White House Countdown: Nate Silver bets on Clinton

9 years ago - Published in Finance, Fundamental Analysis

The oracle of East Lansing spoke: Democrat Hillary Clinton has huge chance to become the forty-fifth president of the United States. Nate Silver, the founder of the Five Thirty Eight site, the man capable of providing virtually error-free the results of the US presidential elections of 2008 and 2012 with its statistical models (with 50 states and the District of Columbia, missed only on Indiana where Barack Obama won in 2008), he has published the first forecast on the upcoming US elections.

Three models developed and in all three the victory smiles to the (possible) first woman in the White House: according to the forecast only based on polls, Clinton has 80.3% chance of winning, versus 19.7% for the Republican rival, Donald Trump. The second model takes into account surveys, economic and historical factors: in this case, the possibility of the former Secretary of State decrease, but only to 73.5%, compared with 26.5% for Trump; a margin, therefore, still largely reassuring. The third model takes into account the result would be achieved by voting today, no on 8 November: Clinton, in this case, would have a 85.5% chance of winning.

The forecast "polls-plus", which also takes into account economic and historical factors, allocates 73.5% of success in Clinton possibilities. In this case, Five Thirty Eight states that the Democratic candidate obtains 48.8% of the popular vote, compared with 44.4% in favor of Trump. In terms of electoral votes, Clinton would gain 318.7 Electors, well above the required minimum, or 270 to be elected.

According to the model, which simulates the election 20,000 times, twelve states will be decisive to assign the victory because at the moment the situation is quite balanced: North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada; of these, eight are assigned by Silver in Clinton, four to Trump.

Silver, however, warns against simplistic enthusiasms: "A 20-25% chance of winning is extremely far from the 2%, or by 0.02 per cent. It is a distinct possibility, more or less the same as a team that loses one point, out of the house, at the beginning of the eighth inning of a baseball game. " The polls, however, say that Clinton is a "clear favorite."