Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Don't listen to that pollster

Pollsters - what do pollsters know?

Let's listen to the sage council of Robert Shrum: "Democrats must run on Obamacare in November."  Yes, that's good advice.

8 comments:

What a difference 538 days makes said...

In October 2012, Red State called Nate Silver a “fake work of art" and "a relatively dumb liberal propagandist" with "some serious disconnections from reality" who made "nonsensical" projections about "this wet dream within American liberalism of an Obama re-election."

It's nice to see Nate Silver has finally won the right's trust in a midelection year.

Eric said...

Who said anything about Nate Silver?

Anonymous said...

Hot Air did ("what do pollsters know?"). In 2014, they have no desire to unskew this peek into the future:

"Speaking of defeat, take a look at the table Harry Enten put together over at Nate Silver’s new site. Going back more than 75 years, only once has the party that controls the presidency at the time seen its generic ballot numbers improve between spring of a midterm election year and election day. The numbers almost always decline — suggesting that Democrats may become more, not less, vulnerable to a Senate takeover as 2014 wears on."

non-Anonymous said...

Maybe the right learned from the 2012 experience that there's something to Silver's methodology. Wouldn't the sensible thing then be to give his projections more respect? Which is what they are doing.

Now on the other hand we have the left, which is for some reason now lambasting and attacking Silver, a pollster who has (I think we can agree) proven himself to be undeserving of such attacks.

What's the reason then for the sudden turnaround by the left? Could it have to do with Silver's prediction for the Democrats to lose the Senate this year?

So we have the right changing its mind on Silver because of past performance, and the left changing its mind because...why?

Eric said...

By the way, Nate Silver has a post today where he lists how Paul Krugman had nothing but glowing reviews for Silver's 538 blog as long as it reported the results Krugman wanted.

It's very tongue-in-cheek.

Anonymous said...

Silver doesn't mention anything about desired results. He suggests that Krugman's waning love seems to be in sync with Silver's departure from Team New York Times.

Maybe the right learned from the 2012 experience that there's something to Silver's methodology. Wouldn't the sensible thing then be to give his projections more respect?

Which came after the 2010 experience, and before that, the 2008 experience. The sensible reaction would have been to get sensible sooner.

Now on the other hand we have the left, which is for some reason now lambasting and attacking Silver, a pollster who has (I think we can agree) proven himself to be undeserving of such attacks.

Have you ever seen such viciousness and hate? For the most part, Democrats are trying to rouse their base and fundraise off Silver's 2014 projection. They've sent out more than a dozen donation emails in 2014 with titles like "Nate Silver's projections (bad news)" and "Nate Silver's terrifying math."

They're treating him like an alarm bell, not a crazy huckster. No one's accusing Silver of being yet another wingnut in the tank for the Republicans, and no one has created a make-believe website to "unskew" him. It's doubtful that Lawrence O'Donnell is going to walk down MSNBC's hallways on this coming November's television to demand an explanation for the impossible result.

Eric said...

What the hell is MSNBC?

Nielsen Mandela said...

MSNBC is the network that is currently in second place among the three cable news channels fighting over the combined 9/10ths of 1 percent of the American population that watches any of them.

In prime time, that is. During the rest of the day, the three channels' combined viewership numbers are much, much lower than that.