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Nate Silver claims to be a statistician, not a clairvoyant. While there is a sense of inevitability of Romney's nomination, I think it is obvious that the Repu
by cdf 14y ago
Nate Silver claims to be a statistician, not a clairvoyant.
While there is a sense of inevitability of Romney's nomination, I think it is obvious that the Republican voters agree with you that he is not a compelling candidate and were desperately looking for alternatives, and as each candidate wilted in the spotlight, they kept moving on to the next, and polling numbers reflected that, and Nate Silver was merely reporting that shift.
- dkrich 14y agoSo is that at all at odds with what I said? I'm saying that I haven't found his predictions to be useful because they have not correctly predicted anything that I myself didn't predict with the same information without any statistical analysis. Sure, he predicted it with 3% greater accuracy. So what? Sadly what makes most elections predictable is how shitty the candidates are on one side. To be fair I don't think that a statistical analysis will ever be useful in an election unless the election is absolutely a dead heat. Most elections for the past several years (with the obvious exception of 2000) have been fairly predictable from the outset.