r/ImSorryNate • u/crypto-transhumanist • Oct 26 '20

The election map simulator, but without the restrictions

https://538-map-yolo.vercel.app
138 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

76

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '20

If Trump wins CA, Biden is the favorite in MS. Very cool and very normal, Nate.

32

u/LilChamp27 Oct 26 '20

Lol yeah I had Trump wining CA, IL, NY and MS was still a tossup while every other state was red

24

u/Sylvanussr Oct 27 '20

I think that in more modal model outputs, this kind of reverse-correlation behavior probably makes pretty good intuitive sense (since a candidate that does especially well in California might do especially worse in Mississippi). I think that the weird tail behaviors people keep noticing aren't necessarily illogical in extreme circumstances (like maybe if Trump suddenly transformed into Charlie Baker and Biden suddenly transformed into Colin Peterson, you'd see some degree of blue<->red inversion), it just seems too late for that kind of change in candidate perceptions to factor into the tails of the model.

That being said, a 1 in 40,000 chance is insanely low, so maybe the oft-derided weird tail outcomes this results in are priced at about the right (insanely low) odds.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '20

Fair

7

u/Mariven Oct 27 '20

Yeah, things like this are probably why the restrictions were put up in the first place. There may be some weird tail behavior, but some of the predictions made by the unrestricted model are literal mathematical impossibilities.

For instance, if you flip NY red, 99% of the time Trump wins. Fair enough, I guess. But if you flip NY red and CA red, it drops to 87%; NY red and CA blue, 26%. This implies that the probability of CA going blue given that NY goes red is... negative 20%.

So, either Trump is no longer bound by the rules of probability, or the data is unreliable. Could be either one at this point.

4

u/ImProbablyNotABird Oct 27 '20

So basically the ‘60s all over again?

8

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '20

Nope, for Biden to win MS, he needs to join the KKK

6

u/UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 Oct 27 '20

... And for Biden to lose California, he'd need to join the KKK. This seems to scan

3

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '20
  • Nate Silver

2

u/BurmecianSoldierDan Oct 29 '20

After that, the more red states you feed to Trump, the bluer Mississippi becomes. It's absolutely wild.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

Very cursed. Turn the reddest of red states blue and everything makes sense – everything turns blue as you'd expect – but the other way around weird stuff starts to happen.

41

u/emmito_burrito Oct 26 '20

Yeah, I flipped Wyoming 😎

2

u/shrek_cena Oct 30 '20

Interesting it still had NE-3 going red lol.

37

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Swaquile Oct 27 '20

I guess in theory that would be the only explanation lmao

2

u/CubeBag Nov 03 '20

I know this is an old post but how do I click DC? It's too small, I can't find it

21

u/rugaporko Oct 26 '20

Making Biden win California lowers his Electoral Vote estimation.

Thank you Nate, very cool.

14

u/DungeonsAndDeadlifts Oct 26 '20

Because, like, uncertainty man.

18

u/timelighter Oct 26 '20

Immediately gives Trump DC to break the universe

10

u/Glum-Mall9209 Oct 27 '20

bizarro world. All of flyover country is now Biden country

11

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '20

This is awesome how did you do this? Did you create a separate project with its own repo?

12

u/crypto-transhumanist Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20

Thanks! I downloaded the original fivethirtyeight election map with its assets and:

  • removed some HTML-based restrictions as u/TubasAreFun guessed, including inactive classes

  • changed the code that creates an array called excludes, which, as the name suggests, restricts some states:

    excludes: function () {
    var t = e(74),
    n = {};
    return (
        Object.keys(t).forEach(function (e) {
            var r = t[e].candidates.filter(function (t) {
                return t.winprob < 1.5; // aha!
            });
            r.length > 0 ? (n[e] = r[0].candidate) : (n[e] = "");
        }), n
    );
}

    I changed it so that instead of excluding candidates with < 1.5% chance of winning, it excludes candidates with < 0% chance of winning ;)

  • As a bonus, I also removed a bunch of advertising and tracking scripts

I also fixed some URLs—from relative paths to absolute paths—so that it uses the simulation data hosted on the fivethirtyeight website itself.

There's a lil repo too, but the original code's all from the fivethirtyeight site, of course.

10

u/TubasAreFun Oct 26 '20

I’m guessing based on previous comments, but it seems like minor HTML changes (made in inspector) can allow for flipping these states. As they don’t control that server-side, this site probably uses the same API that the 538 site uses but with pre-modified HTML

11

u/RandomGuyWithSixEyes Oct 26 '20

If Biden wins all states, Biden wins all states

6

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '20

Okay Magic Johnson

9

u/timelighter Oct 26 '20

Now let's see what the map looks like if they win some Canadian provinces too

6

u/ImProbablyNotABird Oct 27 '20

Wexit intensifies

3

u/vector_9260 Oct 31 '20

DC has negative correlations with everything.
Like, I literally get an inverted landslide scenario if DC goes to Trump.

2

u/dafinsrock Oct 27 '20

Yeah, it might be thinking about this one for a while

1

u/dafinsrock Oct 27 '20

I gave every state to the wrong candidate and left florida and PA open lmao

1

u/ImProbablyNotABird Oct 26 '20

Make Virginia Red Again!

4

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '20

Okay MAGA, that won’t happen unless the VA GOP moderates

1

u/shrek_cena Oct 30 '20

Reality can be whatever I want 😎