Polling expert Nate Silver accused the pollsters of lying about a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and said these surveys are ‘herding’ — using existing poll results to impact new polls — and hence they are producing the same result of a close poll where one candidate is up by one point. The real scene will not be this close, the expert warned. “In fact, I kind of trust pollsters less, they all, every time a pollster (says) ‘Oh, every state is just+1, every single state’s a tie,’ No! You’re f***king herding! You’re cheating! You’re cheating!” Silver said on his podcast.
“Your numbers aren’t all going to come out at exactly 1-point leads when you’re sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys. You are lying! You’re putting your f***ing finger on the scale!”
Silver said every pollster except for the New York Times is “just f***ing punting on this election for the most part”.
“If a pollster never publishes any numbers that surprise you, then it has no value,” he said.
In his final prediction, Silver said his forecasts are extremely stable. “Kamala Harris’ winning odds are 46.2 per cent and Donald Trump’s are 53.4 per cent. That’s very close to a coin flip, in other words,” Silver’s prediction early Thursday said. Late on Thursday, he updated that it will be “decidedly rougher for Harris”.
Nate Silver himself continued predicting a close race until mid-October. His prediction turned towards Donald Trump as he, in an opinion piece on NYT, wrote that his gut feeling said it’s going to be Donald Trump.
“My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats. But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine. Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris,” Nate Silver wrote on October 23.
