Ed Kilgore is correct that Nate Silver would be better off without a fan base that only loves him as long as he’s telling them what they want to hear. On the other hand, people should understand what Nate does well and what he doesn’t do well. Nate is the best at telling you how things stand in the present. For the most part, that’s what his models are really designed to describe. Some parts of the present aren’t going to change, like (for the most part) who the candidates are and what they’ve done so far with their lives. So, Nate can tell you that an incumbent senator is more likely to beat a state representative than a sitting governor. That element of his prediction will still be true in November. But the fundraising can change. The candidates can make gaffes. Scandalous information can come to light. World events can turn upside down or go completely pear-shaped.
What Nate is not good at is anticipating events. He’s not terrible at it, but he’s not your go-to guy for that kind of analysis. If you want to know who is going to win on Election Day, wait for the day before Election Day and ask Nate. If you want to know who is going to win right now, ask Nate, but also ask other people (like yours truly) who have pretty damn good records of predicting the broad outlines of elections months out from Election Day.
Right now, Nate’s incredibly pessimistic about the Dems’ chances of winning senate races in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. I don’t think his degree of pessimism is warranted. That doesn’t mean I think anyone should be upset with Nate. He’s committed to being right, not pleasing me. And he’s one of the most valuable resources any analyst could ask for.
Let us all not forget that Nate is only as good as the data he has used to base his predictions on. The several items that I have read Nate has used several Right wing supported polls. I myself do not put much faith in any political polls. Seems that I remember the GOP was predicting a landslide win for Mitt and we all know how that turned out.
Want to know for sure who is winning go out and vote, vote early and get all you know and vote together.
Remember If you do not vote you just supported the GOP and All of their policies! VOTE!
Every polling outfit Silver uses gets weighted depending on how much to the left or right they shade historically. So if a poll continually overestimates the chances of right wing candidates, that gets accounted for.
Some of Nate’s greatest writing has been about the accuracy and inaccuracy of various polls and critiques of polling methodologies. Nate knows the data he uses better than anyone else.
A major component of Integrity is consistency in actions.
For Nate, that is using and improvising what he has found to be a very prescient system of statistically
based Political predictions.
For me, Integrity is I luved Nate when he was predicting
Democratic wins, and I still luve Nate even he is
saying what I and all other Democrats do Not want to
hear. Ya gotta take the bad news with the good news, until you feel you have too much fault to change your opinion.
People with Integrity don’t change opinions based on a
SINGLE opinion!
Go DEMS,
Go Nate
yup. When the rain pours, you can piss and moan and get wet, or hunker down and try to start a fire to dry off.
You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Well, if you want to predict the future, I’d go with Krugzilla. But I agree that Silver is very good at reading the lay of the land. But I wonder about how good “generic ballots” are in this hyper-partisan landscape?
As things stand now, it’s looking dire for Democrats, but even Nate himself said it’s a long time until election day.
For instance, Mitch McConnell might mistake the Kentucky Wildcats for the Duke Blue Devils.
I mean if THAT’S not politically fatal, what is?
referring to Kurt Schilling as “another Yankee fan.”
Generic ballots are what pollsters put out when they don’t have someone specifically asking them to poll a turf. They are mostly bullshit because there is no reliable way (including PVI) to forecast to smaller units of turf from them. And poli sci folks have been trying for maybe as much as a century to do that.
The problem is akin to taking the generic weather of the US and predicting the weather eight months ahead in one media market from that. And being counted on a rain/not rain scale of blue market/yellow market.
Still, one can predict in April that Chicago’s December is going to be cold. Similarly, one can predict in December that the following July is going to be hot. Regarding rain /not rain. That can be done too. Not with pinpoint accuracy but with better than 50-50 odds.
Generic ballots are crap, top to bottom. Everyone hates congress, but loves the local guy. Everyone hates one party or another, but they often pull the lever for the person who has been around in one party or the other.
This is an example of how pundits get so hard to read. It’s as if none of us lived through 2010 or read 538 then. I wonder who Kilgore or Wiegel think their audience is — people too dumb to remember 2010 but fascinated by 2008, 2012 and 2014? Other pundits who think their audience is that dumb?
We are used to the idea that pundits are FoS, because there are so few good ones these days. But there are, and certainly have been, and so obviously can be, good pundits.
But here’s the thing. NATE SILVER IS NOT A PUNDIT. He’s a statistician. He’s real good with numbers. He is not real good with understanding politics.
The numbers at this stage are not very authoritative for November.
Silver is committed to using his statistical expertise to tell you what his statistical methods see. Right now they are all over the place because the factors shaping the events are still in a high state of randomness. For one thing, most people are not paying attention to the election yet. A survey sample may get a bunch of folks who say “What election?” and then go on to answer as if they know; later they might change their minds several times.
Silver is pretty tight about reporting his opinion and it is straightforward statistical work without a whole lot of poli sci analysis. And right now, he is self-confessed ahead of being able to use the model he uses later in the season.
Instead of being so fixated on the statistical forecasts this year, I hope there are some/many Democratic candidate operations that are intent of proving them wrong and have the strategic and organizational chops to surprise all of us.
It is getting late for campaign organizations to get started on laying the ground work for November. Most especially folks who have to be pretty well known in their turf and have positive name recognition. County fair time is for rallying volunteers, not introducing oneself.
Right as rain. Last week we had our Illinois primary. I’ll wager that over 50 percent of the electorate can’t tell you who the Republican candidate for Senator is. I’ll bet further that over 50 per cent can’t tell you who the Democratic candidate is and he is not only the sitting Senator but he was unopposed! Yes, the electorate is that dumb. Otherwise how could Koch brothers’ ads make a difference?
“Yes, the electorate is that dumb. Otherwise how could Koch brothers’ ads make a difference?”
The dollar figures are scary, but the fact is, we don’t even know that Koch brothers’ ads do make a difference.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/17/1132835/-The-GOP-s-last-hope-ineffective-billionaire-funded
-attack-ads
This is no time for complacency, but it’s no time for panic either.
Last I checked, turnout was 16-17% and it was an all time low for Illinois.
Nate’s “fan base” probably doesn’t have a clue how this whole statistical schtick works. They just like that he was correct in 2012, and they are hanging onto that success like some magic chalice. thinking that he is something akin to a lucky rabbits foot in their political pocket.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that 2014 is going to be a severely uphill slog in the Dem camp. So getting ones shorts in a knot over some generalizations Silver makes, months away from the election, and which are obvious to anyone who pays the least bit of attention to the political winds is just, well…..stupid.
Nate Silver has certainly been a one of the 2 best sources (with Sam Wang) for data-driven work in the past few elections. But now I see he’s hired a climate denialist to analyze global warming and I’m forced to conclude he’s been a go-to guy only because the competition is so awful (apart from Wang). And it’s basically true; I think the typical pundit is like Fox News: so incredibly bad you’re better informed if you watch no news at all than if you watch them.
That said, my casual analysis of the current state of the races agrees with Silver – about 50-50 for control of the Senate, with a slight edge to the Republicans. And I also think that if the Democrats don’t start beating the drums about the great things they’ve done like Obamacare, higher taxes on unearned income, ending the wars, Lily Ledbetter, etc., and the things they could have done if the Republicans weren’t blocking them like minimum wage and immigration reform, it’s going to get worse.
One of the hazards of taking money from a big newspaper. You have to toe the company line. Look at some of the dumb shit that Booman’s said about Obama. I give him a pass because I figure he has to suck up some to keep his White House press pass. We all have to suck up a bit to keep our jobs.
You know, not hating obama does not equal sucking up. Just sayin’.
“Greatest President of my Lifetime”? Unless one is fourteen years old what else can you call it?
It’s not even close, Voice.
Obama has not disgraced himself, shown any moral turpitude, he won reelection easily, and the party is stronger and more progressive than when he took office.
It’s not even close at all.
I call it having a good sense of history and understanding how in so many ways the president doesn’t matter as much as public discourse makes the office to be.
Setting aside the merits of your claim that Booman is a sycophant, why did you even feel the need to take that swipe at him? Are you just that deep into derangement?
His degree of pessimism is warranted because that’s what the facts show. The facts could still change but then so would his analysis.
Funny word, “pessimism”. I think Silver is a conservative, myself.
I don’t think he’s into politics enough to really care.
His real love is baseball.
Well from the point of view of the anti-GOP.
Also why would you think that? Curious.
I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised that things aren’t looking great for midterms. A) they rarely do for dems and B) the anti-obamacare propaganda that is being flung around in many of these states is astounding and C) the House is still gerrymandered and D) voter suppression is alive and well in numerous states, matured a little since the last round.
The main focus for dems in this election should be on state leg and preparing for the presidential run in 2016. We can stave off the worst damage from the white house while building up real change from the ground up. I’ll still lend a hand to Franken here in MN, but my main focus will be on the leg and the governor.
Anything can change, of course.
In reverse order:
People vote their emotions, and sometimes let their intellects get a word in. That’s why ads usually work.
Willie Horton and Daisy Nuke Girl are waiting in the wings. The show hasn’t started yet for most of us.
I will always be a Nate Silver fan. What I care about first is to not be self-deluded. Nate has a clear eye on the stats and his devotion to accuracy is why he gets my eyeballs. If I need partisan red meat for that adrenaline fix, I go to Daily Kos user diaries. But sadly, their devotion to facts are all over the place.
To be fair, Silver has only projected the outcomes of three national elections — 2008-2012. Those weren’t all that difficult to project. Nor were the 2002-2006 elections based on the polling numbers months before election day. (The dKos folks got all three wrong because they didn’t know how to read and evaluate polls. To be fair, one did have to go beyond the polls to detect that Democrats would have big gains in 2006.)
So far, nothing has emerged to suggest that 2014 will be like 2006 and therefore, the current expectation would be more similar to 1986 and 1998. With the exception that two to four retiring Democratic Senators will be replaced by Republicans. But KY and GA may flip the other way.