Misplaced Pages

#632367

106-568: As of March 2022, the polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight led by statistician Nate Silver , had 120 Monmouth polls in its database, and gave the polling institute an "A" grade on the basis of its historical accuracy and methodology . The poll appeared on the list in 2014 with an A-minus, and received an A-plus in 2016, 2018 and 2020. The Institute is a signatory to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Transparency Initiative. The Monmouth University Poll

212-530: A NYTimes.com domain". The transition took place on August 25, 2010, with the publication of Silver's first FiveThirtyEight blog article online in The New York Times . On June 3, 2010, The New York Times and Silver announced that FiveThirtyEight had formed a partnership under which the blog would be hosted by the Times for a period of three years. In legal terms, FiveThirtyEight granted

318-480: A plutocratic businessman who was out of touch with the average American. The campaign was marked by a sharp rise in fundraising, including from nominally independent Super PACs . Obama defeated Romney, winning a majority of both the Electoral College and the popular vote . Obama won 332 electoral votes and 51.1% of the popular vote compared to Romney's 206 electoral votes and 47.2%. The results of

424-469: A "license" to the Times to publish the blog. The blog would be listed under the "Politics" tab of the News section of the Times . FiveThirtyEight would thus be subject to and benefit from editing and technical production by the Times , while FiveThirtyEight would be responsible for creating the content. Silver received bids from several major media entities before selecting the Times . Under terms of

530-521: A broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism. These include statistical analysis, but also data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. So in addition to written stories, we'll have interactive graphics and features". FiveThirtyEight launched its ESPN-affiliated stage on March 17, 2014. As of July, it had a staff of 20 writers, editors, data visualization specialists, and others. By March 2016, this staff had nearly doubled to 37 listed on

636-437: A combined total of more than $ 2 billion. Super PACs constituted nearly one-fourth of the total financing, with most coming from pro-Romney PACs. Obama raised $ 690 million through online channels, beating his record of $ 500 million in 2008. Most of the advertising in the 2012 presidential campaign was decidedly negative—80% of Obama's ads and 84% of Romney's ads were negative. The tax-exempt non-profit Americans for Prosperity ,

742-468: A complex methodology, and assigns them values to indicate "Pollster-Introduced Error". At its base, Silver's method is similar to other analysts' approaches to taking advantage of the multiple polls that are conducted within each state: he averaged the polling results. But especially in the early months of the election season polling in many states is sparse and episodic. The "average" of polls over an extended period (perhaps several weeks) would neither reveal

848-415: A forecast of each state. In the initial forecast, Barack Obama was estimated to have a 61.8% chance of winning the electoral vote. The website provided maps and statistics about the electoral outcomes in each state as well as nationally. Later posts addressed methodological issues such as the "house effects" of different pollsters as well as the validity of telephone surveys that did not call cell phones. On

954-474: A hearty welcome to John Sides , a political scientist at George Washington University, who will be writing a series of posts for this site over the next month. Mr. Sides is also the founder of the blog The Monkey Cage , which was named the 2010 Blog of the Year by The Week magazine". While politics and elections remained the main focus of FiveThirtyEight , the blog also sometimes addressed sports, including

1060-615: A list of 2010 Senate races in which he made monthly updates of predicted party turnover. Later, Silver adapted his methods to address a variety of issues of the day, including health care reform, climate change, unemployment, and popular support for same-sex marriage. He wrote a series of columns investigating the credibility of polls by Georgia-based firm Strategic Vision, LLC. According to Silver's analysis, Strategic Vision's data displayed statistical anomalies that were inconsistent with random polling. Later, he uncovered indirect evidence that Strategic Vision may have gone as far as to fabricate

1166-493: A manufacturer of solar panels that went bankrupt, an advertising campaign described by The Wall Street Journal in November 2011 as "perhaps the biggest attack on Mr. Obama so far". The Commission on Presidential Debates held four debates during the last weeks of the campaign: three presidential and one vice-presidential. The major issues debated were the economy and jobs, the federal budget deficit, taxation and spending,

SECTION 10

#1732794453633

1272-513: A member, even though they'll probably offer the most cash". The first column of the renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus appeared in the Times on August 25, 2010, with the introduction of U.S. Senate election forecasts. At the same time, Silver published a brief history of the blog. All columns from the original FiveThirtyEight were also archived for public access. Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times , Silver introduced his prediction models for

1378-536: A month later, with Newt Gingrich , Mitt Romney , former Utah governor Jon Huntsman , and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann participating, and Gary Johnson excluded. A total of thirteen debates were held before the Iowa caucuses. The first major event of the campaign was the Ames Straw Poll , which took place in Iowa on August 13, 2011. Michele Bachmann won the straw poll (this ultimately proved to be

1484-494: A poker player having multiple "outs" for winning a hand. In September, Quinn launched a series of essays under the name On the Road . Quinn traveled from state to state telling the story of the campaign from the electoral battleground, drawing on observations and interviews with grassroots campaign workers. During the first two months after the election, no major innovations in content were introduced. A substantial percentage of

1590-492: A probabilistic projection) or 353 (based on fixed projections of each state). Obama won with 365 electoral college votes. Silver's predictions matched the actual results everywhere except in Indiana and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska , which awards an electoral vote separately from the rest of the state. His projected national popular vote differential was below the actual figure of 7.2 points. The forecasts for

1696-499: A regular contributor was Micah Cohen. Cohen provided a periodic "Reads and Reactions" column in which he summarized Silver's articles for the previous couple of weeks, as well as reactions to them in the media and other blogs, and suggested some additional readings related to the subject of Silver's columns. Silver identified Cohen as "my news assistant". Cohen also contributed additional columns on occasion. On September 12, 2011, Silver introduced another writer: "FiveThirtyEight extends

1802-575: A second term. They defeated the Republican ticket of former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney and U.S. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin , who later became Speaker of the House of Representatives. As the incumbent President , Obama secured the Democratic nomination without serious opposition. The Republicans experienced a competitive primary . Romney was consistently competitive in

1908-492: A so-called "outside group", that is, a political advocacy group that is not a political action committee or super-PAC, ran a television advertising campaign opposing Obama described by The Washington Post as "early and relentless". Americans for Prosperity spent $ 8.4 million in swing states on television advertisements denouncing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 loan guarantee to Solyndra ,

2014-402: A sports site with a little politics thrown in, or it's going to be a politics site with sports thrown in. ... But we take our science and economics and lifestyle coverage very seriously. ... It's a data journalism site. Politics is one topic that sometimes data journalism is good at covering. It's certainly good with presidential elections. But we don't really see politics as how the site

2120-505: A wide variety of topics in current politics and political news. These included a monthly update on the prospects for turnover in the Senate ; federal economic policies; Congressional support for legislation; public support for health care reform , global warming legislation and LGBT rights ; elections around the world; marijuana legalization ; and numerous other topics. The site and its founder are best known for election forecasts, including

2226-462: Is an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. Founder Nate Silver left in 2023, taking the rights to his forecasting model with him to his website Silver Bulletin. 538's new owner Disney hired G. Elliott Morris to develop a new model. On September 18, 2023, the original website domain at fivethirtyeight.com

SECTION 20

#1732794453633

2332-461: Is conducted in a multi-modal fashion, incorporating phone calls to landlines and cell phones, and online surveys delivered through text and email. Sample selection is conducted on a case-by-case basis depending on the survey topics. Polls are weighted for demographic factors like age and also incorporate partisan affiliation for political polls. In 2009, the institute's gubernatorial polling received national attention, including findings that indicated

2438-438: Is going to grow". FiveThirtyEight launched its ESPN webpage on March 17, 2014. The lead story by Silver explained that "FiveThirtyEight is a data journalism organization. ... We've expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas – politics, economics, science, life and sports. Our team also has

2544-627: Is negative for every state that Romney won). Maine and Nebraska each allow for their election results votes to be split between candidates. The winner within each congressional district gets one electoral vote for the district. The winner of the statewide vote gets two additional electoral votes. In the 2012 election, all four of Maine's electoral votes were won by Obama and all five of Nebraska's electoral votes were won by Romney. Red denotes states (or congressional districts that contribute an electoral vote) won by Republican Mitt Romney; blue denotes those won by Democrat Barack Obama. State where

2650-487: Is willing to give all pollsters who he had included in his rating a list of their polls that he had in his archive, along with the key information that he used (poll marginals, sample size, dates of administration); and he encouraged the pollsters to examine the lists and the results to compare them with the pollster's own record and make corrections. In September 2014, Silver put into the public domain all of his pollster ratings, as well as descriptive summary data for all of

2756-517: The 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate , the U.S. House of Representatives , and state Governorships . Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling. The 538 model had forecast a net pickup of 8 seats by the Republicans in the Senate and 55 seats in the House, close to the actual outcome of a pickup of 6 seats in the Senate and 63 seats in

2862-477: The 2012 presidential election in which FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the vote winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. FiveThirtyEight has won numerous awards. These include Bloggie Awards for Best Political Coverage in 2008 and Best Weblog about Politics in 2009 as well as Webbies for Best Political Blog in 2012 and 2013. While under the ownership of ESPN in 2016, FiveThirtyEight won

2968-753: The Great Recession . Other issues included long-term federal budget issues, the future of social insurance programs , and the Affordable Care Act , Obama's marquee legislative program. Foreign policy was also discussed, including the end of the Iraq War in 2011, military spending, the Iranian nuclear program , and appropriate counteractions to terrorism . Romney attacked Obama's domestic policies as ineffective and financially insolvent while Obama's campaign sought to characterize Romney as

3074-814: The March Madness and the 2012 NCAA Men's Basketball tournament selection process, the B.C.S. rankings in NCAA college football, the NBA , and Major League Baseball matters ranging from the 2011 attendance at the New York Mets ' Citi Field to the historic 2011 collapse of the Boston Red Sox . The site has also posted forecasts for the Academy Awards . In addition, FiveThirtyEight sometimes turned its attention to other topics, such as

3180-579: The North Carolina and Indiana Democratic party primaries on May 6, 2008. As Mark Blumenthal wrote in National Journal , "Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com . He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data. ... Critics scoffed. Most of

3286-738: The Ohio law , pushing for a petition and statewide referendum to repeal it in time for the 2012 election. In addition, the Pennsylvania legislature proposed a plan to change its representation in the electoral college from the traditional winner-take-all model to a district-by-district model. As the governorship and both houses of its legislature were Republican-controlled, the move was viewed by some as an attempt to reduce Democratic chances. Ultimately they did not do it, leaving their winner take all format intact as of 2020. With an incumbent president running for re-election against token opposition ,

Monmouth University Polling Institute - Misplaced Pages Continue

3392-489: The Republican National Convention officially named Romney the party's presidential nominee. Romney formally accepted the delegates' nomination on August 30, 2012. [REDACTED] Four other parties nominated candidates that had ballot access or write-in access to at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum number of votes needed in the 2012 election to win the presidency through a majority of

3498-456: The Senate proved to be correct for every race, but the near stalemate in Minnesota led to a recount that was settled only on June 30, 2009. In Alaska , after a protracted counting of ballots, on November 19 Republican incumbent Ted Stevens conceded the seat to Democrat Mark Begich , an outcome that Silver had forecast on election day. In Georgia , a run-off election on December 2 led to

3604-487: The conservative primary electorate found him to be too moderate for their political views. As a result, a number of potential "anti-Romney" candidates were put forward, including future president Donald Trump , former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin , New Jersey governor Chris Christie , and Texas governor Rick Perry , the last of whom decided to run in August 2011. Perry did poorly in

3710-585: The poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today". He was referring to Jim Crow laws passed in southern states near the turn of the twentieth century that disenfranchised most blacks from voting and excluded them from the political process for more than six decades. Clinton said the moves would effectively disenfranchise core voter blocs that trend liberal, including college students, black people , and Latinos . The Obama campaign fought against

3816-469: The presidential primaries and general election of 2008 the site compiled polling data through a unique methodology derived from Silver's experience in sabermetrics to "balance out the polls with comparative demographic data". Silver weighted "each poll based on the pollster's historical track record, sample size, and recentness of the poll". Since the 2008 election, the site has published articles—typically creating or analyzing statistical information—on

3922-459: The 2008 election. Silver expanded the database to more than 4,700 election polls and developed a model for rating the polls that was more sophisticated than his original rankings. Silver responded on 538 : "Where's the transparency? Well, it's here [citing his June 6 article], in an article that contains 4,807 words and 18 footnotes. Every detail of how the pollster ratings are calculated is explained. It's also here [referring to another article], in

4028-487: The 36 U.S. Senate elections being contested that year. At that time, the Republican Party was given a 64 percent chance of holding a majority of the seats in the Senate after the election. However, Silver also remarked, "An equally important theme is the high degree of uncertainty around that outcome. A large number of states remain competitive, and Democrats could easily retain the Senate". About two weeks later,

4134-628: The Data Journalism Website of the Year award from the Global Editors Network . One aspect of the site is Silver's efforts to rank pollsters by accuracy, weight their polls accordingly, and then supplement those polls with his own electoral projections based on demographics and prior voting patterns. Silver said: "I did think there was room for a more sophisticated way of handling these things." FiveThirtyEight weighs pollsters' historical track records through

4240-532: The Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana , for example. Using such information allowed Silver to come up with estimates of the vote preferences even in states for which there were few if any polls. For his general election projections for each state, in addition to relying on the available polls in a given state and "similar states", Silver estimated a " 538 regression " using historical voting information along with demographic characteristics of

4346-500: The House. When the transition to The New York Times was announced, Silver listed his staff of writers for the first time. However, of the seven listed writers, only three of them had published on 538 / New York Times by late December 2010: Silver, Renard Sexton and Hale Stewart. Andrew Gelman contributed again in early 2011. Brian McCabe published his first article in January 2011. Beginning in 2011, one writer who emerged as

Monmouth University Polling Institute - Misplaced Pages Continue

4452-436: The Republicans had won in 2000 and 2004 , most notably Colorado , Florida , Nevada , Ohio , and Virginia . Ultimately, of the nine swing states identified by The Washington Post in the 2012 election, Obama won eight, losing only North Carolina. This is the most recent presidential election in which the Democratic candidate won the states of Iowa , Ohio , and Florida , along with Maine's 2nd congressional district ,

4558-539: The UK polling industry and the 'surge' of the third-party Liberal Democrats, while Silver, Sexton and Dan Berman developed a seat projection model. The UK election was the first time the FiveThirtyEight team did an election night 'liveblog' of a non-U.S. election. In April 2010, The Guardian published Silver's predictions for the 2010 United Kingdom General Election . The majority of polling organisations in

4664-408: The UK use the concept of uniform swing to predict the outcome of elections. However, by applying his own methodology, Silver produced very different results, which suggested that a Conservative victory might have been the most likely outcome. After a series of articles, including critiques and responses to other electoral analysts, his "final projection" was published on the eve of the election. In

4770-472: The accuracy of the electoral vote predictions were published by other researchers. In July 2013, it was revealed that Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog would depart The New York Times and join ESPN . In its announcement of its acquisition of FiveThirtyEight , ESPN reported that "Silver will serve as the editor-in-chief of the site and will build a team of journalists, editors, analysts and contributors in

4876-464: The acme of her campaign). Pawlenty withdrew from the race after a poor showing in the straw poll, as did Thaddeus McCotter , the only candidate among those who qualified for the ballot who was refused entrance into the debate. It became clear at around this point in the nomination process that while Romney was considered to be the likely nominee by the Republican establishment, a large segment of

4982-540: The agreement, Silver would also write monthly articles for the print version of both the newspaper and the Sunday magazine . Silver did not move his blog to the highest bidder, because he was concerned with maintaining his own voice while gaining the exposure and technical support that a larger media company could provide. "There's a bit of a Groucho Marx quality to it [Silver has said]. ... You shouldn't want to belong to any media brand that seems desperate to have you as

5088-624: The articles focused on Senatorial races: the runoff in Georgia, won by Saxby Chambliss ; recounts of votes in Alaska (won by Mark Begich ), and Minnesota ( Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman ); and the appointments of Senatorial replacements in Colorado, New York, and Illinois. After President Obama's inauguration , Sean Quinn reported that he was moving to Washington, D.C., to continue political writing from that locale. On February 4, 2009, he became

5194-798: The caucuses would eventually lead to Ron Paul earning 22 of the 28 Iowa delegates to the Republican National Convention. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina by a surprisingly large margin, and Romney won only in New Hampshire. A number of candidates dropped out at this point in the nomination process. Bachmann withdrew after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucuses, Huntsman withdrew after coming in third in New Hampshire, and Perry withdrew when polls showed him drawing low numbers in South Carolina. Santorum, who had previously run an essentially one-state campaign in Iowa,

5300-467: The coming months. Much like Grantland , which ESPN launched in 2011, the site will retain an independent brand sensibility and editorial point-of-view, while interfacing with other websites in the ESPN and Disney families. The site will return to its original URL, www.FiveThirtyEight.com." According to Silver, the focus of FiveThirtyEight in its ESPN phase would broaden: "People also think it's going to be

5406-468: The day of the election, spread betting firm Spreadex were offering an Obama Electoral College Votes spread of 296–300 to Romney's 239–243. In reality Obama's victory over Romney was far greater, winning 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. Romney lost all but one of nine battleground states , and received 47 percent of the nationwide popular vote to Obama's 51 percent. Of the 3,154 counties/districts/independent cities making returns, Romney won

SECTION 50

#1732794453633

5512-584: The debates, however, and Herman Cain and then Newt Gingrich came to the fore in October and November. Due to a number of scandals, Cain withdrew just before the end of the year, after having ballot placement in several states. Around the same time, Johnson, who had been able to get into only one other debate, withdrew to seek the Libertarian Party nomination. For the first time in modern Republican Party history, three different candidates won

5618-603: The disparate polls to correctly predict that the Republican Scott Brown would win. In spring 2010, FiveThirtyEight turned a focus on the United Kingdom general election scheduled for May 6 , with a series of more than forty articles on the subject that culminated in projections of the number of seats that the three major parties were expected to win. Following a number of preview posts in January and February, Renard Sexton examined subjects such as

5724-413: The economics of blogging, the financial ratings by Standard & Poors , economists' tendency to underpredict unemployment levels, and the economic impact and media coverage of Hurricane Irene (2011) . FiveThirtyEight published a graph showing different growth curves of the news stories covering Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests. Silver pointed out that conflicts with the police caused

5830-658: The election. On November 30, 2012, it was revealed that shortly before the election, internal polling done by the Romney campaign had shown Romney ahead in Colorado and New Hampshire, tied in Iowa, and within a few points of Obama in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Ohio. In addition, the Romney campaign had assumed that they would win Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. The polls had made Romney and his campaign team so confident of their victory that Romney did not write

5936-417: The election; then posts by Silver, Andrew Gelman and Sexton analyzed the reported returns and political implications. FiveThirtyEight covered the November 3, 2009, elections in the United States in detail. FiveThirtyEight writers Schaller, Gelman, and Silver also gave extensive coverage to the January 19, 2010 Massachusetts special election to the U.S. Senate. The " 538 model" once again aggregated

6042-443: The electoral college. Candidates in bold were on ballots representing 270 electoral votes. All other candidates were on the ballots of fewer than 10 states, 100 electors, and less than 20% of voters nationwide. The United States presidential election of 2012 broke new records in financing, fundraising, and negative campaigning . Through grassroots campaign contributions, online donations, and Super PACs , Obama and Romney raised

6148-458: The electoral vote were certified by Congress on January 4, 2013. Obama was the first president since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to win a majority of the national popular vote more than once, and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 . Obama also became only the fifth Democratic president in history to win a second consecutive term after Andrew Jackson , Woodrow Wilson , Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton , as well as

6254-433: The end of February. The Super Tuesday primaries took place on March 6. Romney carried six states, Santorum carried three, and Gingrich won only in his home state of Georgia. Throughout the rest of March, 266 delegates were allocated in 12 events, including the territorial contests and the first local conventions that allocated delegates (Wyoming's county conventions). Santorum won Kansas and three Southern primaries, but he

6360-547: The end, Silver's projections were off the mark, particularly compared with those of some other organizations, and Silver wrote a post mortem on his blog. Silver examined the pitfalls of the forecasting process, while Sexton discussed the final government agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. On June 3, 2010, Silver announced that in early August the blog would be "relaunched under

6466-403: The estimates for a given state. Thus, his projections were not simply based on the polling trends in a given state. Furthermore, a basic intuition that Silver drew from his analysis of the 2008 Democratic party primary elections was that the voting history of a state or Congressional district provided clues to current voting. This is what allowed him to beat all the pollsters in his forecasts in

SECTION 60

#1732794453633

6572-544: The eventual winner Chris Christie 's weight was an issue for voters in the campaign. In 2010, the institute's director Patrick Murray was named "Pollster of the Year" by PolitickerNJ and one of the 100 most influential people in New Jersey politics. Murray is an occasional contributor to the Huffington Post 's Pollster page. FiveThirtyEight 538 , originally rendered as FiveThirtyEight ,

6678-629: The final contests, Obama won 847 delegates and Clinton 834. Based on this result, New York Times op-ed columnist William Kristol wrote: "And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio". FiveThirtyEight gained further national attention for beating out most pollsters' projections in

6784-546: The first blogger to join the White House press corps . After that time, however, he contributed only a handful of articles to FiveThirtyEight . During the post-2008 election period Silver devoted attention to developing some tools for the analysis of forthcoming 2010 Congressional elections , as well as discussing policy issues and the policy agenda for the Obama administration, especially economic policies. He developed

6890-487: The first three state contests in January (the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, and the South Carolina primary). Although Romney had been expected to win in at least Iowa and New Hampshire, Rick Santorum won the non-binding poll at caucus sites in Iowa by 34 votes, as near as could be determined from the incomplete tally, earning him a declaration as winner by state party leaders, although vote totals were missing from eight precincts. The election of county delegates at

6996-517: The forecast showed the Republican chances of holding the majority down to 55 percent. 2012 United States presidential election This is an accepted version of this page Barack Obama Democratic Barack Obama Democratic Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 2012. Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate , incumbent Vice President Joe Biden , were elected to

7102-441: The form of Pollster Scorecards, a feature which we'll continue to roll out over the coming weeks for each of the major polling firms, and which will explain in some detail how we arrive at the particular rating that we did for each one". As for why the complete 538 polling database had not been released publicly, Silver responded: "The principal reason is because I don't know that I'm legally entitled to do so. The polling database

7208-809: The future of Social Security , Medicare , and Medicaid , healthcare reform , education, social issues, immigration, and foreign policy. Debate schedule: An independent presidential debate featuring minor party candidates took place on Tuesday, October 23 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago , Illinois. The debate was moderated by Larry King and organized by the Free & Equal Elections Foundation . The participants were Gary Johnson ( Libertarian ), Jill Stein ( Green ), Virgil Goode ( Constitution ), and Rocky Anderson ( Justice ). A second debate between Stein and Johnson took place on Sunday, November 4, and

7314-432: The gaps in information about the trends in a given state. Accordingly, he adapted an approach that he had previously used in his baseball forecasting : using nearest neighbor analysis he first identified "most similar states" and then factored into his electoral projections for a given state the polling information from "similar states". He carried this approach one step further by also factoring national polling trends into

7420-453: The margin of victory was under 1% (29 electoral votes): States where the margin of victory was under 5% (46 electoral votes): States/districts where the margin of victory was between 5% and 10% (120 electoral votes): Counties with highest percent of vote (Democratic) Counties with highest percent of vote (Republican) After the networks called Ohio (the state that was arguably the most critical for Romney, as no Republican had ever won

7526-518: The masthead, and 7 listed as contributors. The site produced articles under 5 headings: politics, economics, science and health, (cultural) life, and sports. In addition to feature articles it produced podcasts on a range of subjects. Monthly traffic to the site grew steadily from about 2.8 million unique visitors in April 2014 to 10.7 million unique visitors in January 2016. On September 3, 2014, FiveThirtyEight introduced its forecasts for each of

7632-420: The more than 6,600 polls in his data collection for the final three weeks of U.S. presidential primaries and general elections, state governor elections, and U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress elections for the years 1998–2012. In addition to updating his pollster ratings, he published an updated methodological report. Nate Silver started FiveThirtyEight in early March 2008, published under the pseudonym Poblano,

7738-641: The morning of November 6, Election Day, Silver's model gave President Obama a 90.9% chance of winning a majority of the electoral votes. The 538 model correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Silver, along with at least two academic-based analysts who aggregated polls from multiple pollsters, thus not only correctly predicted all 50 states, but also all nine " swing states ". In contrast, individual pollsters were less successful. For example, Rasmussen Reports "missed on six of its nine swing-state polls". An independent analysis of Silver's state-by-state projections, assessing whether

7844-559: The most popular votes in 2,447 (77.58%) while Obama carried 707 (22.42%). Popular vote totals are from the Federal Election Commission report. The table below displays the official vote tallies by each state's Electoral College voting method. The source for the results of all states, except those that amended their official results, is the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled "Margin" shows Obama's margin of victory over Romney (the margin

7950-412: The most recent in which neither major party's ticket included a woman, and the most recent in which Donald Trump was not the Republican nominee. All four major candidates for president and vice president went on to hold significant public office after this election. Obama served his second term as president, while Biden also served his second term as vice president and initially retired from politics but

8056-590: The nomination without counting unpledged delegates, making the June 26 Utah Primary, the last contest of the cycle, purely symbolic. CNN's final delegate estimate, released on July 27, 2012, put Romney at 1,462 pledged delegates and 62 unpledged delegates, for a total estimate of 1,524 delegates. No other candidate had unpledged delegates. The delegate estimates for the other candidates were Santorum at 261 delegates, Paul at 154, Gingrich at 142, Bachmann at 1, Huntsman at 1, and all others at 0. On August 28, 2012, delegates at

8162-571: The party's presumptive nominee . Ron Paul officially remained in the race, but he stopped campaigning on May 14 to focus on state conventions. On May 29, after winning the Texas primary, Romney had received a sufficient number of delegates to clinch the party's nomination with the inclusion of unpledged delegates. After winning the June 5 primaries in California and several other states, Romney had received more than enough pledged delegates to clinch

8268-476: The percentages of votes that the candidates actually received fell within the "margin of error" of Silver's forecasts, found that "48 out of 50 states actually fell within his margin of error, giving him a success rate of 96%. And assuming that his projected margin of error figures represent 95 percent confidence intervals, which it is likely they did, Silver performed just about exactly as well as he would expect to over 50 trials. Wizard, indeed". Additional tests of

8374-495: The polls and won the support of many party leaders, but he faced challenges from a number of more conservative contenders. Romney secured his party's nomination in May, defeating former senator Rick Santorum , former Speaker of the House and Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich , and Texas congressman Ron Paul , among other candidates. The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debate centered largely around sound responses to

8480-689: The presidency without carrying it) for Obama at around 11:15 pm EST on Election Day, Romney was ready to concede the race, but hesitated when Karl Rove strenuously objected on Fox News to the network's decision to make that call. However, after Colorado and Nevada were called for the President (giving Obama enough electoral votes to win even if Ohio were to leave his column), in tandem with Obama's apparent lead in Florida and Virginia (both were eventually called for Obama), Romney acknowledged that he had lost and conceded at around 1:00 am EST on November 7. Despite public polling showing Romney behind Obama in

8586-421: The president's vote total in individual counties in several of the seven contested primaries, though none made a significant impact in the delegate count. Running unopposed everywhere else, Obama cemented his status as the Democratic presumptive nominee on April 3, 2012, by securing the minimum number of pledged delegates needed to obtain the nomination. Candidates with considerable name recognition who entered

8692-441: The primary season was coming to an end, Silver began to build a model for the general election race. This model, too, relied in part on demographic information but mainly involved a complex method of aggregating polling results. In 2008, Rasmussen Reports had an apparently short-term partnership with FiveThirtyEight in order to include this unique methodology for generating poll averages in their "Balance of Power Calculator". At

8798-494: The public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina. ... But a funny thing happened. The model got it right." Silver relied on demographic data and on the history of voting in other states during the 2008 Democratic primary elections. On May 30, 2008, Silver revealed his true identity for the first time to his FiveThirtyEight readers. After that date, he published just four more diaries on Daily Kos . As

8904-406: The public record and clearly we feel as though we have every right to use them for research purposes, I don't know what rights we might have to re-publish their data in full." Silver also commented on the fact that the 538 ratings had contributed to Markos Moulitsas 's decision to end Daily Kos 's use of Research 2000 as its pollster. On June 11, 2010, Mark Blumenthal also commented on

9010-470: The question of transparency in an article in the National Journal titled "Transparency In Rating: Nate Silver's Impressive Ranking Of Pollsters' Accuracy Is Less Impressive In Making Clear What Data Is Used". He noted that in the case of Research 2000 there were some discrepancies between what Silver reported and what the pollster itself reported. Other researchers questioned aspects of the methodology. On June 16, 2010, Silver announced on his blog that he

9116-473: The race for the Democratic nomination was largely uneventful. The nomination process consisted of primaries and caucuses , held by the 50 states, as well as Guam , Puerto Rico , Washington, D.C. , U.S. Virgin Islands , American Samoa , and Democrats Abroad . Additionally, high-ranking party members known as superdelegates each received one vote in the convention. A few of the primary challengers surpassed

9222-814: The race for the Republican presidential nomination in the early stages of the primary campaign included U.S. representative and former Libertarian nominee Ron Paul , former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty , who co-chaired John McCain's campaign in 2008 , former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney , the runner-up for the nomination in the 2008 cycle, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich . The first debate took place on May 5, 2011, in Greenville, South Carolina , with businessman Herman Cain , former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson , Ron Paul , Tim Pawlenty , and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum participating. Another debate took place

9328-501: The re-election of Republican Saxby Chambliss , a result that was also consistent with Silver's original projection. During the 2008 electoral campaign, Sean Quinn , a second contributor, drew on his knowledge and experience with campaign organizations to evaluate the ground game and "get out the vote" strategies of the McCain and Obama campaign teams. A poker player , Quinn drew an analogy between Barack Obama's electoral strategy and

9434-420: The results of a citizenship survey taken by Oklahoma high school students, which led him to denounce Strategic Vision as "disreputable and fraudulent". FiveThirtyEight devoted more than a dozen articles to the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 , assessing of the quality of the vote counting. International affairs columnist Renard Sexton began the series with an analysis of polling leading up to

9540-646: The same name that he had used since November 2007 when he began publishing a diary on the political blog Daily Kos . The name FiveThirtyEight derives from the 538 electors in the United States Electoral College . Writing for Daily Kos , Silver had gained a following, especially for his primary election forecast on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008 . From that primary election day, which included contests in 24 states plus American Samoa , Poblano predicted that Barack Obama would come away with 859 delegates, and Hillary Clinton 829; in

9646-538: The same time, FiveThirtyEight ' s daily "Today's Polls" column began to be mirrored on "The Plank", a blog published by The New Republic . In July 2008, the site began to report regular updates of projections of 2008 U.S. Senate races. Special procedures were developed relying on both polls and demographic analysis . The projections were updated on a weekly basis. By early October 2008, FiveThirtyEight approached 2.5 million visitors per week, while averaging approximately 400,000 per weekday. During October 2008

9752-480: The sharpest increases in news coverage of the protests and assessed the geography of the protests by analyzing news reports of the size and location of events across the United States. FiveThirtyEight rolled out its 2012 general election forecasting model on June 7, 2012. The model forecast both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, with the latter being central to the exercise and involving

9858-400: The site received 3.63 million unique visitors, 20.57 million site visits, and 32.18 million page views . On Election Day, November 4, 2008, the site had nearly 5 million page views. In the final update of his presidential forecast model at midday of November 4, 2008, Silver projected a popular vote victory by 6.1 percentage points for Barack Obama and electoral vote totals of 349 (based on

9964-876: The stated purpose of combating voter fraud ; the laws were attacked, however, by the Democratic Party as attempts to suppress voting among its supporters and to improve the Republican Party's presidential prospects. Florida , Georgia , Ohio , Tennessee , and West Virginia 's state legislatures approved measures to shorten early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all felons from voting. Kansas , South Carolina , Tennessee , Texas , and Wisconsin state legislatures passed laws requiring voters to have government-issued IDs before they could cast their ballots. This meant, typically, that people without driver's licenses or passports had to gain new forms of ID. Former president Bill Clinton denounced them, saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of

10070-425: The states to create an estimate that he treated as a separate poll (equivalent to the actually available polls from that state). This approach helped to stabilize his projections, because if there were few if any polls in a given state, the state forecast was largely determined by the 538 regression estimate. On June 6, 2010, FiveThirtyEight posted pollster rankings that updated and elaborated Silver's efforts from

10176-481: The swing states of Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Hampshire, tied with Obama in Virginia, and just barely ahead of Obama in Florida, the Romney campaign said they were genuinely surprised by the loss, having believed that public polling was oversampling Democrats. The Romney campaign had already set up a transition website, and had scheduled and purchased a fireworks display to celebrate in case he won

10282-522: The third sitting president in a row (after Clinton and George W. Bush ) to win a second term. As of 2024, this remains the last U.S. presidential election in which an incumbent president won re-election to a second consecutive term and the last U.S. presidential election in which the incumbent White House party won the election. Obama did not hold onto Indiana , North Carolina , or Nebraska's 2nd congressional district , but crucially won all 18 " blue wall " states and defeated Romney in other swing states

10388-429: The true state of voter preferences at the present time, nor provide an accurate forecast of the future. One approach to this problem was followed by Pollster.com : if enough polls were available, it computed a locally weighted moving average or LOESS . While adopting such an approach in his own analysis, Silver reasoned that there was additional information available in polls from "similar" states that might help to fill

10494-502: Was "the last conservative standing" in the campaign for the nomination. After disappointing results in the April 24 primaries (finishing second in one state, third in three, and fourth in one), Gingrich dropped out on May 2 in a move that was seen as an effective end to the contest for the nomination. After Gingrich's spokesman announced his upcoming withdrawal, the Republican National Committee declared Romney

10600-535: Was able to organize a national campaign after his surprising victory there. He unexpectedly carried three states in a row on February 7 and overtook Romney in nationwide opinion polls, becoming the only candidate in the race to effectively challenge the notion that Romney was the inevitable nominee. However, Romney won all of the other contests between South Carolina and the Super Tuesday primaries , and regained his first-place status in nationwide opinion polls by

10706-453: Was closed, and web traffic became redirected to ABC News pages. The logo was replaced, with the name 538 now used instead of FiveThirtyEight . The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college , was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver . In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and

10812-402: Was compiled from approximately eight or ten distinct data sources, which were disclosed in a comment which I posted shortly after the pollster ratings were released, and which are detailed again at the end of this article. These include some subscription services, and others from websites that are direct competitors of this one. Although polls contained in these databases are ultimately a matter of

10918-596: Was later elected president in 2020 , defeating Obama's successor, then-incumbent Donald Trump. This is the most recent election in which two major party nominees would go on to become president. Romney moved to Utah in 2014 and was elected to the Senate there in 2018 , succeeding Orrin Hatch . Ryan served three more terms in the House and eventually became Speaker from 2015 until his retirement from politics in 2019. In 2011, several state legislatures passed new voting laws, especially pertaining to voter identification, with

11024-565: Was moderated by Ralph Nader. Elections analysts and political pundits issue probabilistic forecasts of the composition of the Electoral College. These forecasts use a variety of factors to estimate the likelihood of each candidate winning the Electoral College electors for that state. Most election predictors use the following ratings: Below is a list of states considered by one or more forecast to be competitive; states that are deemed to be "safe" or "solid" by forecasters RealClearPolitics , Sabato's Crystal Ball , and FiveThirtyEight . On

11130-519: Was renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus . In July 2013, ESPN acquired FiveThirtyEight , hiring Silver as editor-in-chief and a contributor for ESPN.com ; the new publication launched on March 17, 2014. Since then, the FiveThirtyEight blog has covered a broad spectrum of subjects including politics, sports, science, economics, and popular culture. In 2018, the operations were transferred from ESPN to sister property ABC News (also under parent The Walt Disney Company ). During

11236-513: Was unable to make any substantial gain on Romney, who became a formidable frontrunner after securing more than half of the delegates allocated in March. On April 10, Santorum suspended his campaign due to a variety of reasons, such as a low delegate count, unfavorable polls in his home state of Pennsylvania, and his daughter's health, leaving Mitt Romney as the undisputed front-runner for the presidential nomination and allowing Gingrich to claim that he

#632367