Nate Silver is desperately attempting to remain credible. It’s not working:
FiveThirtyEight’s election forecaster Nate Silver said Sunday that the House could end up in Democratic or Republican hands in Tuesday’s election, though polling predicts that Democrats will flip the chamber.
“So in the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning,” Silver told ABC’s “This Week.”
However, he noted that “polls aren’t always right.”
“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.”
The low end is 15+ Democrat. Duly noted.
Haunted by memories of 2016, liberals around the country are riven with anxiety in the campaign’s homestretch. They’re suspicious of favorable polls and making election night contingency plans in case their worst fears come true. Some report literal nightmares about a Democratic wipeout.
“We’re kind of just in the bed-wetting phase now,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, a Hillary Clinton campaign alumnus who spent election night 2016 in Clinton’s Manhattan war room.
Two years later, even thinking about the prospect of a repeat of that night’s letdown is still too much for many Democrats to bear.
This should be amusing.