After all of the election predictions I read, and after the election dust has settled, I have lost a ton of respect for several right-wingers, from pundits to people I know personally, who just knew Obama would lose. Moreso for the ones I know personally, because, 1) The pundit's job is, in part, to incite, and 2) There wasn't as much respect to lose with the pundits in the first place.
Here's the reason: There was so much data for political followers to, well, follow. It all pointed to Obama. Even after the first debate. Even up to Sandy. The Electoral College still pointed to Obama.
Now, I'm not talking about an opinion, simple prediction, hunch, or anything qualified with, "I don't know for sure, but I think..." What I'm talking about are the cocksure, no-doubt-about-it proclamations that Romney was for sure going to win. Even in a "landslide" as one Facebook friend put it. I simply can no longer respect anything he has to say of opinion in political discussion.
Because the data didn't support it, and yet he made his assertion without any qualifier. Sure, some doubted the validity of the polls. So qualify your claim by predicating it with that for your reasoning. But even so, ALL polls being wrong on the Electoral College? REALLY?
I was following Nate Silver's work at http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/. As a stats geek, I found it fantastic reading every day. Yet these right-wing critics called him liberal and biased. Fine, but then explain what in his writing is showing bias in his picking Obama day after day. (Crickets.)
They couldn't, because there was nothing. The guy simply had too much of a reputation at stake to risk it on bias. Unlike, say, a Dick Morris who seems to make a career out of being wrong. Dead wrong.
So Silver ends up nailing it, spot on: 332 electoral votes for Obama, just like his most likely scenario showed on his final post before the polls opened. Fantastic.
Perhaps Steven Colbert was right when he said, "Reality has a liberal bias."
Elf
2 weeks ago
2 comments:
Great post, TSnide! I rarely post about politics but am workin' on one of my own this week. And I ABSOLUTELY agree with you about Silver. If he hasn't developed the definitive predictive model then I don't know who has.
It was amazing, but as a stats geek I also understand that his success didn't prove anything. Even he said Romney had a 10% chance of winning, so if Romney did win, that wouldn't have proven his methods wrong. So again, all I'm really railing against are those klunkheads who "knew" with absolute certainty that their guy was going to win. I would also throw in those who ignored Silver's and others' work, and believed only those whose predictions matched their own hopes.
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