FiveThirtyEight Writer Visits Upper School

Harry Enten, senior political writer and analyst at FiveThirtyEight (a data journalism website), spoke to Upper School students recently. At FiveThirtyEight, “we bring numbers together to tell a story,” he said. “We use numbers to illustrate what’s going on in the real world.” In addition to looking at current data, the site also looks at historical data, which can help to put things into perspective. For example, a good indication of what the results of the presidential election will be when there is no incumbent running is the popularity of the incumbent. If the incumbent has high popularity numbers, then the candidate in his or her party is more likely to win. According to Mr. Enten, President Obama has decent numbers (higher than George W. Bush at the same moment in his presidency), but the numbers are not high enough to indicate a decisive win for Hillary Clinton and suggests a relatively close race. However, this is only one factor to look at. The state of the economy is also important, and though employment and the stock markets are up, income has not followed suit. A unique factor in this particular presidential election is that both candidates are historically unpopular. In addition, recent revelations about Donald Trump have tilted the race toward Mrs. Clinton. After his talk, he took questions from students regarding how predictions take voter turnout into account, if a terrorist attack would change the outcome of the election, and the influence of third party candidates.