FiveThirtyEight loses credibility.. unabashedly shills and calls NH for Hillary

[ram2008]

I'm not sure whats going on at FiveThirtyEight, but they're certainly way out of touch when it comes to analyzing the Democratic primary. Harry Enten of 538, famously known for declaring the surge was over a day before all the polls showed Bernie was surging has decided to JUMP THE SHARK today. To my shock, I see a tweet declaring that Hillary will all but win the New Hampshire primary now that she's got the endorsement of the governor Hassan.

Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten
Clinton's winning this primary unless some massive shoe drops
---"Dan Merica @danmericaCNN New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan will endorse Hillary Clinton on Friday in Durham, per HRC's NH operation."

Wow, ok so Clinton will win because she has the support of NH's governor, what data is he using for this wild claim?

Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten
16 years ago, a "struggling" front-runner in the polls is endorsed by NH's sitting governor http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/e98/e472.htm

What? How the heck are you going to compare Bernie Sanders to Bradley, and Gore to Clinton... This happened 16 YEARS AGO, in a totally different electoral environment. Bernie Sanders has continued to go up in the polls and the demographics overwhelmingly favor him in the state, yet now he's going to lose because Bradley lost 16 years ago? WTF???

Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten
Three major elected Dem officials in NH: Hassan, Kuster, & Shaheen. All have or will be endorsing Clinton.

More name dropping, yet zero data, what's going on? I thought FiveThirtyEight used numbers? That doesn't stop Harry from continuing to dig.

Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten
@conorsen @Nate_Cohn There is much less of a push within the Democratic primary for an outsider. In fact, most Dems want experience.

Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten
I don't know why people claim Democrats want an outsider. From the most recent ABC poll, langerresearch.com/wp-content/upl…

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/644574980894760965/photo/1

Newsflash Harry: Bernie Sanders has been in congress since 2007 and was Mayor of Burlington before that. He HAS decades of experience, all while maintaining his outsider image. He has the best of both worlds, if people didn't want to support him, then he wouldn't continue going up in the polls, nor would he draw enormous rallies. Just because people like experience, doesn't imply that they want Hillary.

I thought FiveThirtyEight was supposed to be about data journalism and not blind partisan punditry, yet all these tweets use ZERO data and go contrary to what the polling says. Unbelievable that one of the lead writers would call NH already based on an ENDORSEMENT, especially when Sanders is between 7 and 22 points ahead depending on what poll you're reading. Fivethirtyeight has lost it and has jumped the shark.

[DanTex]

1. Interesting, didn't know about the Hassan endorsement. The people at 538 have a pretty

good track record on this kind of thing. The NH gap is down to 3% in the last poll, but still a ways to go, we'll see. NH is definitely Bernie's best early primary state.

[ram2008]

2. Nate is smart...

Nate is smart, although a bit elitist and has a tendency to not see the bigger picture.

However, I think Harry is absolutely clueless if he thinks the endorsement of a gov will change the trajectory of the race to the point that Hillary is a shoo-in. I mean I can see if him saying she'll win the nom, but NH? He shouldn't be writing for 538 if he is as clueless as he seems.

[DanTex]

8. In other words, you disagree with him. Happens all the time.

So everyone you disagree with now is a Hillary shill?

Personally, I think it could go either way in NH, but 538 has done more analysis on the impact of endorsements than I have. But, yeah, they could be wrong.

[brooklynite]

3. So, you have evidence that 538 is intentionally skewing it's analysis to support Clinton?

Please feel free to share it.

[ram2008]

5. There is no skewing because there is no data

Might as well be a talking head on CNN spouting non-sense.

[morningfog]

25. Is there a link to a 538 analysis that shows Hillary winning in NH?

[GitRDun]

4. Maybe he's just wrong...

What makes you think he's a shill, e.g., some covert Clinton operative?

[FSogol]

6. ALCOA!

[peacebird]

7. In mid August Harry Enten totally dismissed Sanders as not a credible candidate

He says there is no way Sanders wins because the Dem establishment doesn't support him. I believe he is wrong, but there you have it.

[ram2008]

9. And then he tried to play off polls showing Bernie ahead as outliers:

Someone pointed out this old tweet from him on Twitter:

[peacebird]

11. Seems pretty partisan to me. At least with Nate it was all in the numbers....

[SheilaT]

10. Calling an election, in this case a primary, months

before the voting actually occurs, is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst. Not to mention, as already pointed out, Bernie is currently leading in the polling there.

[randome]

16. "Calling an election"? It's a periodic best-guess scenario.

No one has said Clinton is guaranteed a win.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[kenfrequed]

12. Enten has been screwing this up since June

He has been using really loose data, polls based on name recognition, and complete opinion projections on how things would shake out.

If you see an article about how Bernie stands no chance, about how he is losing ground, peaking, or how his numbers are going to stall out and shrink, then nine times out of ten it is Enten writing it.

Hopefully Nate will give him the boot soon.

[bunnies]

13. Hassan who says one thing then does another once elected?

Wow. Now theres a shocker.

[ram2008]

14. I think the punditry is grossly overestimating the worth of endorsements.

Donald Trump is all the way out front with essentially zero endorsements. He's in first place.

Jeb has the most endorsements and is in the single digits.

Hillary has almost every endorsement yet Bernie continues to climb.

If people have close to zero trust in their leaders, why do pundits seem to think they care about who those leaders support?

[bunnies]

19. I have no idea.

Re: NH - first it was Shaheen... whose husband lost his job in 08 for saying Obama was a drug pusher. And now Hassan - who GUTTED the medical marijuana legislation that was approved by the Republican legislature. The very same legislation she pushed for when in congress. They all only care about their own political ambitions. And to keep coming out and endorsing a candidate thats BEHIND in the polling in the state? Who the fuck are these people representing? Sure as hell not their constituents.

I dont give a rats ass who the establishment stacks up on the side of the chosen one. My vote goes to Bernie. These pundits are WAY out of touch.

[frylock]

15. Bradley, much like McGovern, didn't have much of a presence on social media..

I'll just bet all the kids are impressed with Hassan's endorsement.

[JI7]

17. while NS does seem like a huge Hillary fan why would they risk credibility

By making up numbers ?

[ram2008]

18. They didn't use any numbers

That's the issue. Harry predicts Hillary winning NH based on an endorsement, which runs very contrary to the numbers.

[jeff47]

22. 'Cause they don't really have much?

Last edited Thu Sep 17, 2015, 04:47 PM - Edit history (1)

The big innovation of 538 is to keep following the polls. So they get it right most of the time...by actually paying attention to the polls at the end of the race. Instead of blindly following the results from 3 months ago, mixed with some "I know what real Americans think because someone who's income depends on my tip agreed with me."

But polls don't come out that often, and the 538 site needed something to pay the bills while waiting for the next polls. So they added pundits. And they suck as much as anyone else's pundits.

[reformist2]

20. 538 is sooo overrated.

[MineralMan]

21. Hmm...either he is right or you are right.

I know his history, but I don't know yours, in predicting elections. Why should I believe your prediction, I wonder?

[RufusTFirefly]

23. Fear not, Hillary fans! Bernie will "scream" or do something similar...

... and then you'll have a nice, plausible explanation for how she bounced back and won the nomination in a cakewalk.<sup>*


*</sup>A tip of the pen to Iraq war liberator Kenneth Adelman

[mhatrw]

24. Nobody has endorsed Sanders.

Why would they? They all want to continue to live in establi$$ment.

[Gothmog]

26. I remember Mitt Romney and Karl Rove being convinced that Nate was wrong in 2012

Time will tell but Nate has a great track record and the complaints I am hearing remind me of Romney and Rove in 2012

[chillfactor]

27. sorry...

but I trust Nate's analysis rather than yours....you sound like a Hillary hater rather than an objective observer....

[ram2008]

28. You clearly didn't even read the post

It's not Nate who provided this "analysis"

[Trajan]

29. You outed yourself as a 'wonderful person'

I cannot have such a wonderful person in my world, so you gotta go ...

[Uncle Joe]

30. It seems FiveThirtyEight has succumbed to confirmation bias, "in for a penny in for a pound."

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it.[Note 1][1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Thanks for the thread, ram.

[Jim Lane]

31. One correction -- you've understated Sanders's experience

You write: "Bernie Sanders has been in congress since 2007 and was Mayor of Burlington before that." Actually, he's been in the Senate since 2007. Before that he served for 16 years in the House.