[dangus]

But he kind of sucks and isn’t worth following.

He’s a sellout at heart, including his recent association with Polymarket.

Someone cool would have never sold out a website as good as 538 used to be. Now he’s more interested in profiting off of gamblers.

[derektank]

538 has basically always been a licensed product, first with the NYT in 2010, and then with ESPN/ABC/Disney since they left the NYT in 2013. There were only 2 years where it was an independent blog

[yieldcrv]

538 got one election right a decade and a half ago with a contrarian alternative data source, and hooked a bunch of partisan gamblers since

now you can actually bet on your beliefs and dont need to debate with anyone on whether the koolaid colored wave of choice will actually happen, or whether you are a slave to an algorithm induced hall of mirrors. note, the senate has been 50-50 for over a decade, its probably the latter

so the only intervention necessary here is on yourself, focusing on things you cant control while delusionally thinking this time will be different, over and over and over again

extracting value from partisan gullibility and pathetic power struggles is unironically the move

[ownlife]

There's no "getting elections right"; these models just estimate probability. They gave Trump a 29% change in 2016 -- that's almost 1 in 3!

A better way to assess accuracy would be to bin predictions (0-10% chance, 10-20% chance, etc.) and see if the observed frequency aligns with the predictions.

[yieldcrv]

I like market based approaches as a signal and opportunity creation, price discovery

In parallel your signal could be a data source adding to individuals contribution to price discovery

[stackghost]

Pretty sure the only election that 538 didn't correctly call was 2016. For sure they correctly predicted both Obama wins and Biden.

[owisd]

They don't really 'call' elections since they only publish probabilities. If you'd bet on the candidate 538/Silver was more bullish than the bookies, then the only election year you wouldn't have made money would have been 2024.

[jimbokun]

You do realize the person responsible for 538 is the same person?

[fragmede]

People change over time. The Nate Silver of 2026 isn't the same Nate Silver of 2010 or 2013.

[furyofantares]

That's a funny response in the context of "Now he’s more interested in profiting off of gamblers" given I remember posting with him on the 2+2 forums in the early aughts poker boom days where he was a popular poster teaching a lot of people how to profit off gamblers.

[matltc]

2+2 is great. Still go check on casino megathreads if I wanna play somewhere in a new town

[jazzpush2]

See also his new book versus his old. His new book is nothing but name-dropping.

[kortilla]

… yes, that’s why he mentioned that he isn’t cool for selling 538…

[dangus]

Yes that’s literally what I’m talking about. He made a cool site, sold it off to get enshittified, and now his main gig is grifting off of polymarket.