FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver whiffed on the 2016 election, along with nearly every other prognosticator, but Silver said he would have been correct if one out of every 100 voters shifted from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton.
Silver explained on his site that one percent of Trump supporters flipping to Clinton would have resulted in Americans waking up on Wednesday to news of our first female president in history.
“Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida flip back to Clinton, giving her a total of 307 electoral votes,” Silver wrote.
Silver used his data to show that “Democrats may have to rebuild their party from the ground up” and the divide between “elites” and everyone else is greater than ever.
“One fact that doesn’t fit very well into this narrative is that Clinton leads in the popular vote count,” Silver wrote. “But ignore that for now — elections, after all, are contested in the Electoral College.”
The FiveThirtyEight founder also explained different media narratives that would have taken place if Clinton pulled out a victory, including would-be talking points such as “Republicans simply can’t appeal to enough voters to have a credible chance at the Electoral College” and we were “more than ready for the first woman president.”
In 2012, when Mitt Romney seemed close to defeating President Obama, Democrats took to tweeting the slogan “Keep Calm and Trust in Nate Silver.” He called all 50 states correctly and emerged at the nation’s predictor-in-chief, a title that could be in question going forward.
“Nate was arrogant. His numbers were all over the place. The title of ‘guru’ is now gone,” The Hill media reporter Joe Concha told TheWrap. He said Silver’s career will survive, but “never again will he be held in any revered regard.”
It appears Silver is working on a response to such critics, noting, “We’ll have more to say about the polling in the coming days.”