Nate Silver Floats Biden Drop Out As President’s Approval Rating Sinks to New ‘All-Time Low’
Nate Silver Floats Biden Drop Out As President’s Approval Rating Sinks to New ‘All-Time Low’
Nate Silver is again asking if the Democratic Party's interests would be best served by President Joe Biden dropping out of this year's presidential race.
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Remind me how his 2016 prediction worked out.
They worked within the margins of error. He didn't say Hillary would win. He said there was a about a 7 in 8 chance she would win. And when you look at the numbers by state and figure out how many votes made a difference in the electorial college numbers he was remarkably accurate. Don't blame him for most of the country not knowing how statistics work. Blame people for not voting because they don't understand statistics.
Adding to this, 538 gave Trump a higher probability than most pundits, and were mocked (pre-election) for doing so
Well, unlike the vast majority of pundits and other forecasts FiveThirtyEight had Trump at about a 28.6% chance to win, and was catching all kinds of shit over it. While you would still expect a 70-30 favorite to win a majority of the time, sometimes the dice do come up craps. So ya, while I wouldn't take his word as gospel, he did predict Trump to flame out in the 2016 GOP Primary after all, he's also pretty good at evaluating polling data and is probably worth taking seriously.
And let's be honest here, the fact that Biden is somewhere between tied and a slight underdog to Trump is bad, really fucking bad. If Biden had been willing to swallow his ego a year and a half ago, and bow out of the race, we might have had a much better candidate at this point. With his numbers slipping and his approval rating being so low, it's hard to believe we would have had worse. Of course, were he taken out behind the shed now, that could result in a lot of chaos, which could be worse for any resultant candidate. So, it may now be that Democrats are committed to Biden and just have to hope things improve for him. But, with the DNC convention yet to be held and the Democratic Candidate yet to be officially named, it may still be worth considering the metaphorical Old Yeller option.