Polling aggregation website founder Nate Silver was so confident that Republican challenger Karen Handel would lose the Georgia special election Tuesday evening that he declared the death of math if she won.
The prominent statistician gave Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff a 70 percent chance of winning, leaving a 30 percent chance that Handel would claim the office. Handel handily won the race with 51.9 percent, and Ossoff trailed with 48.1 percent.
It means there’s a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 14, 2017
Although Silver called the Georgia special election wrong, his analysis of the 2016 presidential election was actually the friendliest to President Donald Trump, and therefore the most accurate. The site gave Trump a 28.6 percent chance of defeating Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. Although that’s still a low chance, it was much higher than the 1 percent chance that the New York Times gave Trump in the final days of the presidential election.
Trump predicted Handel’s win as early as April 17, when he said that a runoff will lead to a win.
“With eleven Republican candidates running in Georgia on Tuesday for Congress, a runoff will be a win. Vote ‘R’ for lower taxes and safety!” the president tweeted before Ossoff earned 48 percent in the April 18 election.
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