ClaimsNate Silver

“It’s not hard, for instance, to find polls from this point in 2015 showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Trump.”

Nate Silver, author of Silver Bulletin 8 September 2023 It's gonna be a very long and exceptionally tedious road to November 2024 (Silver Bulletin) archived copy

Factual AI timelines and forecasting

Polls from around September 2015 can be found showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Donald Trump.

Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

What would count as true or false

'This point in 2015' means about September 2015. TRUE: at least one publicly released national or swing-state general-election poll of Clinton vs. Trump with fieldwork in roughly August to October 2015 shows Clinton ahead by 10 or more points. MOSTLY TRUE: no such poll falls within August to October 2015, but such polls exist from nearby months of 2015 (e.g. June–July or November 2015). MOSTLY FALSE: Clinton's best leads in 2015 polls were in the high single digits (7–9 points). FALSE: no 2015 Clinton–Trump poll showed Clinton with a lead near 10 points.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 Poll: Clinton tops Trump in general election | CNN Politics CNN · 28 September 2015

    “Clinton beats Trump, 49% to 39%, head-to-head.”

  2. E2 Poll: Clinton tops Trump in general election | CNN Politics CNN · 28 September 2015

    “The general election poll was conducted September 20-24, surveying a total of 1,000 adults for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points;”

  3. E3 Insider vs. Outsider Matchup Finds Clinton, Trump Near Even ABC7 New York (abc7ny.com) · 13 September 2015

    “That compares to a clear Clinton lead among all adults, 51-39 percent, indicating her broad support in groups that are less apt to be registered to vote, such as young adults and racial and ethnic minorities.”

  4. E4 Insider vs. Outsider Matchup Finds Clinton, Trump Near Even ABC7 New York (abc7ny.com) · 13 September 2015

    “This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Sept. 7-10, 2015, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, including 821 registered voters.”

Reasoning

The ABC News/Washington Post national poll, fielded September 7-10, 2015, showed Clinton leading Trump 51-39 among all adults, a 12-point lead (E3, E4). A CNN poll fielded September 20-24, 2015 showed Clinton ahead 49% to 39%, a 10-point lead (E1, E2). Both leads come from the adult samples, not registered voters, which narrowed the ABC/Post race (E3). Still, both are publicly released general-election polls fielded in September 2015 with Clinton ahead by 10 or more points, so the TRUE criterion is met.

Cite this claim

Nate Silver, “Polls from around September 2015 can be found showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Donald Trump.” (said 8 September 2023). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_9b84fa1b0b60, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_9b84fa1b0b60

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Nate Silver, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Nate Silver

  1. Mostly true Factual 21 May 2022
    “There was never any spike in Biden's approval rating.”

    Joe Biden's approval rating never had a spike.

  2. Resolved true Factual 9 June 2021
    “This is the pollster that had shown a big bounce for Garcia before, so either that previous poll was an outlier or her momentum has been usurped by Wiley.”

    A pollster that earlier showed a big bounce for Garcia has now shown a result implying either that the earlier poll was an outlier or that Wiley has taken over her momentum.

  3. Mixed Factual November 2016
    “Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump.”

    The 2016 polling error was modest and in line with historical polling errors, yet large enough to give Trump many paths to victory.

  4. Mostly true Factual November 2016
    “The single most important reason that our model gave Trump a better chance than others is because of our assumption that polling errors are correlated.”

    The main reason FiveThirtyEight's 2016 model gave Trump a better chance than other models was its assumption that polling errors are correlated.

  5. Mostly true Factual November 2016
    “Clinton collapsed in the Midwest, destroying her Electoral College chances”

    Clinton significantly underperformed her polls across the Midwest and Rust Belt in the 2016 election, costing her the Electoral College.

All of them

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