If only people would pay more attention to what Nate Silver thinks are important. Which are mostly things Nate Silver has put actual cash money bets on, because that's what he does now.
Replies
I mean, I disagree with Nate on this, but he's not wrong.
sep 1, 2025, 8:12 pm • 3 0 • view
Well he's wrong in that he has no real grasp on what normal people want, and hasn't for some time. He's "right" in that Democratic Party politicians sure aren't serving those wants and needs.
sep 1, 2025, 8:13 pm • 64 0 • view
I think Nate's problem is that he mistook being good at statistics for knowing how politics work.
sep 1, 2025, 8:39 pm • 85 2 • view
I'm not convinced he's even good at that. And I say this as someone who has a Masters degree in essentially applied statistics & has seen some of his 'work'.
sep 1, 2025, 11:30 pm • 3 0 • view
Nates problem is that he mistook being able to do the math necessary to do statistics with being able to apply statistical analysis in any way that doesn’t align with his preconceptions
sep 2, 2025, 12:23 am • 4 0 • view
This
sep 1, 2025, 8:50 pm • 8 0 • view
Also he seems to think sports and politics are fungible because betting markets exist for both.
sep 2, 2025, 12:25 am • 3 0 • view
The king of broad statements that seem insightful and precise.
sep 1, 2025, 8:40 pm • 1 0 • view
He is, in fact, wrong. The past 30 years show one Democrat after another trying to build a movement by "triangulating" and they've all failed. Have you considered the possibility that surrendering ideological ground without fight only serves to empower the other side?
sep 1, 2025, 9:51 pm • 2 0 • view
Who's ideological ground? Yours? The Party's? The voters'? Ideological purity is dandy. It doesn't win elections. Reluctance to build coalitions doesn't win elections. Elections are won from the centre.
sep 1, 2025, 9:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes I remember hearing that bit about the center too..30 years ago in college. Tell me what center Trump won from again..twice?
sep 2, 2025, 12:12 am • 2 0 • view
Back in 2016 a significant number of voters thought that Trump was more moderate, and less evil, than Clinton. You and I would disagree with these assessments.
sep 2, 2025, 1:27 am • 1 0 • view
The entire left-right axis is a myth, and the idea of a "center" is itself another myth. Everybody thinks they are in the "center", even the most extreme. Dem centrists have shown, time and time again, that they are happier with traditional GOP government than they would be with New Deal leftism.
sep 2, 2025, 12:39 am • 0 0 • view
We're doomed.
sep 2, 2025, 1:27 am • 0 0 • view
I don't think we're doomed. I think we've had things absurdly easy for eighty years. (Well, those of us in the right race and wealth background.) The idea that we had to _work_ to have a good government was discarded along the way. But it still can be done.
sep 2, 2025, 2:54 am • 1 0 • view
Bluesky political thought is doomed if we won't map voter's individual social and economic preferences, if we think our stance is normal and we rebuff coalition building. In the real world we have pols like that nice Zohran Mamdani who seems a pluralist and coalition builder. Less doom there.
sep 2, 2025, 4:09 am • 2 1 • view
From over across the country, he's just a REMARKABLY gifted politician. I'm constantly floored.
sep 2, 2025, 4:44 am • 2 0 • view
Sorry, but the burden is on doomsayers to justify exactly what they mean and why it's inevitable. It's very, very easy to say "if people don't do exactly what I say, we're doomed."
sep 2, 2025, 4:20 am • 0 0 • view
Given a choice between a Democrat who is willing to yield ground to Republican interests and, well, *a Republican*, voters generally choose the Republican because the Democrat has no principles that aren't up for negotiation.
sep 1, 2025, 10:09 pm • 1 0 • view
In your scenario, wouldn't voters stay home?
sep 1, 2025, 10:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm referring to voters as a whole. The Republican motivates their base, everyone else gives it a miss, and you've got a Republican who is now claiming the mandate of the voters. Stop me if you've heard this one.
sep 1, 2025, 10:17 pm • 1 0 • view
So in your scenario it's not voters saying, "I am disappointed my preferred candidate has moved to the centre so I am going to vote for the right-wing candidate who is standing firm like a stonewall." Rather the right-wing base shows up and both the left-wing and centrist bases stay home.
sep 1, 2025, 10:23 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm not sure the distinction you're trying to draw here. The Republican has things that people are willing to turn out for. The centrist is selling compromise as a virtue, but just comes across... compromised. Nothing to excite people to turn out. Nobody wants to vote for preemptive surrender.
sep 1, 2025, 10:25 pm • 1 0 • view
"Ideological purity is dandy. It doesn't win elections." That's a phenomenally wrong claim. In the past thirty years, the only Republicans to win the Presidency have also been the most ideologically extreme. Trump and Bush won where Dole, McCain, and Romney couldn't.
sep 1, 2025, 10:22 pm • 1 0 • view
Whereas the only Democrats who could win the presidency were Clinton, Obama and Biden.
sep 1, 2025, 10:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, Obama could win. He was the leftist candidate in 2008, though that fact seems to have been buried. Clinton won in 1992 with 43% of the vote because H. Ross Perot had an axe to grind with George HW Bush and made it his mission to deny re-election. (Also, HW failed 'purity' tests himself.)
sep 1, 2025, 10:28 pm • 0 0 • view
And Biden beat Trump because Trump was an objectively terrible President. But, in spite of that, and because the Democrats didn't thoroughly bury him when they should have, he resurrected and beat another milquetoast centrist.
sep 1, 2025, 10:29 pm • 0 0 • view
You cannot seriously argue that leftists cannot win general elections when a) they are never allowed to be the nominee and b) the center refuses to respect primary results when they lose, siding with Republicans to defeat leftist Dems (See, Ned Lamont, Zohran Mamdani.)
sep 1, 2025, 10:31 pm • 1 1 • view
Of course leftists can win elections (and do in my country). Let's do maths and stuff! Imagine a bell curve of voters. You and I stand on the left of the curve. Way out on the right is the GOP. We want to pick a candidate to win the general. Are they from where we are? The centre? Somewhere else?
sep 1, 2025, 11:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Meanwhile, the only Democrat to win commandingly has been Obama, who also was the further left (as a candidate) of any we've seen since Mondale. But he compromised his "purity," betrayed his mandate, the country was worse off, and his coattails disappeared.
sep 1, 2025, 10:24 pm • 1 0 • view
The anti-"purity" rhetoric is just gaslighting on the part of centrists. It's not remotely rigorously supported. It just expresses their personal desires about what they don't want to fight for. Of course, when centrists reject leftist proposals, that is its own type of purity.
sep 1, 2025, 10:26 pm • 1 0 • view
Case in point: the VA governor race between Terry McAuliffe and Glen Youngkin. McAuliffe has a long history of being a great fundraiser and a guy who cannot be relied on for any ideological fight. Youngkin scared voters with CRT. Youngkin won. McAuliffe's brand of centrism was useless.
sep 1, 2025, 9:54 pm • 0 0 • view
I heard Nate Silver called Hillary for the election and also that Donna Martin graduates…
sep 1, 2025, 10:47 pm • 0 0 • view
What does Polymarket say? Can Nate still write off his gambling losses?
sep 1, 2025, 8:33 pm • 0 0 • view