Nate Silver is a left-leaning statistical analyst who took the political world by storm in 2008 after his election forecasting system accurately predicted both the primary results and the presidential winner in 49 states. Although Silver was blindsided by former President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, he is at least willing to acknowledge the faults of the polling industry and try to correct them.
This month, for example, Silver admitted that a lot of polls are probably overstating support for Democratic candidates ahead of the midterm elections in November. Though he claimed it is also possible “the polls could be biased against Democrats,” Silver said his “mental model” is “slightly more favorable to the GOP than the FiveThirtyEight forecast itself.” (Might it be time to make some adjustments to his model?)
