He has the advantage of being able to consult his forecast, but sometimes he has hot takes that contradict it. Will those takes be vindicated?
In 2022, Nate wrote an article called "Why I'm Telling My Friends That The Senate Is A Toss-Up" (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-is-a-toss-up/ ) when his forecast showed Democrats leading, but his forecast seems to be turning out more correct.
In 2020, Nate sent this tweet after the election, which I think captures the subject of this market pretty well:
Anyway, this is another market with subjective resolution criteria - sorry - but I'll do my best to resolve in good faith. It would have resolved NO for the 2020 and 2022 elections, since his forecast was better than his own personal opinions.
1,000
3.00In his latest article, he states that while his forecast is closer than a coinflip, applying the 15 Clarifying Questions for Close Elections brings Harris's win chance to around 52%. Anyone find any other forecast-contradicting hot takes from Nate? Otherwise this market is tentatively a proxy for "Will Harris win"
On the other hand, he did write this article about his gut saying Trump, and he now seems to be taking more credit for having a Trump gut
@Conflux fwiw the first thing that came to mind when I saw this market was his article about the gut feeling.
@Sketchy First of all, I'm going to close this market to avoid COI
But I'm leaning NO. His NYT gut article was two weeks before the election. Have you read his pre-election blog post? My read is that his gut switched to Harris.
@Conflux I can't get past the paywall but I think that's totally fair, and his model was pretty darn accurate so agreed on that.
So if you offered me a bet on the election, who would I pick?
Well, I wouldn’t. And not because I don’t like gambling. But at the odds sportsbooks typically offer, you have to win 52.5 percent of the time to have a +EV bet. And Harris’s “lead” is smaller than that. I emphatically don’t think you should trust your “gut” when it comes to elections. I also don’t really believe in indicators like early voting or rumors of internal polls that people tend to overweight.
But what if you offered me a free bet at 50/50? If I’m right, you buy me a nice sushi dinner. If I’m wrong, you razz me a bit?
Well, I really like sushi. So I’d bet on Kamala Harris. And expect to be wrong roughly 49.985 percent of the time.
The main reason is fairly straightforward. My guess is that if a bunch of high-quality polls had gone into the field this weekend — most pollsters did their final interviews last week and then published their numbers this weekend and closed up shop — she would have pulled out of the literally ambiguous zone and into a very, very slight lead. Still well within what we usually define as toss-up range, but maybe 52 or 53 percent.
...
In thinking through what I wanted to say for this final election column, I came across an article I published 15 years ago (!) called “15 Clarifying Questions For Close Elections”, originally written in advance of the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial race. These are things that don’t matter much and even can get overweighted in the press, but at least serve as tiebreakers. They won’t get you from 50 percent to 60 percent, or even 55 percent, but maybe they can get you to 52 or 53 if they mostly point in the same direction. And when I run through them, I think they mostly do — they point you toward Harris. I’m going to proceed quickly given the hour.
So that’s 8 Harrises, 4 Trumps, and 3 passes. It’s not the 13 Keys, but I kind of like the 15 Tiebreaker Questions. If each one is worth half a percentage point of win probability, then maybe that means Harris’s “real” odds are 52 percent, not 50.015 percent.
In an alternate universe, Nate (a paid Polymarket consultant!) was like "my gut is Trump, and the Polymarket bettors seem to agree with me, being a little more bullish. Also, I know my forecast assumes that polling error could go either way, but we've seen a two election pattern of Trump beating polls, so maybe I'd put Trump at 55 or 60." He didn't say this!
@Conflux what if Nate doesn't give a personal take that's different from the model forecast? Does this resolve NO or N/A?
