLINTON CAMPAIGN IN RACES LAST DAYS. 5 Immediately, almost all other
media outlets followed suit. Between the 29th and the 4th of November, stories detailing
Comeys letter and its impact were the lead stories in multiple national news outlets, six days out
of seven.6 Suddenly, an undecided voter was hard-pressed to find an article criticizing Donald
On election day the two candidates were separated by about three percentage points.7 But
this really isnt that significant a gap. The average polling error of general elections since 1968
is 2 percent and in 2012 the error was 2.7 percent.8 This means that in no way was Clintons
lead safe. Furthermore, fivethirtyeight.coms model had Clinton at a only 64% chance of
winning the electoral college -- ultimately the only measure that matters. (Its important to
5
Front Page of New York Times on October 29th, 2016. Digital image. New York
6
Silver, The Comey Letter
7
Enten, Harry. "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton." FiveThirtyEight.
8
Enten, Normal Polling Error
remember that national polls attempt to reflect the popular vote, not the electoral college.) Then
why did The New York Times, whose website alone received 502 million visits in the month of
October, 2016, say in an article released on election day that Clinton had a clear if not
insurmountable advantage over Donald Trump? 9 Its no surprise that much of the electorate
went into election night on November 9, 2016 expecting news of a Clinton victory.
But lets back up for a second. Lets say that Trumps victory wasnt just a polling error
and that there was something fundamentally wrong with polls on the national and state level and
that Clinton shouldve become the 45th President of the United States? So then what did go
wrong? Why were the polls so misleading? This has a lot to do with undecided voters. The
number of undecided voters on election night (12.5 percent) was more than the percentage of
undecideds from the past three general elections combined and the 18.5 percent of voters
undecided in the last 100 days was the largest percentage since 1996.10 It makes perfect sense
that a bunch of minds that arent made up can compromise any poll. A pollsters main job is to
give a preview into a popular vote held in a given population. The problem is, some polls dont
even report participants who answered undecided and when they do, its often just an asterisk.
This can easily make a lead look much more secure than it actually is. (Its worth noting that one
of the unique aspects of fivethirtyeight.coms model is that Nate Silver did take into account, to
an extent, the unusually high number of undecided voters in his model.) Furthermore, the vast
9
Cohn, Nate. "What Time Will the Presidency Be Decided?" The New York Times. The
10
Silver, Nate. "The Invisible Undecided Voter." FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, 25
undecided voters, or at least to a much lesser extent. If you made up any of those 502 million
views of The New York Times that I mentioned earlier youd have read on that fateful night that
Clinton had a 85 percent chance of winning the electoral college, its no surprise that the loss
was so shocking.11 Oh, you used a different source? It mustve been The Huffington Post; well
they reported a 98 percent chance of a Clinton victory. Or did you use predictwise.com (89
percent chance) or maybe dailykos.com (92 percent chance)12? I really hope you didnt use The
Princeton Election Consortium, an excellent source really any year other than 2016, which gave
Its now pretty clear where all of these undecided voters went: to the current President.
Earlier, I talked about how the Comey letter effected the polls during election week but even
after that, 12.5 percent of the electorate was still undecided. And what happened with this
portion of the electorate is what decided the election. The vast majority of these undecided
voters decided to Make America Great Again. Why? I suspect that it had a lot to do with the
Comey letter still dominating much of the news cycle that week. But, maybe in those final days
of decision making people simply found something in Donald Trump that resonated with them.
That brings us back to the all-important question: Why did Clinton lose? Well, according
to the map, she lost Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, states that were in her supposedly
impenetrable Blue Wall, as well as swing states North Carolina and Florida. Many
post-election articles have pointed the finger at her lack of attention to the ground game in these
11
Katz, 2016 Election Forecast
12
Daily Kos Elections. Daily Ko, n.d. Web. 30 May 2017.
states. For example, she didnt spend any time in Wisconsin.13 But if you look at her
involvement, or lack of involvement, in other states this argument falls apart. First off,
remember that even allowing for a losses in Wisconsin and Michigan, the states in which her
lack of involvement is most often cited, she still wouldve won. So lets look at some of the
other states. In Pennsylvania, both candidates focused extensively on the ground game, and
Trump won by the exact same margin as he did in Wisconsin. Furthermore, Trump spent
significantly more in Colorado, another swing state with a large number of undecided voters, and
still lost it.14 There is no consistent pattern among these state losses that reveals an answer to why
So if the ground game didnt seal the deal, what did? Well, this essay has been focused
on the We know the inaccuracy of polling during the election meant no one really saw a Trump
victory coming. So then, lets go back to the polls. The states Clinton lost had a majority
population of white, non-college educated voters.15 This chunk of the electorate were
unwavering Trump supporters throughout the campaign: from the the beginning until right
before they walked into the booth. They voted for Trump on a larger scale than anyone expected.
Pennsylvania is a great state to see this phenomenon t. Going into election day, Clinton had
more decided voters in Pennsylvania but critically there were plenty of undecided voters to
13
Arp, Jessica. "Why Hasn't Clinton Come to Wisconsin? Here Are Some
14
Silver, Nate. "Clinton's Ground Game Didn't Cost Her The Election." FiveThirtyEight.
15
Silver, Clintons Ground Game
swing the vote to Trump. Also, demographically, we now see that the majority of these
undecided voters were non-college educated whites and, as we now know, the vast majority of
that demographic voted Trump. While that demographic does often vote red, it hasnt done so
on such a scale is a very long time. In the last election cycle much of the idea of the blue wall
was established because of how many non-college educated votes Obama was able to reel in.
If you remember anything from this paper, I dont want it to be why Clinton lost or just
the examples of the gross predictive errors weve identified. I want you to remember to always
take a closer look when evaluating at any statistical model. Figure out why a certain candidates
chances are so high or so low, but dont just look at one source; make sure to read many different
opinions. Otherwise, youre going to end up like most democratic voters in the early hours of
Arp, Jessica. "Why Hasn't Clinton Come to Wisconsin? Here Are Some Theories." WISC. N.p.,
Cohn, Nate. "What Time Will the Presidency Be Decided?" The New York Times. The New York
Enten, Harry. "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton." FiveThirtyEight.
Front Page of New York Times on October 29th, 2016. Digital image. New York Times. N.p.,
Katz, Josh. "2016 Election Forecast: Who Will Be President?" The New York Times. The New
Silver, Nate. "Clinton's Ground Game Didn't Cost Her The Election." FiveThirtyEight.
Silver, Nate. "The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election." FiveThirtyEight.
Silver, Nate. "The Invisible Undecided Voter." FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, 25 Jan. 2017.
Silver, Nate. "A User's Guide To FiveThirtyEights 2016 General Election Forecast."