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scottfines.bsky.social
Math and Engineering is my jam.
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AFAICT, this election looks very much like 2020, which…is good for Dems? I dunno, seems like we should just be patient and wait for final tallies before we freak out.

submitted 124 days ago • 0 comments

I know no actual numbers, but this would be quite easy if turnout is down in those areas(or flat). Smaller denominator and all that

submitted 124 days ago • 1 comment

ann selzer, you fucking madwoman

submitted 124 days ago • 2 comments

This is totally random, but two weeks ago I watched a 12u soccer tournament be decided by penalties and it was the best possible ending and all sports should do it

submitted 124 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: I ran 80,000 simulations of the election. My wife left me for a guy who doesn’t do that.

submitted 125 days ago • 78 comments

No one expected overruling Chevron would drive turnout like this.

submitted 124 days ago • 18 comments

So one of the things that it’s fun to know from your wife the elections expert is that a bunch of states expanded their early voting laws in 2020 for COVID and also that having longer voting windows increases turnout. Hence, 2020 and (starting to look like) 2024z

submitted 124 days ago • 1 comment

I have a sinking suspicion that one of the reasons this doesn't happen (aside from the integrity issues) is that most of the politics news-desks around the country don't understand polling well enough to realize how much Cohn has been bullshitting this cycle.

submitted 125 days ago • 1 comment

Yesterday everyone on this site was all "WE'RE GONNA WIN! GRIND THEIR BONES INTO ASH". This morning it's all "oh man, we are so screwed!" And this is a perfect example of sampling error--all the hopeful people have logged off to protect their sanity, and all that is left are the doomers.

submitted 125 days ago • 0 comments

I briefly followed some people on early voting results, and then witnessed them freaking out about Guam, and realized what a horrible mistake I had made.

submitted 125 days ago • 0 comments

My hot take, although I’m not super confident in it, is that Harris wins Florida tomorrow in an absolute squeaker. Recount territory close, but it’ll stand in the end.

submitted 125 days ago • 0 comments

Ah

submitted 125 days ago • 4 comments

The election is nigh. What I should be doing: Working on my power-plant query engine. What I am actually doing: laughing at insane polls and outlining the math on how I would write a polling prediction engine. Goddamnit

submitted 125 days ago • 0 comments

While you're at it, expand the House of Representatives so that we don't live in a world where 500k people get one representative.

submitted 125 days ago • 2 comments

A vision of the 2024 US presidential election, from 1925

submitted 125 days ago • 5 comments

lol. Lmao

submitted 125 days ago • 1 comment

I do think that on the whole we(BlueSky) are putting a little too much on the DMR poll. Selzer has an excellent record, and her poll is just self-evidently of higher quality than most of the trash out there. But it is still a single poll, and outliers do happen. She's very good, but not infallible.

submitted 125 days ago • 0 comments

2016: selzer's method works, everyone else models away the signal and gets surprised 2020: selzer's method works, everyone else models away the signal and gets surprised 2024: selzer's method works, everyone else models away the signal and gets surprised (TBD) ...why didn't anyone try her method?

submitted 125 days ago • 6 comments

Lots of people adding context, making it more complicated, but the basic story is this: Some dude did some shit online. The fact that we're all being like "OOOH right wing conspiracy!" is just evidence that the RW has lost its goddamn mind, and not a sign that we need to dig deeper on the details

submitted 126 days ago • 0 comments

I don’t want to dog, but my wife runs elections here in town, and fights tooth and nail to get lines shorter. Lines have been long this year. It’s not always nefarious, sometimes it’s because there aren’t buildings big enough to handle the demand.

submitted 126 days ago • 0 comments

It’s the abortion bans, stupid

submitted 126 days ago • 12 comments

Pollsters seem to have the implicit theory that voters change their opinions frequently with little or no justification. Gerrymandering, by contrast, operates on the exact opposite theory: voters almost never change their opinions. Only one of these theories is true. I’ll let you guess which.

submitted 127 days ago • 0 comments

@peark.es in light of the DMR results, I checked back in on our friends at Vantage Data House, and they have had Florida as a tight Harris win since about mid-October. Still no huge reason to believe they have special accuracy, but it’s a more consistent reading given DMR…

submitted 127 days ago • 1 comment