Reverse-engineering the problematic tail behavior of Fivethirtyeight forecast
As a US voter I am very frustrated With and tired of this obsession with election forecasting. Is it going to influence whether or not you go out and vote? If not, what is the point of it?<p>What value does something like fivethirtyeight add to our democracy, if any? Is this motivation the same as that of diving deep into baseball stats or Star Wars starship engineering, just like “nerding out” for its own sake?<p>Contrast the voter who never looks at any of these polls with one who keeps up with them daily. Is the latter voter better off in some way? Is this just about trying to read the tea leaves so you can strut and preen later about having been correct, should the dice roll be in your favor?<p>My concern is that these things are distracting and may actually dissuade some people from voting because they think they “don’t have to.”<p>Here’s an idea: <i>everyone go vote for whoever you think the best candidate is regardless of what a stack of polls say.</i><p>Someone set me straight here, what is the point of all this stuff.