31 Comments

  1. OnBorrowedTimes on

    Nate Silver Sounds The Alarm, Urges Americans to ‘Make Contingency Plans Right Away’ to ‘Protect Their Faces’ If The Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party He’s Promoted With His Conspiratorial BullShit Wins

  2. IMO, Silver is reliant on a flawed premise.

    His premise is, the polls are all off in Harris’s favor because in 2016 and 2020 the polls underrepresented Trump voters as a share of the electorate.

    2018 and 2022 were better for
    democrats than the polls, so his logic his midterms are favoring democrats and trump has a special power to get his voters to turn out that no one else can.

    However, Silver a) ignores special election data as non representative. Democrats are doing better than 2020 but worse than 2018 in terms of special
    elections. Which would track with a Harris victorious in line with like a 2012 electoral margin.

    b) Having done a lot of social
    science research, i can tell you the pollsters are already baking in the “trump effect” into the polls. it’s why trump was clearly leading against biden, when really that was an actual toss up.

    Silver essentially is double dipping into this trend. Saying that polls that already account for trumps ability to surprise the polls are themselves still going to be surprised.

    TDLR. Silver doesn’t like relying on special election data as predictive and pollsters are already baking in giving trump extra points to not repeat 2016 and 2020 polls

  3. If we have to fear for the future of our democracy every election, we have already lost our democracy

  4. >Prominent election forecaster Nate Silver is sounding the alarm for Americans to prepare “contingency plans” in anticipation of a possible Trump victory in the closely contested 2024 presidential election, which he describes as a “toss-up.”

    >In an [interview](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/people-should-be-making-their-contingency-plans-like-right-away-americas-leading-forecaster-on-the-chances-of-a-trump-win) with The Guardian, Silver stated, “One potential advantage of having a forecast that says … it’s 50/50, is that people should be making their contingency plans, like, right away. It doesn’t mean you need [to stockpile] ammo and peanut butter, but it means, you know: what’s your strategy to protect American institutions in the event of a Trump second term?”

    Luckily, the strategy to protect our institutions was already put in place by those that came before us. Maybe you’ve heard of it? The 14th Amendment says that trump is ineligible to hold office. Why so many in the country, and more importantly, the gop has decided to ignore the basic fact that the republican candidate is constitutionally prohibited from becoming the chief executive is beyond me.

    So anyway, if Trump wins, Biden, as the current chief executive is tasked with executing the law of the land and, thus, is on the hook to ensure that the 14th amendment is upheld. In short, if he cares about the rule of law and this nation (and I very much believe he does), then he cannot allow Trump to take office.

    To aid him in this fight, the SCOTUS has seen fit to allow Biden absolute immunity for official acts (of which this would be one). If they rule against Biden to seat trump, Biden would presumably have cause to unseat the SCOTUS members who rule against him because, by doing so, they would be giving comfort and aid to an insurrectionist whom the constitution prohibits from being president.

    At the end of the day, Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy. This isn’t about dems or republicans. This is about the promise of a nation of the people, for the people, and by the people. I do not think that the current administration should (or would) cede power to such a candidate. I honestly think the dems are playing ball as best they can so that they don’t have to pull the emergency brake, but I do think that if they have to, they will.

    Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

    Vote!

  5. If Trump somehow wins, there’s something wrong because he hasn’t come close to winning anything since 2016. 2016 was also a fluke.

  6. At this point, if Trump gets back into office with a popular vote win, we deserve to lose our democracy.

  7. What about Joe- why can’t he protect democracy by throwing trump in Guantanamo bay !!!
    Mother fucker has been a traitor since his last bankruptcy

  8. Ok_Calligrapher_8199 on

    Lolol when Nate sounds the alarm, America rests easy.

    Because he’s bad at his job is what I mean.

  9. Look, after all he’s done, if trump still wins . . . That’s democracy. My contingency plan is moving to a different country.

  10. “The election is soooo incredibly close, you MUST fretfully visit my website *daily* to see whether democracy is going to end in November—pls click the ads when you do!”

  11. So I guess he means start digging trenches in the back yard and load it with ammo and food……WTF?

  12. Weird draped Ozempic skin. Watch dRump turn out to be Red Skull and all us true American’s are Captain America.

  13. Republican controlled states are looking to delay their certifications so they miss the federal deadline. This leaves the election to the house. We all know what Johnson will do.

  14. Caution and concern is definitely warranted, however Silver is hardly a trustworthy or unbiased source these days.

    He was fired from fivethirtyeight, and it’s been suggested this was partly for using very questionable methodology that magnified the weighting of pro-republican pollsters even when they had a track record of low accuracy.

    His own model is doing the same thing this year, and it still operates on the assumption that Trump has hidden votes out there.

    That’s flawed, though. Trump doesn’t have hidden votes any longer. He does get his voters to turn out whenever he’s on the ballot, that’s a lock. But the polls this year have been intentionally weighted to compensate for it. That’s why he’s now polling consistently at or around 47% nationally and in the swing states – which was where he landed in 2020. Polls in ’16 and ’20 didn’t show him getting that high.

    The formerly shy trump voters aren’t shy anymore. They’re known and accounted for. And that’s even before we even consider that Harris has higher voter enthusiasm scores than he does, which wasn’t the case in ’16 or ’20 either.

    So not only is Silver disregarding this, but hes then putting his thumb further on the scales by having the model assume a 2 point Harris lead (which other aggregators have it more around 3-4 now) is a tie. So he’s double dipping in his skewing of the polls.

    That’s not to say there isn’t a risk of trump winning. The electoral college and the fickle nature of swing voters means that it’s always a chance. And it isn’t unsage advice to urge contingency plans for how to deal with an american autocracy.

    But Silver is using flawed methodology to arrive at his conclusions, which causes him to arrive at a more dour assessment of those odds than is realistic.

    Take his “analysis” with a grain of salt.

  15. meanwhile at work he says Trump will win by carefully choosing polls known to be bad. LITERALLY helps trump.

  16. The important point here is not whether you believe Silver’s forecasts or think he’s full of crap.
    Instead, he’s saying that Americans serious about democracy should be thinking seriously about strengthening American institutions against the sort of threats posed by MAGA-ish demagoguery