The Results Were Skewed Toward Republicans: A Response to Nate Silver

[HomerRamone]

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10929

he seems to have a blind spot in his presumption that the pre-election polls were wrong and the election results were right. That, despite the lack of verification of virtually any of the results from Tuesday night, despite myriad and widespread if almost completely ignored problems and failures at polls across the country that day, and despite systematic voter suppression and dirty tricks that almost certainly resulted in election results (verified or otherwise) that were skewed toward Republicans...

<...> (You really need to read the specifics--I can't condense it all down to four paragraphs)

We could go on. And on. And on. And on. There were many more problems across the country, and undoubtedly others yet to come to light, but you get the idea. And, of course, none of that takes into account whether any of the reported results themselves were accurately tabulated by the oft-failed computer systems which tabulate almost all our nation's ballots...

"What are the statistical odds of so many races all skewing towards the GOP?"

Am I suggesting that elections were stolen by the Republicans? There is no doubt it was a good year for Republicans. But there is also no doubt that it was GOP voter suppression laws that affected turnout and the ability of many voters to be able to cast their votes at all, so that could certainly have swung a number of contests.

[napi21]

1. This election in the Seate WAS against the Dems. We had to defend

? I forget how many seats this year, but in 2016 we will only have to defend 2. All the rrest of the Senate seats that are up for reelection are in very blue states.

The House is another story. Gerrymandering played a HUGH PART and I don't see that changing unless we can take back a lot of the State legislatures. With Dems being so lax in voting in off years, it doesn't look good for us doing that.

[Igel]

2. People don't understand polling.

It makes their universe easier to deal with.

A better question is, What are the statistical odds that so many pollsters would have similar assumptions that skewed their pre-election data adjustments towards the Democrats?

Because then you have a series of testable hypotheses: You can go and check each demographic assumption against actual turnout. Did white women over age 65 turn out and vote as the models assumed? Did Latino men under age 25 turn out and vote as the models assumed? Did AA women heads of household aged 25-35 turn out and vote as the models assumed?

Then when you're done checking every assumption, you tote up the numbers and see if you can reconcile reality with projection.

Otherwise you're just left with unprovable, untestable doubts, breeding ground for cynicism and nihilism, and a myriad CTs, where tokens become categories and instances become generalized. And yet in the midst of that, still nobody likes to question their assumptions, the beginning of critical thinking.

[HomerRamone]

3. "Reality"--really? How do we know the supposed "real" results are the voters' actual intentions?

"While Silver's focus on polling and reported results is understandable, the analysis he offered is itself a skewed picture of what actually happened on Tuesday. It presumes that election results reported on our terrible electronic voting and tabulation systems, amidst voter suppression efforts unprecedented since the Jim Crow era, are accurate, while it was the pollsters who must have got it all wrong --- and wrong, by a remarkable coincidence, in a way that supposedly overestimated Democratic turnout in almost every case."

[Misskittycat]

4. I'm surprised that Nate Silver blames it on incorrect polls.

You'd think he'd be the first person in line to shout from the rooftops that there must have been voting machine irregularities and huge voter suppression to account for the large number of race results that did deviated from the polls - and almost all in the direction of the GOP.