Pet peeve of mine here on this Vox tweet, OK?

Yes, yes, it’s looking exceedingly likely that we’re taking the Senate back. Or, rather, it’s looking exceedingly likely to everybody else, now (I knew this back in March*). Still:

That 74% number is meaningless, because every single one of those forecasts is unique, and the six of them do not in fact cover evenly the possible ways to forecast the Senate races. It’s like measuring the sizes of an individual apple, an orange, a peach, a tomato, a pomegranate, a pear, and a mango and using that to determine the average size of a fruit. I understand that everything is sexier with math, but for the love of God, Montresor!

Moe Lane

*This map from March, I think, holds up pretty well:

march-15-senate-map

 

Looking at it, at this moment I’d switch CO and IA to red, MI to blue, and NC to… whatever that yellowish color is. I obviously wasn’t perfect, but then I haven’t been actually proven wrong yet on it, either.  If Kansas and North Carolina actually break the way that I had them break then I’d say that I did pretty well with assessing the races.

7 thoughts on “Pet peeve of mine here on this Vox tweet, OK?”

  1. Slightly disappointed that you didn’t call out your reference there: The Cask of Amontillado.

    There are valid ways of calculating the probability for flipping the Senate. I learned them my first year at the university, so why didn’t they- oh right, Vox. Nevermind.

  2. They are predicting the most extreme outcome – landslide, total DOOM…so that when we win, but not by a landslide, they can jump on it. It will be “not as big a win as anyone was hoping for” or whatever phrase the LSM is putting together for all the sheep to say.

  3. Their numbers are already out of date. Nate Silver has upped his to 74 percent chance of GOP Senate takeover, with 53 seats being the most likely outcome.

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