Nate Silver Mentioned in Doonesbury

To quote Chris Matthews: HA!

Nate Silver's 538 Blog



Via Political Carnival

Nate Silver, Polls and Arithmatic

Well, Nate Silver was right. Exactly right. He couldn't have been more right. His Monte Carlo models for 2012 accurately predicted the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive, as well as which states would go blue for Obama. Well-done, Sir. You have now become part of election history, and I'm glad you also stuck to your guns when others were taunting you and with Politico calling you a "one-term celebrity." I guess they should have said "Won Term Celebrity."

What's important is that you get the last laugh. :) I think you'll be around in the next election. I'm not sure about the hacks at Breitbart or those guys from Politico. What were their names again?

Excerpt of Silver's Book "The Signal and the Noise" via Daily Beast

Political news, and especially the important news that really affects the campaign, proceeds at an irregular pace. But news coverage is produced every day. Most of it is filler, packaged in the form of stories that are designed to obscure its unimportance. Not only does political coverage often lose the signal—it frequently accentuates the noise.

Snark Amendment: Pundits Wagering War on Nate Silver
Previous Posts on Nate Silver and the Polls



The Romney camp was "shellshocked" over the fact that the Republican-leaning polls were the ones that were skewed, since the party-line had been the opposite for months.

Rush, Dick and Rove Skewed into Frenzy by Polls

In the last days of the campaign, people were coming out of the woodwork to predict a landslide, which had nothing to do with the reality of the polls, most of which showed Obama ahead at that time. I gathered up their quotes and tweets here:

Snark Amendment: Republicans Predict Romney Landslide

Yeah, the GOP got a landslide, all right. They are going to be digging their way out of it for years to come!



I think one reason ordinary voters drank that Kool-Aid in addition to the Romney Camp, was that some spineless pundits in the mainstream were hedging bets on the outside chance that all the Democratic pollsters were A. Delusional and B. Liars. For instance, CNN kept talking about the "razor thin margin" which somehow gave the advantage to Mitt instead of Obama, when their own internal polling showed otherwise. Chris Cillizza at Washington Post moved Ohio into the "toss-up" column just because Romney needed it so much to win.

The Dems who took a "poll of polls" approach and checked in with statisticians and oddsmakers were not nearly as confused. Yes, we were also nervous and scared about the unknown outcome, yes, but we were not AS confused about the data. And in the end, this election was all about the math.

Bookmark these websites for future elections - math works!

538.com - Nate Silver
ElectoralVote.com
Princeton - Sam Wang
PredictWise


Below is a list compiled by professor Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D. of Fordham University. It shows which pollsters did a good job of accurately predicting the election outcome. It's a good idea to save this list for the next election so you can avoid the polls from CNN down to AP because those were the most biased and least accurate.

Fordham University List of Pollsters Ranked from Most Accurate to Least Accurate

Most (22) polls overestimated Romney support, while six (6)
overestimated Obama strength (indicated with a * below), but none of the 28 national preelection polls I examined had a significant partisan bias.
The following list ranks the 28 organizations by the predictive accuracy of their final, national pre-election estimates (as reported on pollster.com).

1. Ipsos/Reuters
2. YouGov
3. PPP (D)
3. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
4. Angus-Reid*
5. ABC/WP*
6. Pew Research*
6. Hartford Courant/UConn*
7. Purple Strategies
8. NBC/WSJ
8. CBS/NYT
8. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Democracy Corps (D)*
12. CNN/ORC
12. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
12. Politico/GWU/Battleground
12. FOX News
12. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
12. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
12. American Research Group
12. Gravis Marketing
13. National Journal*
14. Rasmussen
14. Gallup
15. NPR
16. AP/GfK

Polls are Tightening As Dems Have Hope for Biden-Ryan Debate

I usually enjoy writing headlines, but this one makes me cringe. With just a few weeks to go, Obama has lost his lead in the election, mainly due to what was seen as his lackluster performance in last week's debate. My own take is that some viewers who have been checked out for the past few months took Romney's "enthusiasm" as somehow more honest than Obama's rather understated way of talking. And it didn't help that moderator Jim Lehrer was asleep at the wheel and let Romney bully him, but oh well . . . here we are now.

A PEW Poll released on October 8th nearly drove some Dems over the edge:
Snark Amendment: Le Pew: Dems Panic Over One Stinky Poll

Unfortunately, other polls show an increasing problem for President Obama since he has lost his big lead and the race is nearly a dead heat. But there is still hope that things might turn around quickly after tomorrow night's debate between VP Joe Biden and VP wannabe Paul Ryan. Fingers crossed.

From The Daily Beast

. . . while hile these numbers are painful for Obama supporters, the election is close to a tie overall. The Pew survey is just one poll, capturing one moment in time. Consider Monday’s Washington Times/Zogby poll, which showed Romney and Obama in an effective tie, with Romney slightly ahead by 45.1 to 44.5 percent. If you factor in Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Obama is actually ahead by half a point, 45.5 to 45 percent.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen’s tracking numbers also show a tie, with both candidates at 48 percent. The Gallup numbers put Romney only slightly ahead at 49 to 47 percent. And yesterday, Rasmussen reported that 55 percent of likely voters still think Obama is probably going to win in November.

The electoral map also continues to shape up in the President’s favor. Although Romney is ahead by one in Ohio, according to the latest ARG survey, he trails by three in both Pennsylvania (PDF) and Virginia (PDF).

From Nate Silver's 538 Blog

Following another day of strong polling on Tuesday, Mitt Romney advanced into the best position in the FiveThirtyEight forecast since the party conventions. His chances of winning the Electoral College are now 28.8 percent in the forecast, his highest since Aug. 29. For the first time since Aug. 28, President Obama is projected to win fewer than 300 electoral votes. And Mr. Obama’s projected margin of victory in the national popular vote — 2.0 percentage points — represents the closest the race has been since June 27.
The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up; Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we can be surer about that.
But we are ready to conclude that one night in Denver undid most of the advantage Mr. Obama had appeared to gain in September.

Statistics Show Ryan a Risky Game Change like Sarah Palin

USA Today Gallop Poll

Only Dan Quayle in a 1988 Harris Poll of likely voters was viewed less positively than Ryan, with 52% rating Quayle as a "fair" or "poor" vice presidential choice. The Ryan poll includes all adults, not just registered voters.
. . . The poll also finds 17% of adults say they are more likely to vote for Romney in November because Ryan is his running mate -- about the same impact Sarah Palin had for John McCain four years ago among registered voters.
. . . Republicans, however, see the appeal in Ryan, who was hailed this weekend as a bold, innovative thinker by party stalwarts. The poll finds 36% of Republicans are now more likely to vote for Romney. In 2008, only 3 in 10 Republicans said the choice of Palin made them more likely to vote for McCain.

Nate Silver on 538 Blog: Ryan a Risky "Game Change"

. . . Why am I concluding that Mr. Romney would have chosen Mr. Ryan only if he felt he was losing? Because from a Politics 101 point of view, this isn’t the most natural choice.

. . .The last time an ordinary member of the House was elected vice president, and the last Republican, was more than 100 years ago: in 1908, when William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman, a New York congressman, were chosen by voters. (Coincidentally, that fall was also the last time that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.)

Politics 101 suggests that you play toward the center of the electorate. Although this rule has more frequently been violated when it comes to vice-presidential picks, there is evidence that presidential candidates who have more “extreme” ideologies (closer to the left wing or the right wing than the electoral center) underperform relative to the economic fundamentals.

Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.