I thought the reason Silver got it right was because the polls were pretty good. As a whole, the polls showed the two candidates neck to neck, with Obama leading in key states. Now, what you might be talking about is how the media covered the polls - they were cherrypicking data points that made for juicier stories, which is the case in most election years. If an individual poll result is the story, that means we should probably ignore that result. I mean, I remember back in 2008, a major newspaper that should know better putting "Poll shows Obama and McCain tied" on the front page after an aberration in the AP poll.
The state polls were good except for the ones that the Romney campaign favored. The national polls ended up being alright too, putting Obama up 1.6 points by the end. Silver and the other quants never had much use for the national polls, though, as their task was to estimate electoral votes. They nailed that, settling on 303 mostly, with maybe 332 if Florida went Obama's way. Bingo. Although even the state polls were a bit tilted toward Romney -- ironically given how Silver was allegedly pro-Dem. Iowa, New Hampshire, and Colorado went substantially more to Obama than Silver forecasted, Virginia 1 point more, Florida 0.5 points more, and North Carolina 0.5 points less. Only Ohio significantly was more to Romney, at 1.7 points.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/what-the-2012-election-would-have-looked-like-with Not sure this should go here, so feel free to move it if it doesnt belong but its definately interesting.
Nate Silver has a funny interview whereby he says, diplomatically, that the right wing appears to be unhinged, and that the people who criticize him for his political calls are dumber than the ones who argue with his sports' predictions. He lets loose this gem, when asked if statisticians are really *that* smart - This bit is even better, it's so good I wonder if it was a set-up question - http://deadspin.com/5960364/skew-yourselves-nate-silver-is-here-to-answer-your-questions
Otherwise they'd be dancing around the maypole singing Up With People? I'm more of a nature over nurture guy.
It turns out that there was no real difference between Nate Silver's and Sam Wang's models, it's just (as I suspected) Nate got careful and hedged - Thus, when the media reported this as a 50/50 race, it was a 99/1 race. CNN needs to fire every single one of its pundit talkers and hire a whole bunch of bright, eager, inquisitive young people who know how to do data analysis.
I don't think it's a coincidence at all that MSNBC has been growing by leaps and bounds since they started giving young, smart, eloquent, and engaging personalities more opportunities.
Speaking as a quasi-old person, the quasi-old and actually old political pundits on television are absolute shit. George ********ing Will? Krauthammer? Noonan? Rove? Morris? Gag me And I'm none too impressed by the lefty geezers on MSNBC either. So going young can't be wrong. There must be a couple of geezers who are alright. Carville is good as a humor columnist. .
Exactly. There isn't even a comparison betwee the wonky young folks I just mentioned and MSNBC's old guard: Ed Shultz, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Al Sharpton.
And besides being my dream woman, where would you say Alex fits into the equation? In her frequent appearances as a guest along side Chris Hayes on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, she seems to fit the young wonkish mold. But unfortunately on her own show, she seems a little too enthralled with some of the older hacks that frequently sit on her panel (see Mark Halperin).
You know, I've seen her a couple times maybe. So can't really claim an opinion other than than she's cute as a button.
Remember our friend Dean Chambers of "Unskewed Polls" fame? He sure was chastened by the election going pretty much as Nate Silver projected. So you know what he's up to? Running a site alleging widespread voter fraud!
The thing about her is that her show's format doesn't require her to be super opinionated. Her panel is big and she's basically there to arbitrate and lead the direction of the discussion. She's very smart, funny and laid back which makes her panel one of the most enjoyable discussions on all of MSNBC. The problem with the old guard is that most of their shows are basically the host spewing the most unintelligent opinions like they're in a war with the GOP and they want to score any cheap point they can get ... I let Matthews get away with it because he actually scores real points sometimes.
That could lead to having less pols at the end of the race or asking the media to not comment on them since it could lead to lower voter turn out, the voters for the Party that is down could say fuck it the pols say we will lose so why vote, the voters for the Party that is up could say, it is in the bag so why bother with the long lines I will just stay at home. I mean think of Florida, what if all the networks did report that Obama has a 99% chance of winning (while Fox news claiming they are all lies and pumping up their viewers to go vote), so the people waiting in line for 2 hours could say, fuck this, Obama does not need my vote, I am going home (I guess that that would have been ok since Obama did not need Florida anyways). Like I said before, this was the case in Mexico with all the pols giving PRI an easy victory with almost 50% of the vote (in a 3 Party election basically), the polls were right and PRI won but by a smaller margin, so the losing parties claimed that the polls and the media (that was backing PRI anyways) discouraged voters with their commenting on the PRI lead in the polls. (3 Party races are probably harder to predict than 2 Party races). Then again, the media should report the facts (unless you are Fox) regardless of what they are, so perhaps fears of voter discouragement are over blown in my part.
I swear I just got to this thread today and I see you posted about the great new site that I posted about later in the day.
Im pretty sure you and I are essentially the same person as far as news sources a pop culture tastes go.
I am baffled by this. The age group that depends the most on government programs votes most heavily against the party that gave them those programs and for the ticket that includes the guy who wants to voucherize Medicare. What is the explanation for this?
The plans to voucherize Medicare are only for people not actually on Medicare or soon to be on Medicare. I think the idea was for it to be for people under 55. Which is about as big of a tell as you could come up with. The plan OBVIOUSLY sucks for recipients which is why they don't want anyone thinking too much about how it would affect THEM.