Nate Silver: prediction

Transcript context

…Hi. I’m Michael Willie, thanks for coming. If it winds up being Clinton versus Trump, is that the first time where we’ve had two candidates with the highest unfavorables going against each other? Yeah, I would think so. There have been a few candidates — I think Romney was basically breakeven when he was nominated, as Obama was, but Clinton is negative 10, and Trump is negative 25, or something. There probably will be some reversion to the mean in both cases. Remember, one reason why — and I’d say Trump’s a fairly heavy underdog if he wins the nomination. But it’s a conditional probability. Conditional on having won the GOP nomination, Trump will have had to display some staying power, some acumen, because sooner or later he will have to get beyond 35 percent to win 50 percent or so, and probably will have done something to improve his image with people who are not in his core constituency. But yeah, it would be pretty unprecedented, certainly. I wonder if you have to adjust — in baseball, you have to adjust stats for the era, where if you’re in the home run or steroid era, then 50 home runs doesn’t matter as much. Maybe now, Obama with a 48 percent approval rating, is at a 56 park-adjusted approval rating. I’m not sure, maybe. [laughter] Next question.…

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