Question

1. What model of electoral choice do you think predicts voter behavior most adequately? Compare and contrast your model with another model that we discussed.

2. What did you think of Elliott Morris’ guest presentation to the course? What did you learn in terms of the current 2020 presidential election and how voters make decisions?

Answer 1

I’m G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist and political analyst who mostly covers polls, elections, and political science. As always, I invite you to drop me a line (or just respond to this email). Please hit the ❤️below the title if you like what you’re reading; it’s our little trick to sway Substack’s curation algorithm. If you want more content, I publish subscriber-only posts 1-2x a week.

I imagine we will be getting some more election-forecasting models in the coming weeks. No doubt they will differ from each other. This is a blog post about a Twitter discussion between me and Nate Silver on how to determine what sets different models apart. In particular, we will answer the questions: What gives us faith in a model that hasn’t made real-world predictions before? Can we be confident in its future performance, or are indicators just a rough guide? And, if the latter, is that still helpful?

One thing I’ve learned about modeling since 2016 is that it takes a lot of hard work and rethinking to get it right. It’s easy to get stuck in loops of affirmational thinking about a formula you’ve landed on or parameterization you think is good. I think one of Nate’s real strengths is figuring out how to break out of those loops and really land on a good, robust solution. Or maybe he’s just really, really lucky. Either way, this is something I can probably work on.