Nate Silver Election Challenge: Final Projections

Nate Silver Election Challenge: Final Projections

Well, the time has come. After a long, arduous, exhausting, and often exasperating campaign, Election Day is finally here. Tomorrow, we’ll decide who will be the 45^thPresident of the United States. And that means that it’s time for my final election projection.

Though it may be a bit anticlimactic, I will not be making any changes to my projections. I am projecting that Hillary Clinton will win the election with an electoral vote count of 322, while Trump will receive 216 electoral votes. My are my specific projections:

Clinton – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin

Trump – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming

Though the electoral vote difference seems significant, it will not take much for the race to be much closer (see my post, Yes, Trump Can Win for a more detailed discussion of some of the scenarios which could play out). New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, and Nevada are all basically tossups at this point. These account for a total of 54 electoral votes so if these were to swing to Trump, then he would be at 270 and Clinton would be at 268. But therein lies a key point—in order to win the election, Trump needs to sweep all of the tossups. A loss of any of these states would almost certainly hand the election over to Clinton, unless he were able to pull off a big upset in another state such as Pennsylvania or Michigan.

So, where do I stand in comparison to Nate Silver? Well, like my last update, we match exactly. So, no matter the outcome, our accuracy levels will be the same, which I feel lends some credence to my theory that US Presidential elections are not that difficult to predict. I have much more to say about that, but it will have to wait until my post-election update.

Please be sure to vote tomorrow, if you have not already, and make your voice heard!

Note: This was posted around 7:30 PM ET on Monday, November 7. While I do not expect any new polls to come in before tomorrow, I will be keeping an eye out just in case. If needed, I will update this post to reflect any changes in my projections (no changes will be made after midnight). I will be sure to make note of all changes. In addition, I’ll be keeping an eye on Nate Silver’s model; if anything changes there, I’ll make the necessary changes to this post to reflect any differences between our projections.

Reminder:

You can interact with my election map on Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ken.flerlage#!/vizhome/Election2016_7/Election2016.

You can view Silver’s “Polls Plus” projections on FiveThirtyEight: http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#plus.

Ken Flerlage, November 7, 2016

Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ken.flerlage#!/