One thing about the election season just past: the nerds got it right. Andy Tanenbaum at electoral-vote.com, Nate Silver at the Times, Sam Wang at Princeton, and Scott Elliott at electionprojection.com all the nailed or came close to nailing the electoral vote.
That's because these guys looked hard at the numbers and weren't swayed by ideology. Andy and Nate are left-leaning, Scott is right-leaning, don't know about Sam. But out there, as Frank Rich points out, most of the Republican party was living in Fantasyland, where the polls were all skewed and their feelings, or desire, that Romney would win were facts. No, they're not, and it turns out that the Romney campaign drank the Kool-Aid on this, unskewing public and their own polls to match "reality." They were surprised that Romney lost, despite months of polling data showing him behind Obama.
Next time around, I suggest paying attention to the facts, not your daydreams.
Beating all of the prognosticators including Mr. Silver was a local math genius, Matt Hubbard, who lives in downtown Oakland. Here's a link to him crowing about his latest, real triumph:
ReplyDeletehttp://lotsasplainin.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-hard-is-it-to-beat-nate-silver.html
I was following his posts over the last month and was one of the few people not terrified about the coming Republican backwards onslaught, only because his analysis of the numbers were so persuasive that this was not going to be the case.
Good suggestion but not very likely.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mike!
ReplyDeleteDr. B, one can hope.