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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   28014 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Did Nate Silver just get obliterated by some twitter random (Keith Rabois) for 100K? Back a month ago there was this exchange where Nate asked this dude for a binding promise to transfer 100K if Trump didn't win by 8 points in Florida. Nate seemed pretty confident and I assumed he knew what he was doing. The other guy seemed like an angry lower-caps twitter dude.

https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1842211340720504895

Florida is 91% in and it's looking pretty bad for Nate: https://www.axios.com/visuals/presidential-election-results-2024-updates-harris-trump?selectedRaces=all

Trump 5,864,014 56.1% Harris 4,491,712 43.0

Am I fundamentally misunderstanding what's going on here? It seems very bad for Mr Forecaster if he bets so confidently and gets nuked.

Edit: According to Rabois Nate Silver later withdrew his offer of a bet: https://x.com/rabois/status/1853971462744359299

By my math she would need to win ~72.5% of the remaining votes to lose by 8. I don't know how plausible that is.

Yeah, especially since a decent fraction of votes remaining are in the central time pan handle, not remote votes like in other states. I interpreted the comment as implying Nate Silver took the margin greater than 8 points side. But then the comment also implied he was wrong?

I think 56-43 gives a +13 spread. Was OP interpreting it as +13/2 or +6.5?

Nate silver wins the bet if trump doesn't win by 8 points, is what I read.

Nate Silver was betting Trump's margin wouldn't exceed 8 points, so it's (arguably) looking like Nate will be down $100,000 if the contract was indeed signed.

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