FiveThirtyEight founder and polling guru Nate Silver sent an odd tweet on Friday morning: “Here’s what the electoral map would look like if only people who weren’t burnt to a crisp in the nuclear holocaust voted.”
Here's what the electoral map would look like if only people who weren't burnt to a crisp in the nuclear holocaust voted. pic.twitter.com/MsrkuOjZWi
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 23, 2016
There was a whole set of memes after the election, showing maps such as, “here’s what it would look like if only women voted,” or “here’s how it would look if only men voted.” This is a much darker take.
The tweet is a clear response to President-elect Donald Trump’s recent comments about nuclear weapons to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, who said Trump told her, “Let it be an arms race, we will outmatch them at every pass. And outlast them all.”
Trump’s comments were an attempt to double down on a tweet he sent Thursday:
The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
Silver, who called all 50 states correctly in 2012, didn’t fair so well in 2016. One day before the election, Silver predicted that Trump had a 1-in-3 chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. By Election Day, Silver’s site reported that Clinton had a 71.4 percent chance of winning the election.
That was a huge improvement over his numbers earlier in the year: Back in January, Silver couldn’t make up his mind on where Trump stood.
“I don’t think his chances are zero. You have to be very careful about saying they’re zero, but I think they’re lower than 20 [percent] or 25 percent. Maybe they’re 10 percent. Maybe they’re 8 percent. I’m not sure, somewhere in that range,” Silver told Adweek.
Trump shocked the world to defeat Hillary Clinton, and now it appears that Silver thinks we’re on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. Happy Holidays, everybody!