“Nate Silver in Conversation with NY1’s Pat Kiernan” on the YP Stage on Day 1 of Internet Week New York May 18, 2015. INSIDER IMAGES/Gary He (from Wikipedia)
Nate Silver, the famed statistician and founder of the political predictions and observations website FiveThirtyEight, shocked many people by saying that Joe Biden will not win reelection this year. Silver provided a number of reasons why, but basically, it is due to Joe Biden’s age.
But, his critics, point to Silver’s past failures in response.
In 2016, Nate Silver was widely criticized because he predicted a victory for Hilary Clinton that year. However, Clinton did win the popular vote and both she and Donald Trump received the same percentages of the popular vote as predicted. But Clinton lost by only a few thousand votes in three states that made the difference in the Electoral College.
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So, what did Nate Silver say this time that has annoyed supporters of Joe Biden.
“If you’re someone who would rather not see Trump re-elected again or who cares about the election for other reasons, it’s time to face the facts,” Nate Silver wrote on his website. “You need to adjust to the new reality and not be mired in anchoring bias by your previous impression of the race.”
“Biden can still win,” he added. But he’s losing now and there’s no plan to fix the problems other than hoping that the polls are wrong or that voters look at the race differently when they have more time to focus on it. Neither is so implausible and it is likely to be a close race. But even the most optimistic Democrats, if you read between the lines, are really arguing that Democrats could win despite Biden and not because of him.
In response to the backlash, Nate Silver clarified his remarks “I’m not arguing that Biden should drop out. I’m arguing that Biden should drop out if he’s unwilling to do a series of normal high-profile interviews or flubs them, because that is an extremely bad sign and even other “bad” alternatives would be better at that point.
Nate Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is best known for founding the website FiveThirtyEight, which uses statistical analysis to predict outcomes in various fields.
Silver gained national attention for his accurate predictions of the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections. He has also written several books on baseball statistics and the application of statistics to other fields.
In addition to his work at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver is also a co-founder of the data journalism website The Upshot.
