Nate Silver

[[File:Nate Silver 2009.png|thumb|165px|right|Someone's looking for a Pulitzer.]]{{USpolitics}}
'''Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver''' {{lived|1978|}} is an [[United States|American]] [[statistic]]ian and [[author]] and probably also a [[witch]].<ref>[https://archive.ph/0G4br As of press time, Nate Silver is probably a witch.]</ref> After making a fuck-ton of [[money]] through online poker (in its relative infancy when it mostly attracted people with more money than poker skill), he made a name for himself by becoming a political statistician, founding the blog '''FiveThirtyEight''' to analyse [[US]] elections and becoming a staple on the ''[[New York Times]]''. FiveThirtyEight has since been moved to a larger partnership with sports network {{wpl|ESPN||.}}<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/public-editor-how-the-upshot-replaced-nate-silver.html And the ''Times'' has filled in the vacuum with The Upshot.]</ref> Ultimately, Silver would be forced to leave FiveThirtyEight in 2023 because he was laid off by [[The Walt Disney Company]].<ref>[https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/04/disney-is-shrinking-fivethirtyeight-and-nate-silver-and-his-models-are-leaving/ Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving], Sarah Scire and Laura Hazard Owen, ''Niemen Lab'' 25 April 2023</ref> By September, FiveThirtyEight would be moved and redirected to ABC News.<ref>[https://abcnews.go.com/538/introducing-538-abc-news/story?id=103218541 Welcome to the new 538 website], Nathaniel Rakich and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, ''ABC News'' 18 September 2023</ref> FiveThirtyEight ultimately was shut down for good in March 2025.<ref>[https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/538-disney-abc-layoffs-shut-down-nate-silver/ "Disney and ABC News cuts include the shutdown of FiveThirtyEight"] by Tom Jones, Poynter Institute, 2025 March 6</ref>

In contrast to [[pundit]]s, Silver's approach was to use both [[mathematics]] and [[evidence]] to make his [[prediction]]s — notably the use of [[Bayesian]] statistics, which take into account prior information on how states voted. Putting it down to being a bit of a [[nerd]] for numbers,<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/17/nate-silver-interview-election-data-statistics Nate Silver: it's the numbers, stupid], ''[[The Guardian]]''</ref><ref>[http://xkcd.com/1131/ xkcd]</ref> this has turned out to be remarkably successful.

==Election predictions==
With a combination of this skill<ref group=note>Not that it's difficult, just very uncommon amongst the usual political talking heads.</ref> and a bit of luck, he successfully predicted the outcome of the [[2012 U.S. Presidential Election]] with almost perfect accuracy. This was notable because at the time, most [[mainstream media]] were predicting the election to be "too close to call" — Silver, on the other hand, actually looked at the data and found it to tell a different story, one where the incumbent [[Barack Obama]] had a ''90% chance of winning'', and by a significant margin. It was the second time he pulled this off, getting 49/50 [[state]]s right in [[2008 U.S. Presidential Election|2008]].<ref group=note>In both cases, "he successfully predicted the outcome" means that the candidate Nate Silver gave the highest probability of winning won the given state. Silver's predictions (and others') are probabilistic, so over enough elections, the prediction should often be "wrong" - for example, if it's predicted that a candidate has a 60% chance of winning in each of ten states, over enough elections the candidate should ''lose'' an average of about four. 
Un
fortunately the US presidential election does not happen often enough to really assess the accuracy of prediction methods, and [[Innumeracy|the popular media (and the public) do not understand statistics well enough]] to distinguish "Candidate A has a 60% chance of winning Virginia" from "Candidate A is guaranteed to win Virginia".</ref>

===2016===
Silver, while mostly accurate in his predictions, made several rather uncharacteristic mistakes during the 2016 elections. While he indicated that [[Hillary Clinton]] would win the [[Michigan]] Democratic primary,<ref>http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/michigan-democratic/</ref> it actually went to [[Bernie Sanders]] — although virtually every pollster got that one wrong, so it's not entirely his fault.<ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-polls-missed-bernie-sanders-michigan-upset/</ref><ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-stunning-bernie-sanders-win-in-michigan-means/</ref>

What is his fault, however, is when he endorsed and co-wrote an article titled "Bernie Sanders may win Iowa and New Hampshire - and lose everything else,"<ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/bernie-sanders-could-win-iowa-and-new-hampshire-then-lose-everywhere-else/</ref> which certainly wasn't very accurate at all. (This prediction was so inaccurate that a fictional parody pundit named Carl Diggler was found to be better at predicting election outcomes than Silver was.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/09/our-fictional-pundit-predicted-more-correct-primary-results-than-nate-silver-did/</ref>)Another fuck-up occurred when he insisted that [[Donald Trump]] would not win the Republican presidential nomination,<ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-media-stop-freaking-out-about-donald-trumps-polls/</ref> despite repeated polling evidence showing that Trump was leading; Silver himself admitted that he was dead wrong about this one.<ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/</ref> He's since admitted to using punditry for this election cycle rather than just sticking to his raw-numbers analysis.<ref>http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/</ref>

538's model uses high correlations between the states, to the extent that a candidate winning a ''single'' swing state doubles their probability of winning the election. For example, if Clinton wins Nevada, in the model her probability of winning goes up to 91, not because the 6 electoral votes from Nevada are so very important, but because according to Nate's model, the swing states behave in a very similar manner, so whoever wins one swing state will sweep all of them. In this case, that obviously favored Trump. He needed to win all swing states plus at least one "blue wall" state. FiveThirtyEight's final prediction for the 2016 election had Clinton's probability of winning at about 70% and Trump's at 30%, but Trump ended up winning because he did in fact pull off the once-thought-to-be-impossible feat of winning most of the swing states (including, crucially, Florida and Pennsylvania) as well as two other states thought to be solidly Democratic (Wisconsin and Michigan, albeit winning the latter very narrowly indeed). Clinton did win Nevada, but losing those key northern states destroyed her once infallible position in the Northeast, and that coupled with the loss of Florida lost her the election. Therefore, Silver's predicted result for the election using this model was way off, although he was correct that one candidate was going to sweep most of the swing states — it's just that he picked the wrong one. It should be mentioned, however, that Silver frequently pointed out that Trump was just "one standard size polling error" away from winning the electoral vote. And the national popular vote (which went to Clinton by two points) was well within the margin of error (the polls had her up by roughly four points). In fact in a "Dewey defeats Truman" election, Silver was pretty much the only mainstream source without partisan bias or motivation to give Trump more than a "Yeah, and pigs can fly" chance on election day. But because Democrats were so shocked at losing the election after "everybody" had them comfortably winning it and Republicans had had an axe to grind with him for 2012, and combined with the general public apparently being incapable of grasping the likelihood of a "30%" event actually happening — roughly one in three times — Silver and his website now has to deal with hecklers saying "Yeah and you were wrong on the 2016 election, so shut up".

This was the worst possible result for Nate Silver personally. He correctly warned of a split result between the [[United States Electoral College|Electoral College]] and the popular vote, and repeatedly said that Trump had a better chance at winning than most gave him credit for (compare ''[[The Huffington Post]]'' claiming that Clinton had a ''98%'' chance of winning).<ref group=note>As detailed in a previous note, the nature of a presidential election as a singular event makes the latter "achievement" essentially pointless. If person A's model predicts a fair coin will land on heads only 25% of the time, and person B's model predicts it will land on heads 99% of the time, then flipping a coin ''once'' and getting a result of heads does not mean person B's model was somehow better.</ref> However, because his model failed to predict the actual winner, Silver's reputation as an election-forecasting wizard has arguably gone down the tubes. Instead of being remembered for correctly predicting all 50 states between Obama and Romney, he may be remembered for his methodology (like everyone else's) failing to predict the final 2016 presidential result. Also, the sheer avalanche of election "updates" (usually overly-long blog posts stating the obvious) gave the impression that fivethirtyeight.com was massaging the "horse race" for clicks.

===Conservative disdain===
As Silver was both predicting a win for Obama and turned out to be staggeringly correct about it, he has become something of a pariah and figure of hate for those on the US far right, who still hold their [[denialism|heads in the sand]] over the election.<ref>[http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/war-on-nate-silver-final-after-action-report-the-flag-of-science-flies-uncontested-over-silvergrad-weblogging.html Nearly 50 high-profile wingnuts.]</ref> Being openly [[gay]] certainly hasn't helped there, as comments from Dean Chambers, who runs [[Fair and Balanced|unskewedpolls.com]], seemed almost entirely ''[[ad hominem]]'' in nature — dismissing Silver as nothing more than an "effeminate," "soft-sounding" "Castrat[o]."<ref>[Gawker.com: [http://archive.ph/http://gawker.com/5956724/ archive.ph], [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gawker.com/5956724/ web.archive.org] Shooting the Messenger’s Numbers: Nate Silver’s Struggle (The Redux)], Gawker</ref>

==Predicting the world==
He is described by ''[[Black Swan]]'' author [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]] as "seriously knowing his shit,"<ref group=note>Okay, so the actual quote is "He's the real deal."</ref> although the two appear to disagree on how predictable the world actually is. In his book ''The Signal and the Noise'', Silver claims that the [[9/11]] terrorist attack was, to a degree, predictable — and furthermore that statistics ''may'' suggest another, even larger, attack is coming within the next decade or so — while Taleb's Black Swan theory would hold that such events are outside the realm of predictability.

==Becoming the pundit he once disparaged==
After 2016, Silver started drifting from his original focus of data-driven electoral analysis towards a new role as a purveyor of data-free political "hot takes" on [[Twitter]] — [[Hypocrisy|essentially becoming the very same pundit that FiveThirtyEight was founded to counteract]]. As typical for any pundit, many of his political tweets were half-baked at best and on topics Silver had little to no expertise in while lacking the sort of numerical analysis he was once known for.<ref>[https://newrepublic.com/article/155761/fall-nate-silver "The Fall of Nate Silver"] by Aaron Timms, New Republic, 2019 November 18</ref><ref>[https://www.truthdig.com/articles/nate-silver-is-making-this-up-as-he-goes/ "Nate Silver Is Making This Up as He Goes"] by Jacob Bacharach, TruthDig, 2019 October 30</ref> 

This was deeply apparent when Silver made some particularly stupid and irresponsible tweets during the [[COVID-19 pandemic]], many of which outright bordered on [[anti-vaxxer]]/anti-lockdown talking points popular among fringe extremists. Lowlights include bizarrely comparing school closures caused by the pandemic to the [[Iraq War]],<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nate-silver-school-closures-iraq-war-b1988308.html "Nate Silver prompts outrage by likening school closures to the Iraq War"] by Gustaf Klander, Independent, 2022 January 6</ref> believing that he was [[Dunning–Kruger effect|smarter than public health care professionals]] and making some ill-thought out criticism of a report (based on a misunderstanding of one slide) from scientists at the {{wpl|Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices}} regarding how best to allocate the vaccine,<ref>[https://www.newsweek.com/nate-silver-criticism-covid-vaccine-report-interpretation-1556198 "Nate Silver Draws Criticism for COVID Vaccine Report Interpretation"] by Matt Cannon, Newsweek, 2020 December 20</ref> questioning the decision to pause distribution of the {{wpl|Janssen COVID-19 vaccine}} due to 6 cases of blood clots without evidence (and much hyperbole) claiming that "this is going to get people killed" and "it's going to create more vaccine hesitancy",<ref>[https://www.mediaite.com/politics/nate-silver-feuds-with-cnn-medical-analyst-on-twitter-after-she-dismisses-his-arrogant-and-uninformed-take-on-jj-pause/ "Nate Silver Feuds With CNN Medical Analyst on Twitter After She Dismisses His ‘Arrogant and Uninformed’ Take on J&J Pause"] by Katherine Huggins, 2021 April 14th</ref> and a bad take where, based on one poll, Silver complained that "mixed messages" from the media and medical experts were unnecessarily increasing fear among the public of breakthrough cases of the disease (a stance that got plenty of push-back on Twitter from anyone with kids or who knew immunocompromised individuals).<ref>[https://www.newsweek.com/nate-silver-told-shut-twitter-covid-musings-face-huge-backlash-1627470 "Nate Silver Told to 'Shut Up' As Twitter COVID Musings Face Huge Backlash"] by Brendan Cole, 2021, September 9</ref>

Silver still occasionally posts entries on his blog with the type of numerical analysis he was once famous for.<ref>[https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-regression-analysis "Fine, I'll run a regression analysis. But it won't make you happy."], Nate Silver, Substack, 2023 October 1</ref> Sadly, however, in recent times, Silver is more known for his Twitter feuds and questionable political takes (some of which actually seem to ignore numeric evidence that contradict his conclusions)<ref>[https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Feb20-2.html "Enough of the Gospel According to Nate Silver"], Electoral-Vote.com, 2024 February 20</ref> instead of his prior data-driven analysis paradigm.

==Into the dark side==
Though Silver was frequently critical of political betting marketplaces in the past,<ref>[https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/polymarket-nate-silver-prediction-markets-gambling.html "Polymarket and Nate Silver Want to Reshape Political Forecasting"] by Nitish Pahwa, Slate, 2024 August 16</ref> in July 2024, Silver was hired by Polymarket, a [[cryptocurrency]]-based event forecasting ([[gambling]]) firm.<ref>[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/polymarket-hires-nate-silver-taking-154956290.html Polymarket Hires Nate Silver After Taking in $265M of Bets on U.S. Election: Report] by Oliver Knight (Jul 17, 2024, 8:49 AM PDT) ''Yahoo! Finance''.</ref> Two months prior to this, [[Peter Thiel]] had invested $70 million in Polymarket.<ref>[https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/05/14/peter-thiel-invests-in-polymarket-political-betting-platform-but-the-future-of-gambling-on-elections-remains-unclear/ Peter Thiel Invests In Polymarket Political Betting Platform—But The Future Of Gambling On Elections Remains Unclear] by Zachary Folk (May 14, 2024, 02:19pm EDT) ''Forbes''.</ref> Despite the new consulting job, Silver still ran election prediction models on the [[2024 U.S. presidential election]]. Some commentators criticized Silver's models as being a conflict of interest, as Polymarket allowed you to gamble on the outcome of this election.<ref>[https://www.salon.com/2024/09/06/nate-silver-faces-backlash-for-pro-model-skewing/ "Nate Silver faces backlash for pro-Trump model skewing"] by Griffin Eckstein, Salon, 2024 September 6</ref>

==See also==
*[[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s Third Law

==External links==
*[http://fivethirtyeight.com/ FiveThirtyEight]
*[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/1107/Election-2012-Has-Nate-Silver-destroyed-punditry/ Has Nate Silver destroyed punditry?], ''Christian Science Monitor''

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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