When rigorously honest social scientists issue predictions there is often less there than meets the eye, the qualifiers and margins of error and nuance hollow out meaning. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight is a rigorously honest social scientist-like being and he distills his post yesterday thusly:
I think Trump’s more likely than not to underachieve his national polls once people get around to voting in the early states, but I don’t expect his numbers to fade to zero. Perhaps he has [Pat] Buchanan’s constituency of 15 to 20 percent of the Republican electorate, plus another 15 to 20 percent of bandwagon voters that will join him or leave him at any given time.
lol. Let's attempt to quantify those modifiers and put meaning back into Silver's summation:
"I think"=50%+1 probability.
} < 34%*
I think Trump’s more likely than not to underachieve his national polls once people get around to voting in the early states, but I don’t expect his numbers to fade to zero. Perhaps he has [Pat] Buchanan’s constituency of 15 to 20 percent of the Republican electorate, plus another 15 to 20 percent of bandwagon voters that will join him or leave him at any given time.
lol. Let's attempt to quantify those modifiers and put meaning back into Silver's summation:
"I think"=50%+1 probability.
} < 34%*
"More likely than not"=50%+1.
"Perhaps." Hmm, that sounds even squishier. "Perhaps" is like "maybe," the realm of equally likely outcomes. What the hell is the dictionary definition of "perhaps?" Une momento, por favor....Si: "possibly but not certainly." "Possibly" is a dirty word in court. You can't say "possibly." "Possibly" cannot be quantified. Should we be this rigorous in parsing Silver's words? The case for "Yes": In the sentence before he used more quantifiable terms, "I think" and "more likely than not." The case for "No": That would drain fun from this exercise. HELD:
"Possibly"=50%.
So, in Silver's opinion, there's an even chance Trump's "true" pool of potential voters is between 30%-40%. More importantly, according to Silver, there is a better than even chance that the vote for Trump will be less than his average 34% current polling number, the two sets of numbers being consistent. Therefore, it seems reasonable to quantify Silver's prediction for Trump's vote as 30%-34%.
30%-34% is a lot! That's a lot in a race with ten candidates. Silver does not do a similar analysis on the others, nor even on those below Trump but with 10% or more polling support, Cruz, Rubio, Carson. We can rigorously presume that those Lesser Three are left with 70% of the vote to divvy up. If they divvied it up equally (which they won't) each would receive </=23% of the vote since 100%-30%=70% which divided by 3=23.3%.
30%, say, to 23% puts the Lesser Three within striking distance of Trump. The Greatest of the Lesser Three, say Cruz, is mathematically guaranteed to have more than 23% of the vote, putting him even closer to Trump, in Silver's opinion.
Fun, no?
*RealClearPolitics average of polls.
"Perhaps." Hmm, that sounds even squishier. "Perhaps" is like "maybe," the realm of equally likely outcomes. What the hell is the dictionary definition of "perhaps?" Une momento, por favor....Si: "possibly but not certainly." "Possibly" is a dirty word in court. You can't say "possibly." "Possibly" cannot be quantified. Should we be this rigorous in parsing Silver's words? The case for "Yes": In the sentence before he used more quantifiable terms, "I think" and "more likely than not." The case for "No": That would drain fun from this exercise. HELD:
"Possibly"=50%.
So, in Silver's opinion, there's an even chance Trump's "true" pool of potential voters is between 30%-40%. More importantly, according to Silver, there is a better than even chance that the vote for Trump will be less than his average 34% current polling number, the two sets of numbers being consistent. Therefore, it seems reasonable to quantify Silver's prediction for Trump's vote as 30%-34%.
30%-34% is a lot! That's a lot in a race with ten candidates. Silver does not do a similar analysis on the others, nor even on those below Trump but with 10% or more polling support, Cruz, Rubio, Carson. We can rigorously presume that those Lesser Three are left with 70% of the vote to divvy up. If they divvied it up equally (which they won't) each would receive </=23% of the vote since 100%-30%=70% which divided by 3=23.3%.
30%, say, to 23% puts the Lesser Three within striking distance of Trump. The Greatest of the Lesser Three, say Cruz, is mathematically guaranteed to have more than 23% of the vote, putting him even closer to Trump, in Silver's opinion.
Fun, no?
*RealClearPolitics average of polls.
