{"id":46313,"date":"2016-11-10T15:44:42","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T21:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=46313"},"modified":"2016-11-10T15:44:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T21:44:42","slug":"its-complicated-the-unpredictability-of-predictions-in-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/its-complicated-the-unpredictability-of-predictions-in-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s complicated: The unpredictability of predictions in elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lakshmi Chandrasekaran <\/strong><\/p>\n

In the end, it came down to will she or won’t she?<\/p>\n

What seemed like a comfortable 81 percent chance of winning the election for Hillary Clinton just a couple of weeks ago, morphed into a tight race to the finish after FBI director James Comey announced a new investigation of a new round of Clinton\u2019s emails. But she was still expected to win the presidency \u2013 until the reality of the red wall of electoral votes gave the victory to Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Clearly predicting outcomes of complex events such as election winners using data and statistical calculations is what statistician and journalist Nate Silver<\/a> does on a regular basis through his news website fivethirtyeight.com<\/a>. He and his team collate mountains of live polling data and crunch these numbers via different statistical and mathematical models to arrive at these predictions. Trump was stronger wherever the economy was weaker,\u00a0 with slower job growth and lower wages. And he outperformed Clinton in all those counties, it states on Silver’s<\/a> website as part of the election analysis.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Silver, a statistician by training, started his career analyzing numbers for baseball. But he catapulted into national fame for successfully hitting the bulls-eye, predicting who the president would be in the 2008 and 2012 elections. His 2012 book \u2018The Signal and the Noise\u2019, on the art of predicting, hit the New York Times bestseller list. Last month, as part of the \u2018One Book One Northwestern<\/a>\u2019 program, he talked about his book at the Northwestern University.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what he said, though we clearly need a new book now. “Prediction is intrinsic to the scientific method, where we are all kind of flailing around and trying to figure out what the truth really is, what’s subjective and what’s not,\u201d said Silver in an interview before his talk. \u201cSo to me, a prediction is central to the process of gaining knowledge,” he added. But it still relies on theories and abstract models.<\/p>\n

\"In
In an interview, Nate Silver talked about the importance of being able to predict complex events such as elections, where the rules are unknown and voting behavior is difficult to understand. (Lakshmi Chandrasekaran\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his talk to a packed auditorium at Northwestern University, Silver noted a shocking statistic – that 90 percent of the data available in the world was recorded in the past couple of years! And we are now grappling with the issues of how to analyze these vast volumes of “big data.”<\/p>\n

“As far as forecasting complex events such as earthquakes and terrorism, people have made very little progress since it’s never as easy as a push button solution. One of the biggest challenges of big data is that there is more room for interpretation and errors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Taking the case of the election predictions, “newspapers such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune etc. have been making a lot of predictions as to how the presidential race is shaping up and their implications,” said Silver. He continued, “Our role is not to say we can predict everything perfectly but instead to be able to say when things are more or less predictable and what are realistic scenarios versus plausible and unrealistic versus really impossible scenarios.”<\/p>\n

Silver emphasized that fivethirtyeight.com has been more on the cautious side<\/a>, predicting that Hillary Clinton had an 80 percent or even 75 percent chance winning as opposed to other polls. However, he mentioned that it is not always easy to make successful predictions because \u2018uncertainty’ gets in its way.<\/p>\n

And what is uncertainty? Let us take the example of the 2016 elections, which has a lot more ambiguity compared to the previous elections. Silver said, “Younger voters are a major source of uncertainty. The way it shows up is a higher number of undecided voters. We are not going to have many millennials who vote for Donald Trump, but they could vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or decide not to vote.” Silver warned that if the Bernie Sanders voters from the primaries did not go out to vote on the day of the election, then Clinton would be at risk.<\/p>\n

In fact, the millennial vote split<\/a> at 55 percent for Clinton, 37 percent for Trump and rest – 8 percent – voted for a variety of candidates.<\/p>\n

Since election polls are all based on a certain sample size, one of the other major components affecting the ability to correctly predict elections is calculating the margin of error,<\/a> said Silver. In statistics, the error margin calculation enables us to discern the “accuracy” and in turn, assess the uncertainty of prediction.<\/p>\n

Drawing on weather forecasting and disasters in his book, Silver said, \u201cIn April 1997, the Red River flooded a town in North Dakota as the state had faced heavy snowfall that year. Although it didn\u2019t result in any loss of life, it resulted in the evacuation of thousands of residents with clean up costs running into billions. This damage could have been mitigated.\u201d Yes, the National Weather Service had predicted that this flood would crest at an all-time high of 49 feet. What they missed in this prediction was the “uncertainty.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out, in this case, the margin of error calculation resulted in +9 to -9 feet,\u201d said Silver, meaning the river could have crested anywhere between 40 and 58 feet. As a result, the prediction was much too “perfect.” The levees were built to withstand a maximum of 51 feet, but that year the water crested at 54 feet, defying the Weather Service\u2019s precise prediction.<\/p>\n

Silver plans to predict much more than sports and elections on fivethirtyeight.com. \u201cWe\u2019d like to look at areas of criminal justice for example, which is a case where, for a long time, you didn\u2019t have very good data. There\u2019s pressure now to get more data,\u201d he said referring to some underrepresented areas of prediction. Education, public policy, urban planning etc. are other areas, which Silver said he would like to explore.<\/p>\n

Talking about his inspiration to create the website, Silver said, \u201cIt was partly due to my frustration with the way elections were covered by media.\u201d And he cautioned about the dangers of publishing breaking news too quickly in today\u2019s expeditious world. \u201cIt\u2019s important to understand what\u2019s going on first before hyping stories. The quick turn-around time in a journalistic sphere is misguided,\u201d he said, adding that it is critical to maintain objectivity while reporting news.<\/p>\n

Silver highlighted, without uncertainty, the need for more STEM graduates in the U.S. who would be trained in quantitative skills needed to promote the future of data journalism. \u201cYoung journalists need to understand the importance of data visualization, which is another valuable skill to have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Silver also stressed the importance of having people trained in cross-disciplinary fields. \u201cI think we will see that happening but we can\u2019t solve a big human capital problem overnight. It will happen over a generation or half a generation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Photo at top (David Lofink<\/a>\/FLICKR<\/a>). Photo has been cropped.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lakshmi Chandrasekaran In the end, it came down to will she or won’t she? What seemed like a comfortable 81 percent chance of winning the election for Hillary Clinton just a couple of weeks ago, morphed into a tight race to the finish after FBI director James Comey announced a new investigation of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":46332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,452,766,2941,28,29,2951,30],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-46313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-beyond-chicago","category-election2016","category-fall-2016","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-politicsnational-security","category-public-affairs","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s complicated: The unpredictability of predictions in elections - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/its-complicated-the-unpredictability-of-predictions-in-elections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It\u2019s complicated: The unpredictability of predictions in elections - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Lakshmi Chandrasekaran In the end, it came down to will she or won’t she? 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