One thing liberals and conservatives are beginning to agree on is the lack of trust everyone has in the ability of pollsters to make correct political predictions.
Wednesday afternoon, Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo jumped on the very crowded bandwagon of people looking to bury FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver for giving Joe Biden a nearly 90% chance at winning the election.
“Nate, raise your hand,” Russo said as he began to berate pollsters, before quickly noting Silver “completely botched” the 2016 election. Silver would argue his model at FiveThirtyEight trended towards Trump in 2016 and gave the current President a better chance than most at defeating Hillary Clinton.
“You wanna give him a pass because that was a colossal shock and Hillary was such a horrendous candidate?” Russo asked referring to 2016. “Alright, maybe I’ll give you one. But to do it again is a mind-boggling scenario.”
Fair or not, Silver seems to be the face of all pollsters and because of that, he was hammered on social media Tuesday night when it looked like President Trump was nearing reelection for a few hours.
Russo acknowledged it now looks like Biden will win the 2020 presidential election, which would then fall in line with the 90% chance FiveThirtyEight gave him of defeating Donald Trump. What remains off-pace is the nine, ten and eleven-point polling leads Biden was given nationally. Pollsters will generally reference the possibility of a five-point polling error, but even that falls short of reflecting the current voting results.
Whatever your thoughts are about Silver and FiveThirtyEight, don’t come back in 2024 and start talking to Russo about polling and percentage chances for who will win the next presidential election.
“If anybody sits there and tells me about some dopey poll when it comes to a political race, I’m going to tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine. These guys are absolutely clueless!” Mad Dog ranted.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
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