Was Nate Silver drunk on April 12, 2015?

I missed this rare face-palmer from Nate Silver in April (I just stumbled on it in Jonathan Allen's hilarious piece on Clintonian "panic"), in which the 538er asks and kinda answers:

What about that "blue wall" — the supposed advantage that Democrats hold in the Electoral College?

Mostly, the "blue wall" was the effect of Obama’s success in 2008 and 2012, not the cause of it. If the economy had collapsed in the summer of 2012, Obama would probably have lost the election, and most of those blue states would have turned red.

Well, perhaps. They also would have turned red if Obama had stripped naked at midnight and howled like a bughouse banshee in Lafayette Park.

Cataclysmic "ifs" don't lend much to empirical analysis.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

Hmm.
In 2008, Obama 52.9 percent of popular vote, McCain 45.7 percent of popular vote.

In 2012, Obama 51.1 percent of popular vote, Romney 47.2 percent of popular vote.

That's pretty near fifty fifty.

I will go out on a limb and say Hillary Clinton will get 52 percent + or - .000002 percent of the vote. I know that this is the popular vote so I will cede those state's electoral college votes in states where the population consists mostly of angry elderly white men.

[Bob]

I'll second Peter's idea. At this point statistician Silver's analysis might well show Hillary has a 50% shot, but we're so far out from the election it's meaningless. Nate's numbers will be important starting around September of next year. In the mean time there are better political writers on 538.