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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNate Silver: Clinton Begins The 2016 Campaign, And It’s A Toss-up
There’s already plenty of bad punditry regarding the chances of Hillary Clinton — who officially announced her candidacy on Sunday — to become the 45th president. You can find Democrats boasting about their “blue wall” in the Electoral College and how hard this will make it for any Republican to win. Or Republicans warning that the Democratic Party rarely wins three elections in a row.
Most of this analysis is flimsy. So is the commentary about the ups-and-downs in early swing state polls. And when you see some pundit declaring a minor misstep to be a “game changer,” find someone else to follow on Twitter.
The truth is that a general election win by Clinton — she’s very likely to become the Democratic nominee — is roughly a 50/50 proposition. And we’re not likely to learn a lot over the rest of 2015 to change that. Here’s why:
Incumbency and Obama’s Approval Rating. Start with the fact that there’s no incumbent president running. There actually haven’t been a lot of cases that precisely meet the circumstances voters will face next year: Barack Obama, assuming he serves out the rest of his term, will become just the fifth president limited by the 22nd Amendment from seeking an additional term in office.1 This is slightly different from the case where an incumbent voluntarily declines to run again.2 Still, the evidence we have from presidential elections and from other contexts like gubernatorial elections is that these cases default to being toss-ups.
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Rest of this long detailed analysis here:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-begins-the-2016-campaign-and-its-a-toss-up/
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Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)....and head to head polling is conducted.
He's a poll aggregator. His statistical analysis is based on the average of the polls conducted by polling firms.
Until then, he's about as useful as a box of rocks.
cali
(114,904 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The Nate Silver who has a climate change denier on his staff?
We've got it in the bag. 
cali
(114,904 posts)He's the gold standard when it comes to statistical analysis.
craigmatic
(4,510 posts)
frylock
(34,825 posts)University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke, Jr., voluntarily ended his participation in Nate Silver’s much hyped, numbers-crunching FiveThirtyEight blog after a controversy arose over an article about natural disasters.
Pielke is not considered a skeptic, but he nonetheless apparently ran afoul of the settled, so-called, climate change science. As a result, FiveThirtyEight reportedly became unenthusiastic about publishing any more of his work on the site.
According to Politico, “In March, Pielke wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight claiming that climate change is not the cause behind the increasing cost of natural disaster. The article unleashed a torrent of criticism directed at both Pielke and the site, which had only just launched. Silver published a conditional defense of the article and a rebuttal.”
http://www.inquisitr.com/1390037/climate-change-scientist-exits-nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight-blog-following-controversy/
cbdo2007
(9,213 posts)Here is my analysis:
75% of the time following a multi-term President, the opposite party wins the next election**
The 25% of the time the same party won, it was the prior VP running and winning -
Therefore, Joe Biden is our best hope for President in 2016!
66% of the time following single or multi-term President where there is a different person running (i.e. President Obama is not running again), the opposite party wins the next election.
Of the 33% of these times when the same party won, 80% of those were won by the previous VP.
Again, statistically, Joe Biden is overwhelmingly our best hope for winning in 2016 and is therefore practically guaranteed the nomination.
source: Wikipedia
**this includes Kennedy/Johnson as a "multi-term" President due to the circumstances of Johnson assuming the Presidency. Removing them from the first equation still results in a 72% chance the opposite party wins the next election.
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Your assertion "that it is more likely to retain the Party of the incumbent President than to flip." is not valid when considering President Obama is not eligible to run again. I'm trying my best to compare apples to apples.
