Nate Silver has been issuing a lot of cautionary tweets lately about which party is likely to win which chamber (or both) and even about specific races, like the Texas Senate matchup between Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz. There’s one thing Silver is crystal clear about: journalists largely suck at this.
“Media understanding about probability, margin of error and uncertainty is very poor,” Silver told the Washington Post.
We've already seen the overblown hype about the GOP's Kavanaugh bump, which likely had more to do with Republicans simply waking up from a slumber to the realization that the midterms are upon us. Meanwhile Democrats have been activated and organizing for fully two years—it's been a constant, not a bump.
But Silver's cautionary notes are worth heeding just three weeks before people hit the polls. At the moment, they amount to the following (some of which he tweeted Monday before the whopping third quarter fundraising figures were in):
- Probability isn't certainty
- Roughly a 1 in 5 chance exists that Democrats win both Senate and House
- Roughly a 3 in 5 chance exists that the GOP keeps the Senate but Democrats win the House
- Roughly a 1 in 5 chance exists that the GOP keeps both chambers
Those numbers are taken from the output of the FiveThirtyEight model for the House and Senate. But Silver’s basic message based on what happened in 2016 is that neither of the one in fives should be outright dismissed simply because they have a low probability of happening. Unfortunately, the pundits and Washington journalists have a knack for exaggerating probabilities into certainties.
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Silver says the same thing about specific races, like the Texas Senate race. Journalists mischaracterized it to begin with, and still are.
When Silver’s forecast had O’Rourke’s chances of upsetting Cruz at a 35 percent probability, the media chatter had it as almost a toss-up. Now that those chances have dropped to about 25 percent, the prevailing narrative has downgraded O’Rourke almost to dead-man-walking status.
“That’s not a night-and-day change, but that’s how it’s being talked about,” Silver said.
In other words, Beto was never the "high probability" upset the media made him out to be and reports of his candidacy’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Overall, the FiveThirtyEight model puts the likelihood that Democrats win the House at about 85 percent (but the 15 percent alternative isn't impossible).
Same goes for the Senate: Republicans currently have an 81 percent chance of maintaining control, but the 19 percent chance for a Democratic flip still exists.
Also, the unprecedented third quarter fundraising totals for Democrats are, well, unprecedented.
As for what those eye-popping numbers mean for Democrats, Silver says, "1. Most indicators are in consensus with one another and indicate that Dems are favored, although not overwhelmingly, to win the House; 2. The fundraising numbers are not in consensus and are crazy, astoundingly good for Democrats.
There's potentially two ways to look at that observation. The first is that the fundraising totals are an outlier, albeit a good one that definitely helps Democratic chances. The other is that the fundraising is signaling something the other indicators aren't picking up.
In any case, VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! That is my main message. Corral everyone you can think of right now to make sure they vote. Commit yourself to helping one person get to the polls or making sure they fill out their absentee ballot.
This thing ain't over ‘til it's over.