538 will be remembered for bringing a false precision to the imprecise science of polling. They went to great lengths to make their aggregations seem like a scoreboard, even though that wasn't the case.
Treating politics like a sport has made it significantly worse, and that's a lot of their legacy IMO.
That's a fair point re: precision, though at least the methodology is more sound than the "____ is Losing Support" headlines based on interviews with four voters.
Do you think that politics pre-538 was _not_ treated like a sport? (My opinion is that that dynamic has not changed as a result of 538).
I think 538 brought the concept of a scoreboard which reinforced what was likely a tendency to want to see it as a sport. It is true the media always tried to make races sound close, but it was just headlines before. Once there was a scoreboard everything became more acute.
I disagree. 538 (at least originally when silver ran it) made it clear that predictions were the likelihood of an outcome. It was the media and users who turned it into a prediction machine that was often right but then abused when wrong.
538 will be remembered for bringing a false precision to the imprecise science of polling. They went to great lengths to make their aggregations seem like a scoreboard, even though that wasn't the case.
Treating politics like a sport has made it significantly worse, and that's a lot of their legacy IMO.
That's a fair point re: precision, though at least the methodology is more sound than the "____ is Losing Support" headlines based on interviews with four voters.
Do you think that politics pre-538 was _not_ treated like a sport? (My opinion is that that dynamic has not changed as a result of 538).
I think 538 brought the concept of a scoreboard which reinforced what was likely a tendency to want to see it as a sport. It is true the media always tried to make races sound close, but it was just headlines before. Once there was a scoreboard everything became more acute.
I disagree. 538 (at least originally when silver ran it) made it clear that predictions were the likelihood of an outcome. It was the media and users who turned it into a prediction machine that was often right but then abused when wrong.