FiveThirtyEight’s election forecaster Nate Silver played both sides of the fence in predicting whether Democrats would win a majority in the House on Tuesday.
“In the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning,” Silver told ABC News today.
However, he noted that “polls aren’t always right.”
They sure aren’t, as evidenced by Silver’s presidential prediction just two years ago (a prediction shared by about every major pollster).
Two years ago, on election eve 2016, FiveThirtyEight predicted an easy Hillary Clinton victory.
The 2016 Election Eve Prediction By FiveThirtyEight
Silver’s prediction about a Clinton win was damaging to about every political reporter in America (including me) because we trusted FiveThirtyEight’s methodology.
And that methodology got in wrong because it never pointed to Clinton’s blue firewall in the Midwest collapsing.
On the eve of this election, Silver is (correctly) pointing out that only voters can determine the final outcome in any election.
“The range of outcomes in the House is really wide,” he explained. “Our range, which covers 80 percent of outcomes goes from, on the low end, about 15 Democratic pickups, all the way to low to mid 50s, 52 or 53.”
“Most of those are under 23, which is how many seats they would need to win to take the House,” he said.”
“But no one should be surprised if they only win 19 seats and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats,” Silver added.
“Those are both extremely possible, based on how accurate polls are in the real world.”
And that is a political forecaster on election eve clearly not taking a strong stand.
Silver can’t afford to.