People consistently have a hard time understanding that 30% probabilities happen all the time.
replySurely not all the time.
replyI think given the number of things that can happen with ~30% probability, there's probably something significant happening with ~30% probability at basically all times.
replyWell, we're talking about elections. You have an election where there's a president, 30 or so governors, 33-34 senators, and 438 representatives. Say a total of 64 major offices, or 500 if you count the representatives. You'd expect a 30% chance to happen in 19 major races, or 150 races if you count the representatives.
replySo in an election, that happens all the time. It just doesn't always happen in the race for president.
30% of the time it is all of the time.
replySome say 30% of the time.
replyWhere Presidential politics is concerned, I think it's less a case of misunderstanding probabilities and more the success of party propaganda. Every victory is a landslide with a resounding mandate from the populace, every defeat a crushing humiliation and repudiation of your opponent's Unamerican ideals.
replyI kind of fell off the Nate Silver train toward the end of Trump's first term (so deep in the COVID-19 era...). It feels like around that time 538 shifted heavily away from raw statistics and into punditry, and they seemed less unique among the various political blogs.
replyThose predictions all became worthless anyway when Comey reopened the "emails" issue right before the election and threw fresh meat to all the stupid people who ate that up.
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