Re:The forces that drove this election’s media failure are l...
by mikeash on Friday November 11, 2016 @11:28AM
(#12932082)
Did they have her with an insurmountable lead, or did they have her with a decent lead still within the margin of error which got misinterpreted?
I'm starting to wonder if the overconfidence in a Clinton victory boils down to assuming that errors are independent when they really aren't. Specifically, did they assume swing states might go one way or the other individually, rather than that they might move as a block? There was a lot of talk about how there were a bunch of states that favored Clinton and she only needed to win one of them. Pulling numbers out of my rear end, if she had a 50% chance of winning each of 8 states, and she only needed one, you might assume her odds of winning the election are 99.6% (255 out of 256). But if they all swing together, then her odds of winning would only be 50%.
I'm starting to wonder if the overconfidence in a Clinton victory boils down to assuming that errors are independent when they really aren't. Specifically, did they assume swing states might go one way or the other individually, rather than that they might move as a block? There was a lot of talk about how there were a bunch of states that favored Clinton and she only needed to win one of them. Pulling numbers out of my rear end, if she had a 50% chance of winning each of 8 states, and she only needed one, you might assume her odds of winning the election are 99.6% (255 out of 256). But if they all swing together, then her odds of winning would only be 50%.