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Politics

‘Unskewed’ Pollster: ‘Nate Silver Was Right, And I Was Wrong’

Brett LoGiurato | Nov. 7, 2012, 12:47 PM | 52,545 | 73
Dean Chambers

Courtesy of Dean Chambers

Dean Chambers, the man who garnered praise from the right and notoriety on the left for his “Unskewed Polling” site, admitted today that his method was flawed.“Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong,” Chambers said in a phone interview.

Chambers’ method of “unskewing” polls involved re-weighting the sample to match what he believed the electorate would look like, in terms of party identification. He thought the electorate would lean more Republican when mainstream pollsters routinely found samples that leaned Democratic.

But as it turned out, the pollsters were right — self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 6% in election exit polls.

“I think it was much more in the Democratic direction than most people predicted,” Chambers said. “But those assumptions — my assumptions — were wrong.”

Chambers’ official Electoral College prediction ended up being much more tame than other conservatives, including Dick Morris. Chambers predicted Romney would win 275 electoral votes to Obama’s 263.

But he said he probably won’t go back to “unskewing” polls next time. He actually thinks conservative-leaning pollsters like Scott Rasmussen have a lot more explaining to do.

“He has lost a lot of credibility, as far as I’m concerned,” Chambers said. “He did a lot of surveys. A lot of those surveys were wrong.”

The four assumptions about polls that people got completely wrong >

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The Water Cooler
73 Comments

Jamie D on Nov 7, 6:02 PM said:

That’s because the polls tell us how things are most likely to turn out. When something different happens, it is cause for suspicion. Don’t you get that? That is the whole point of this discussion – the social scientists and statisticians were correct. Rasmussen is not a statistician. He is a Republican hack. There are hacks on the other side as well, and they shouldn’t be regarded any higher.

Myron on Nov 7, 7:19 PM said:

I respect that he admitted he was wrong. I never paid unskewed polls any mind, b/c I know that Nate and Real Clear Politics had a great track record. Anyway, he’s so right about Rasmussen. Ras was also the worst in the 2010 cycle.

LMFAOSchwartz on Nov 7, 8:03 PM said:

“Chambers’ method of “unskewing” polls involved re-weighting the sample to match what he believed the electorate would look like, in terms of party identification.” This is not a case of Silver being right and Chambers being wrong, but of Silver applying rigor and science to the task of scientific polling, and Chambers just clicking his heels three times and saying “I wish Obama was back in Kenya.”Chambers admitting that he got it wrong shows nothing like courage. He got it wrong because he intended it to be wrong; he was misleading people. That he did it and then hurled insults at Silver, who, once again proved himself best in the biz–shows the exact opposite of moral fiber. It’s like the kid with his fat hand in the cookie jar admitting when caught, “yeah, that was me; I had my hand in the cookie jar.”

frankelee on Nov 7, 8:49 PM said:

He wasn’t wrong about the deliciousness of Hot Pockets.

Kristyne Mednick on Nov 7, 9:03 PM said:

What’s missing from Dean’s statement? How about that horrible editorial he posted on the Examiner, decrying Nate Silver’s numbers because he was “gay”, “effeminate”, “girly” and such? He’s really not owning his mistake. He blames Rassmussen, but what about QStar, which were polls he was responsible for?It’s also well known that Dean had a couple of sock puppet accounts, one in particular where he stole a woman’s photo…and called every critic “Libtard virgin”.Dean isn’t a statistician. He’s not a pollster. He’s not even a pundit. He’s a child who gained celebrity from Bullshit Mountain.

Dean Chambers on Nov 7, 9:52 PM said:

@Kristyne Mednick:

I do not have any suck “sock puppets” I posted under my own name only. But given that the sock puppet you reference has a picture on it looking much like your own, I suspect that and your knowledge of it points to it being yours. I suggest you delete and quit slandering immediately.

David Hart on Nov 7, 10:21 PM said:

Well, what’s else CAN he say? He won’t lack for work, like Dick Morris, Rasmussen, Gallup, et. al., he’ll be back next election. These guys never have to actually atone for their constant inability to get anything right, they usually just make lame excuses and then show up the next election cycle. If this guy wants to be at all credible in the years to come, he’s DAMN well better say he was wrong and do it right the next time. It’s time for the clown act to stop.

PCLC on Nov 7, 10:50 PM said:

fat boy still has a dim light of recognition of what went wrong. when he says the dem representation was 6 points higher than the repubs and that was unexpected, well…bs. it has been that way for a while. he chose his alternate view of the universe and stuck to it to his dismay.

Jiang Qing on Nov 7, 11:26 PM said:

Oh look, an honest idiot. I hope the 15 minutes were worth it. Must have been educated in the South.

Mo on Nov 8, 1:15 AM said:

No Dean’s polling was spot on, its just that those dastardly liberals managed to skew reality.

Johnny on Nov 8, 1:37 AM said:

How’s the bigotry working out for you now Dean? And Faux for that matter? Is there some support group for people with such small, racist, hateful minds like yours or do you just check in to a local head hospital so the tax payers can help you out? It’s certainly a preexisting condition! You don’t deserve the attention of anyone. Your hate, racism and bigotry are one thing but even worse, your complete lack of intelligence or respect for science ( and that includes basic math ) is far more disturbing. You and your ilk thrive on stupid and sowing the seeds of idiocy to maintain a gullible populace. I may not agree with Democrats on much but I certainly will vote for them when the alternative is to vote for government sponsored destruction of the minds of the people with punks like you pushing snake oil and the Faux news drinking it up and puking it all over the television. The American people deserve better. Forward.

jeff hoffman on Nov 8, 3:01 AM said:

Advice to Dean Chambers: take some of the money they paid you and buy a mirror.

elcidharth on Nov 8, 3:40 AM said:

It is funny, in these days of social media dominating news channels that an adamant election predictor like Dean Chambers, get any press, all except in a conservative propaganda campaign machine.
I wrote many critical posts from the day one, when everybody and their conservative brothers-in-law were beating up on Mitt Romney.
The fact that Mitt Romney remained in the ring not because of his merit but because the others demerits overwhelming the debates.
PAC funding is what gets the winner going. Once Mitt Romney cleared the primary hurdle, tons of money was thrown at him, so much so that Democrats start wilting.
This is what is the key to the election win.
More outside money means less likely the candidate

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EZRA KLEIN’S

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Pundit accountability: The official 2012 election prediction thread

Posted by Brad Plumer on November 5, 2012 at 6:00 pm

There are a lot of predictions floating around out there about who will win the presidential election on Tuesday. So why not round them all up in one place?

Place your bets, folks.

Here are the electoral vote predictions from various modelers, political scientists and pundits from around the Internet. All predictions are as of Monday evening. And yes, this will be a fun thread to revisit the day after the election:

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight: Obama 332, Romney 203. This appears to be the most likely scenario in Silver’s model, which now gives Obama a 91 percent chance of winning and shows Florida as basically a tossup. “In order for Mr. Romney to win the Electoral College, a large number of polls, across these states and others, would have to be in error, perhaps because they overestimated Democratic turnout.,” Silver writes.

Intrade: Obama 303, Romney 235. The betting markets also give Obama a 70 percent chance of winning as of Tuesday morning. The main difference from Silver’s model is that Intrade gives Romney a fairly strong chance (65 percent) of winning Florida.

Washington Post’s Outlook contest: There are a slew of different predictions here. Chris Cillizza of the Fix predicts a narrow 277-261 Obama win. Andrew Beyer, our horse-racing columnist, predicts a 284-254 Romney win. And Jason Samenow of the excellent Capital Weather Gang predicts a 281-257 Obama victory.

Sam Wang, Princeton Election Consortium: Obama 303, Romney 235. “In terms of EV or the Meta-margin, [Obama has] made up just about half the ground he ceded to Romney after Debate #1.”

Drew Linzer, Emory University: Obama 326, Romney 212. “The accuracy of my election forecasts depend on the accuracy of the presidential polls,” Linzer writes. ”As such, a major concern heading into Election Day is the possibility that polling firms, out of fear of being wrong, are looking at the results of other published surveys and weighting or adjusting their own results to match.”

Michael Barone, The Examiner: Romney 315, Obama 223. “Both national and target state polls show that independents, voters who don’t identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, break for Romney.”

Ezra Klein, The Washington Post: Obama 290, Romney 248. “I have a simple rule when predicting presidential elections: The polls, taken together, are typically pretty accurate. Systemic problems, while possible, aren’t likely.”

Larry Sabato, UVA Center for Politics: Obama 290, Romney 248. “Who could have imagined that a Frankenstorm would act as a circuit-breaker on the Republican’s campaign, blowing Romney off center stage for three critical days in the campaign’s last week, while enabling Obama to dominate as presidential comforter-in-chief, assisted by his new bipartisan best friend, Gov. Chris Christie (R)?”

Josh Putnam, Davidson College: Obama 332, Romney 206. ”Everything above is based on a graduated weighted average of polls in each state conducted in 2012,” Putnam wrote in explaining his methodology. “The weighting is based on how old a poll is. The older the poll is the more it is discounted. The most recent poll is given full weight.”

Jay Cost, Weekly Standard: Romney victory. “For two reasons,” Cost writes. “(1) Romney leads among voters on trust to get the economy going again. (2) Romney leads among independents.”

Philip Klein, The Examiner: Obama 277, Romney 261. “I’ve given Romney the states that are essentially tied, in which he’s led in at least some recent polls. But in states where Romney has trailed in nearly all polls, and in some cases by a comfortable margin, I’m giving them to Obama.”

Ross Douthat, New York Times: Obama 271, Romney 267. ” In general, I think that the political class tends to overestimate the power of the Hispanic bloc, whose influence is growing more slowly than many pundits and strategists acknowledge. In general, I think that the political class tends to overestimate swing voters’ sympathy for strident social liberalism, and to imagine a lockstep support for legal abortion among female voters that doesn’t actually exist.”

Simon Jackman, Stanford University: Obama 332, Romney 206. “The model uses poll data (and house effect corrections) to generate estimates of Obama and Romney levels of support in the states (and at the national level). The modeling is done simultaneously: if you will, there are up to 52 latent quantities (e.g., Obama support in 50 states, the District of Columbia, plus the national level) moving over time, with polls giving us (noisy) snapshots as to where the latent targets might be on any given day.”

Dave Weigel, Slate: Romney 276, Obama 262. He originally had Romney winning Ohio. But, as he explained yesterday, he’s not so confident about that anymore: “That was 48 hours ago. Since then, I’ve grown more bearish on the Republicans in Ohio, as the final reliable newspaper and college polls arrive. And since then I’ve spent lots of time with different Ohio voter groups, and been surprised by the power of the Ds. So, if you like, you can unskew the prediction.”

Kenneth Bickers, University of Colorado and Kevin Berry, CU-Denver: Romney 330, Obama 208. “While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.” (This model was last updated in October.)

Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect: Obama 303, Romney 235. “[I]f Obama wins on Tuesday, the political science on debates will have won out; they can shift the short-term situation, but they don’t fundamentally change the direction of an election.”

George Will, The Washington Post: Romney 321, Obama 217. “ I guess the wild card in what I’ve projected is I’m projecting Minnesota to go for Romney. Now, that’s the only state in the union, because Mondale held it — native son Mondale held it when Romney was — when Reagan was getting 49 states — the only state that’s voted Democratic in nine consecutive elections. But this year, there’s a marriage amendment on the ballot that will bring out the evangelicals and I think could make the difference.”

Ben Domenech, The Transom: Romney 278, Obama 260. “In sum, I see the bottom slipping out from under Obama’s feet, and a campaign hoping to hold on just long enough to salvage a slim victory, one where he is almost certain to lose the popular vote. He is underperforming among whites and independents, and particularly among those likeliest to vote. I have never believed in running the prevent defense, and Obama has been running it for months.”

Markos Moulitsas: Obama 332, Romney 206. “Currently, national polling assumes a big dropoff from registered voters to likely voters. I don’t believe that’ll be the case, and we’re certainly not seeing it in the early vote—Democratic turnout is up. And the RV models have been more accurate historically.”

Karl Rove: Romney 285, Obama 253. He’s got Romney winning Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, and Florida.

Xu Cheng, Moodys’ Analytics: Obama 303, Romney 235. Note that this prediction was made back in February: “This prediction is tied to the Moody’s Analytics current baseline forecast for U.S. growth, which assumes that most states will continue to recover at slow to moderate speeds.”

James Pethokoukis: Romney 301, Obama 227. “Many pollsters are not catching the stratospheric GOP enthusiasm, particularly among voters of faith, in voting for Romney and Paul Ryan — not just against Obama and Joe Biden. In this way, the Bush-Kerry parallel from 2004 does not hold up”

Joe Trippi, Democratic consultant, Obama 303, Romney 235. Trippi sent in his by e-mail–he’s going with these states.

Dick Morris, FoxNews: Romney 325, Obama 213. ”It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history,” Morris said. “It will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter where in fact Romney’s going to win by quite a bit.”

Jim Cramer, CNBC: Obama 440, Romney 98. Here’s a tweet from Cramer: “No one is going to recall the guy who picks Obama by 10 electorals if it turns out to be 150 margin. Believe me.”

Dean Chambers, UnskewedPolls.com: Romney 275, Obama 263. “Many others in the media project very favorable maps and projections for Obama but those doing so fail to realize or accept how heavily-skewed polls distort any average or analysis that relies on them.”

A ton of predictions from CNN’s pundits. You can see them all here. Paul Begala thinks Obama will win  297-241. Ari Fleischer thinks Romney will win with “minimum 271 EVs.” And so on.

Did we miss any notable predictions? Let us know. And be sure to add yours in comments.

Update: We’ve been adding new predictions as they come in.

719 Comments
kaintuck
12:15 AM EST
Pundit accountability: The official 2012 election prediction threadhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/…

Liked by 1 reader

ReplyReport

NerdWallet
11/7/2012 4:24 PM EST
You forgot the NerdWallet election model which predicted 303 Obama to 235 Romney and called 49 out of 50 states correctly missing only razor-thin margin Florida. The model has been covered in the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and on national television.http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/markets/2012/final-…

eramesan
11/7/2012 3:56 PM EST
Dick Morris, before election: Romney 325, Obama 213. ”It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history,” Morris said. “It will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter where in fact Romney’s going to win by quite a bit.”Dick Morris. after election: I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker.

325 is a landslide if Romney gets it. 332 is a squeaker if Obama gets it.

crankycuss
11/7/2012 3:36 PM EST
Somehow George Will keep on bloviating, and Karl Rove and Dick Morris will keep finding someone to pay them for their facts-resistant nonsense.
kaintuck
11/7/2012 3:08 PM EST
We sure know who the (sore) loser is:George Will, The Washington Post: Romney 321, Obama 217. “ I guess the wild card in what I’ve projected is I’m projecting Minnesota to go for Romney. Now, that’s the only state in the union, because Mondale held it — native son Mondale held it when Romney was — when Reagan was getting 49 states — the only state that’s voted Democratic in nine consecutive elections. But this year, there’s a marriage amendment on the ballot that will bring out the evangelicals and I think could make the difference.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/…

Liked by 2 readers

ReplyReport

1stRuleAboutBush=YouDon’tTalkAboutBush
11/7/2012 11:02 AM EST
Congratulations, Nate!
eddymac99
11/7/2012 7:47 AM EST
Nate Silver has now correctly called 99 states out of 100 in the last two presidential elections.
Liked by 2 readers

ReplyReport

BLT5
11/7/2012 9:18 AM EST
It is pretty damned awesome, isn’t it??
kaintuck
11/7/2012 1:37 AM EST
Dogpile on da wabbit!Pundit accountability: The official 2012 election prediction thread
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/…

addi1
11/7/2012 12:50 AM EST
Which one of the pundits were correct?http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/…

And the winner (seems to be) Drew Linzer, Emory University: Obama 326, Romney 212.

Liked by 2 readers

ReplyReport

BLT5
11/7/2012 9:18 AM EST
Say what? Obama currently stands at 303, with Floridaa’s 29 votes in limbo (but leaning slightly in Obama’s favor).Whether he wins or loses Florida, Obama will not have 326 votes.

twain23
11/6/2012 7:44 PM EST
I’m amused by the Morris quote. He’s one of the most un-astute commenters in recent history, wrong far more often than right. His pronouncement of a Romney victory gives me new confidence in an Obama win.
hsintouch8
11/6/2012 6:30 PM EST
more money printing, more massive spending, buying out unions,more credit downgrades, more lies, propaganda – what you get if you vote for obami
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herrbrahms
11/6/2012 5:31 PM EST
Jim Cramer has clearly been huffing, or is on cough syrup, or has been huffing cough syrup.
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Trisha C
11/6/2012 4:39 PM EST
LOL! Carl Rove? Really? You ACTUALLY took the time to listen to and then report on Carl Rove’s election prediction? I am shocked he didn’t give Romney all of the electoral college points. Listening to pundits on the Republican side (I am talking to you Fox News) is like listening to patients in a mental ward who have not received their medications for the day.
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kblink46
11/6/2012 5:15 PM EST
There is a reason Bush’s nickname for Rove was “terdblossom”
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1Vanna
11/6/2012 5:16 PM EST
The easiest way to fix that is: Don’t Watch Fox News. You already know what they are going to be saying, The only wild card (for entertainment purposes only) is how ridiculous they’ll be in saying it.
kblink46
11/6/2012 5:17 PM EST
I don’t know watching Stepford Wives and Ferrets could be very interesting. Also, Wolf Blitzer is so annoying that he gets in the way of the most knowledgeable guy, David Gergen. Whatever Gergen says is gospel.
makemahday
11/6/2012 4:14 PM EST
Here’s my prediction: 4 more years of gridlock in Congress, regardless of who wins.
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zachjhamilton
11/6/2012 4:01 PM EST
LOL predictions should not be this blatantly partisan! Oh well, they’re meaningless anyway.
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wolfemi1
11/6/2012 4:40 PM EST
“LOL predictions should not be this blatantly partisan!”Okay, you might be being sarcastic, but how could you have a non-partisan election projection? One in which both candidates are given equal chances regardless of polling?

zachjhamilton
11/6/2012 4:54 PM EST
All I’m saying is, look at the political affiliations of those who predict a Romney win against those who predict an Obama win. Perhaps ‘biased’ was the right word, not ‘partisan’ (and you CAN make an OBJECTIVE projection.) But once again, projections are pretty much meaningless. The fact that all Romney backers are projecting a Romney win just makes them a little more meaningless.
Trisha C
11/6/2012 4:54 PM EST
Zach- Exactly! It blows my mind that this reporter actually took the time to tell us that Carl Rove believes that Mitt Romney will win the election! On the side, he also reported that MSNBC pundits all predict an Obama reelection.
On the most important day in politics this reporter proved to us, once again, that “The Spin Misters” of 24 hour news reporting have lost their marbles.
Fox News – Come on, we all know how skewed and misleading this 24 hour news channel reports, who it’s owned by and it’s agenda; put as many extremely conservative people in Washington as possible.
MSNBC- This 24 hour news channel is just as skewed as Fox News Channel, however, they have a soul.
My prediction – I have no idea what the electoral college will be at the end of the election. However, I have to believe, in the end, that American’s are going to vote for the guy who tells the truth and is trustworthy. Hum, I wonder who that guy could be???
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fburgger
11/6/2012 3:58 PM EST
I predict an early Obama lead in most places, but the Romney ticket will catch back up after the republicans get off of work and go vote………..
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wolfemi1
11/6/2012 4:40 PM EST
yuk yuk yuk.
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Susquehanna Studio
11/6/2012 3:52 PM EST
If Nate Silver is wrong then we’re all lost.
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Ken430TX
11/6/2012 4:35 PM EST
That’s funny!
colion
11/6/2012 3:49 PM EST
A bit surprising to me that two pollsters who do not track each other, Gallup and Rasmussen, have Romney at +1
Beingsensible
11/6/2012 4:45 PM EST
It might also surprise you that they are both right leaning…you’ll be very surprised tomorrow morning when you find yourself call him My Dear President Obama…AGAIN! LOL…
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hello dude
11/6/2012 3:06 PM EST
Dems will be gloating tomorrow.
Beingsensible
11/6/2012 4:46 PM EST
And ReTHUGlicans gloat everytime their leader calls them a 47% loser.
middleclassfather
11/6/2012 3:05 PM EST
Dick Morris? Really? This guy couldn’t correctly predict where the sun will set. He predicted Sarah Palin would be a boon to the McCain campaign in 2008. Predicted Donald Trump would run this year and give Obama a good thumpin. Predicted the Democratic leadership would ask Obama to bow out of the 2012 race. Predicted that he would become the new gold standard of stupid. (Wait, that’s my prediction from four years ago.)
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EuroAm
11/6/2012 2:35 PM EST
We’ll see tomorrow…and skewer the losers!
Mystified
11/6/2012 2:28 PM EST
Most of these posts are but a sad reflection of what has become the societal norm. Give me, give me, give me! Anyone remember the infamous JFK quote about asking not what can my country do for me? Trust me, none here have struggled, battled nor lost more than I, so think first before labeling me an imperialist or elitest.Lincoln once said “Tis better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Unfortunately, for those still clinging to hope and change via what was to be the most transparent Presidency in history, Obama HAS removed all doubt while waxing on about the attack on our US Embassy in Benghazi.

To the UN, six times Obama stated the attack was sparked by outrage over an anti-Muslim video! For weeks, he and his staff rejected an and all suggestions the attack was launched by terrorists. The suddenly, a strategic change of sentiment in Debate 2, when he deftly pointed out to Romney – with the assistance of moderator Crowley – that he laid the Benghazi incident at the feet of terrorists in the Rose garden.

I feel for those disillusioned with the capitalistic democracy upon which our great nation was founded, and shall hold you all in disregard should we return an incapable leader to office office and stand aside and watch as our deficit again doubles, our credit rating is again downgraded, our NECESSARY entitlements finally go asunder and our nation slides over the coming fiscal cliff.

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wolfemi1
11/6/2012 4:42 PM EST
TL:DR: I don’t know what I’m talking about, and want Romney to win. Oh, and I’m smart.
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CaliDude
11/6/2012 2:17 PM EST
From the NPR “Political Junkie” podcast: Ken Rudin calls Nevada, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio for Obama. Ron Elving calls Nevada, Wisconsin, and Ohio for Obama.
CaliDude
11/6/2012 2:13 PM EST
Kimberley Strassel from the Wall Street Journal has Romney at 289 EV minimum.
Fighting Armadillo
11/6/2012 2:07 PM EST
I have a better idea than getting pundits (and pollsters) to wager money on their predictions — although, with Nate Silver, I agree it’s an improvement. How about they all sign an agreement that if they are wrong by more than a certain amount, they agree to keep their predictions to themselves for an entire election cycle. That should separate the wheat from the chaff!
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hphoenix
11/6/2012 2:34 PM EST
Exploding pundits! Wonderful! How many could contain themselves for a full election cycle without blowing up? All that hot air has to go somewhere.
EuroAm
11/6/2012 2:39 PM EST
Karl Rove keeping quiet for an entire election cycle…In a pig’s eye! Not without surgery!
colion
11/6/2012 4:28 PM EST
Good idea. But it will not happen. That’s their bread and butter. However, I wish somebody kept a scorecard that was available to the public. This would let people focus on the pollsters who have the best track record. That by itself would, I think, tend to force the weaker ones out.
Fighting Armadillo
11/6/2012 2:05 PM EST
Your really should add the incomparable Newt: “My personal guess is you’ll see a Romney landslide, 53 percent-plus . . . in the popular vote, 300 electoral votes-plus.” I think he also predicted the Republicans would take the Senate. Here’s another “pundit” that should be held accountable for his accuracy.
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HarleyRob22304
11/6/2012 1:42 PM EST
When all is said and done, we will end up with practically the exact same government makeup with have today. HOR in GOP hands, WH and Senate in the Dems. Four years from now, we’ll more than likely be in the same place economically with unemployment etc. Makes you wonder if whoever thought of the definition of insanity had the American voter in mind when he did it.
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missgrace
11/6/2012 1:32 PM EST
I can’t believe Dick Morris is on this list–he is always wrong!
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dmfarooq
11/6/2012 2:15 PM EST
George Will ‘s predictions LOL ! How even a Guru has lost his sense of proportion ,amazing .!
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mattintx
11/6/2012 3:12 PM EST
Guru? No, he just plays one on TV.
chicago56
11/6/2012 4:25 PM EST
George Will, the evangelicals always do vote in force, so how is that going to give any bump the GOP in MN this time around?
NLabbe
11/6/2012 1:31 PM EST
Brad Plummer, I think that you need a binder full of women!
What happened here? This is a completely male list of pundits.
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ColoradoCAPSfan
11/6/2012 1:31 PM EST
You have to realize that Colorado will go for Obama, the reason: the legalization of marijuana on the ballot. if that doesn’t bring out the blue vote…
dmfarooq
11/6/2012 1:26 PM EST
An eye ball average of all the polls listed here Obama vs. Romney , gives President Obama an edge at the top ! Go figure , Go Obama .
PartedOne
11/6/2012 1:20 PM EST
Can we agree that the ones who are substantially wrong don’t get to make a prediction in the next election cycle?
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fedssocr
11/6/2012 1:16 PM EST
Interesting that most of the non-partisan “numbers” people are saying Pbama by a large margin. While the hacks all have it for GOP hacks are pretty much the only one predicting Romney
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1southmt1
11/6/2012 1:09 PM EST
Stock market surges today as Wall Street professionals anticipate Obama victory. Thousands of new millionairs added to the wealth of the nation during the past four years. Pros anticipate Dow 16,000 during 2013.
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Adonis Arkenstone
11/6/2012 1:05 PM EST
Do those who make these predictions get an opportunity tomorrow to explain how they got it right (or wrong)? I think I would find that more entertaining.
wolfemi1
11/6/2012 1:09 PM EST
Dick Morris, I’m looking at you….
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JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 1:12 PM EST
At Fox, calling a Republican to win against all odds, and then come up with a conspiracy theory to explain the theft is called job security.
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bobo13
11/6/2012 2:38 PM EST
Do you notice that they are men and they hardly ever get fired?It’s about power, not about being correct?

zippyspeed
11/6/2012 12:58 PM EST
According to a few projections, they could end up tied at 269 apiece, in which case through various Constitutional mechanisms we would actually end up (given the composition of the House and the Senate) with President Romney and Vice-President Biden. I think that would be funny as hell and who knows, might actually work kinda ok.
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silent_rage
11/6/2012 12:59 PM EST
I would be interesting to say the least.
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silent_rage
11/6/2012 12:59 PM EST
It*
boblesch
11/6/2012 1:00 PM EST
especially if the senate ends up 50-50
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snitzel27
11/6/2012 12:56 PM EST
You forgot the prediction markets. InTrade is predicting Obama victory, 70.4% vs 29.5% for Romney. http://www.intrade.com/v4/misc/scoreboard/
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BradPlumer
11/6/2012 1:11 PM EST
good point, will add!
silent_rage
11/6/2012 12:54 PM EST
Dick Morris, FoxNews: Romney 325, Obama 213. ”It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history,” Morris said. “It will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter where in fact Romney’s going to win by quite a bit.”I was skimming through the predictions without looking at who made them until I cam across this one. I was pretty confused for a second, then I saw who he worked for. HAHAHAHA. This isn’t a prediction, it is wishful thinking.

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JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 12:56 PM EST
When math is your mortal enemy and facts are highly inconvenient, you have to rely on myths.
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silent_rage
11/6/2012 12:58 PM EST
“Wait, I was told there would be no math.”
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JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 1:00 PM EST
When Clinton said Arithmetic, the Republicants were sure he just spoke in Farsi code to let the Iranians know it was ok to make some nukes.
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RicoSuave2
11/6/2012 12:54 PM EST
When Romney loses this election, perhaps he will replace Thomas Monson as president of the LDS Church?
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JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 12:58 PM EST
As long as he gets out of politics. That guy gutted education in Mass, cut taxes for upper income earners, and replaced the income with higher fees on anything he could lay his greasy Mittens on. It’s like a flat tax and national sales tax in which the tax burden is shifted onto the middle class and poor.
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bobo13
11/6/2012 2:40 PM EST
I am not sure the LDL church would accept a bisexual man.
JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 12:52 PM EST
The one that makes me chuckle the most is that Mittens is going to get out more of the so-called faith based vote (I call it the crazy fundy vote) than in 2010 or 2008 or 2004 or 2000. Pethokoukis needs to adjust the tinfoil on his electoral radio cuz he is tuning in The 700 Club. The Republican snake-handler base is one of the most consistent voting blocs, so they do not change the dynamic — a base line does not alter a predictive model based on unpredictable voter turn-out by definition. Poor Republicants, so bad at math.
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rashomon
11/6/2012 1:03 PM EST
And no matter how much wishing people like Pethokoukis do, there is no getting around the fact that some of the fundamentalists are just going to stay home rather than vote for a Mormon.
JIMALLCAPS2
11/6/2012 1:13 PM EST
It’s more about who they hate more, Obama the Kenyan Socialist Terrorist or MIttens the Mormon. No contest in tinfoil hat land
jaduff
11/6/2012 1:34 PM EST
Sad to say, the so-called “faith-based” voters share no religious values outside their individual denominations. What ties them all together then, I wonder, if it is not their evangelical fervor? Could it be – has anyone noticed – is it possible that they are connected by…race? I’m only asking because it looks like to me like a group of really angry white people infuriated about problems that don’t exist. Government controlled health care, for example. And the loosening of welfare requirements. Neither of these things are even remotely true, so why do we keep hearing them? Unless it’s all code for, “I’m afraid that blacks and Mexicans are going to get things for free!” To me, the term Evangelical Christian has become synonymous with the words “bigotry” and “prejudice.”
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truth34
11/6/2012 12:51 PM EST
Why don’t they both run the country for the good of the country.
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truth34
11/6/2012 12:50 PM EST
Last chance to prove that you’re no masochists.
rbresler
11/6/2012 12:45 PM EST
Robert J. Bresler, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Penn State Univ. Obama 286-Romney 252
boblesch
11/6/2012 12:42 PM EST
my hope – at the end of the day – we’ll have to have a new SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.
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scollisacrf
11/6/2012 12:46 PM EST
It is my hope too but it is a fantasy…
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jpbroo
11/6/2012 12:38 PM EST
At this point the only thing that matters is voter turnout. The more important issue is will both sides be able to come together after the election and work together.
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candle1
11/6/2012 12:44 PM EST
That’s a good question for the right wing. If Obama wins, will they actually work with him this time, or will they decide that their only job is to try to prevent a third in a row dem White House term?
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Dake
11/6/2012 12:59 PM EST
With a tea party loss it is likely that the Republicans will try to reclaim their party back from the extremist bigots in their midst, which means the party will be more likely to work for the good of the American people instead of just themselves.Conversely, if the tea party pushes Mitt over the line first, we’re looking at a massive dismantling of all government in order to finance more tax breaks for the super-rich to hide money overseas, more tax loopholes for the big corporations to hide money overseas, and more taxpayers money to the big defense contractors to fund wars overseas. Oh, and even more debt.

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Number crunchers were right about Obama despite what pundits said

Statisticians like Nate Silver looked at all polls and concluded President Obama would win. They may change how races are predicted — and conducted.

Nate SilverNate Silver correctly called all 50 states in the electoral college. (Penguin Press / November 8, 2012)
By Ken Bensinger, Los Angeles TimesNovember 8, 2012

President Obama triumphed on Tuesday. But the biggest winner may have been math.

After decades of relying on predictions from political pundits and wildly gyrating polls, Americans saw a small band of number crunchers redefine the business of election forecasting. Armed with computer simulations and confidence in cold hard data, these self-described geeks called the presidential race and a slew of smaller contests with stunning accuracy.

Their foresight proved astonishing and provided the political class endless talking points to debate in the weeks leadng up to election day. In the process, these statisticians may have fundamentally changed the way that political campaigns are watched and conducted in America. Think of it as Moneyball, which revolutionized baseball, applied to the most important pennant race of all.

The captain of the math brigade, Nate Silver, a former baseball statistician turned New York Times blogger, correctly called 50 of 50 states in the electoral college, assuming Florida remains blue. Sam Wang, a Princeton University neuroscientist who moonlights as an election forecaster, accurately predicted that Obama would capture 51.1% of all votes cast nationwide. Drew Linzer, a political science professor at Emory University, five months ago predicted that Obama would win 332 electoral votes, which will hold up if Florida goes to Obama.

All told, about a dozen math wizards entered the political fray this campaign cycle, championing statistical methods and advanced computing power over partisan bias and conventional wisdom.

“The principle behind this movement is that numbers aren’t ideology,” said Scott Elliott, a computer engineer in North Carolina who operates the site electionprojection.com.

A deeply religious Christian conservative, Elliott voted for Mitt Romney. But his computer model predicted months ago that Obama would easily win the electoral college. Elliott correctly called every state except Florida.

“The poll data don’t come in wearing a blue shirt or a red shirt,” he said. “They are what they are.”

Like other quants in the blossoming field of election probability, Elliott depends heavily on data from the many hundreds of state and national polls taken throughout the course of the election. In simple terms, these forecasters aggregate data, average them and then use high-powered processors to run tens of thousands of simulated elections. Then they base their predictions on the most frequent outcomes of those simulations.

Each poll, conducted by groups including Gallup, Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen, might have a margin of error of 5 or more percentage points. By combining all of them, that error margin diminishes to near-invisibility, said Wang, the neuroscience professor. His simulations not only predicted Obama winning the electoral college handily, but they also nailed upsets like Heidi Heitkamp’s winning a Senate seat in North Dakota.

It is a method predicated on the belief that the more data on hand, the more accurately outcomes can be predicted. Yet Wang and others of his ilk were roundly attacked before the election for allegedly slanting the results to match their political preferences.

“At the national level, pundits were taking brickbats at us because they felt we were in the tank for Obama, but in reality, we were in the tank for getting it right,” Wang said.

Nobody caught more flak than Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog (named for the total number of electoral votes) became the online phenomenon of the year. Churning out new predictions and deep-dive analyses of polling methodologies on nearly a daily basis, his blog was followed religiously by political junkies.

Silver picked Obama to win from the start. Over the campaign’s final weekend, he put the president’s chances above 90%. That evoked yips of joy from Democrats, but furious cries from conservative commentators including Dick Morris who called Silver’s work skewed and predicted a “reckoning” after the election. Silver was even taken to task by his own newspaper. The New York Times public editor criticized him last month for sparring with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. Silver challenged Scarborough to a $1,000 bet that Obama would win, after the TV personality called him an ideologue and a joke.

Scarborough didn’t take that bet. Perhaps he knew better than to challenge Silver, who stunned the baseball world in 2008 by accurately predicting that the last-place Tampa Bay Rays would turn it around and become one of the best teams in the American League. In fact, they went on to make the World Series.

“This probably does rebuke the pundits,” said Dean Chambers, a conservative who also tried his hand at computer-aided poll analysis this year. “Nate Silver was right on the mark.”

Chambers’ own calculations showed Romney winning big. But the longtime commentator and consultant erred, he said, because he didn’t take polls at face value, refusing to include some polls out of concern that they over-sampled Democrats. In other words, Chambers said, he threw out data that seemed to favor Obama too much.

“I think a lot of us should have a bit more faith in the accuracy of these polls after this,” said Chambers, who lives in Duffield, Va.

Linzer, the Emory professor, acknowledges he’s an Obama supporter. But he said that played no role in the numerous simulations he conducted this year that showed Obama winning handily. As a social scientist, he said, these kinds of models are useful for predicting a great range of outcomes based on available data.

By focusing on numbers, he said, it’s possible to overlook momentary events that seem to have great import but in the end don’t shape the election. For example, he said, Romney’s notorious “47%” comment may have momentarily moved some polls, but had a negligible effect on the final result.

And none of that, he said, came as a surprise to the candidates.

“The most sophisticated quantitative work is not happening with people like me, but by those inside the campaigns themselves,” Linzer said. He and other election quants said candidates employ high-powered math whizzes of their own to help predict outcomes and have far larger budgets than any college professor.

“Their work doesn’t show up in a blog or newspaper, but it’s their secret sauce,” he said.

Linzer predicts that many more websites like his votamatic.org will emerge in coming election cycles, and wonders whether other news outlets will adopt such a sophisticated approach. He does worry, however, that the flood of useful data could ebb because of the expense involved in producing it. In 2008, for example, about 1,700 state polls were conducted. This year, there were only 1,200.

Others decry the injection of mathematics in something as personal and heated as presidential politics. Their fear is that computers, rather than well-spoken pundits, might not only take the fun out of the races, but also change the way they’re conducted.

Wang, the Princeton professor, believes pundits and computer-aided analysts can coexist.

“It’s possible to be Homer and write about the wine-dark sea,” he said. “But sometimes you want the guy with the thermometer.”

ken.bensinger@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

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sensi2.frat 11:31 PM November 07, 2012You should have mentioned Dick Morris amazing prediction skills from three days ago : “A landslide for Romney approaching the magnitude of Obama’s against McCain. That’s my prediction. Romney 325, Obama 213″.  Now it is time for ”reckoning”, indeed.Some people have definitely lost any credibility while others have gained some with actual facts and data rather than politically biased, cherry-picked and baseless spin.

Reality Timeat 10:46 PM November 07, 2012Sad day for America….But on the plus side, whenever you hear a liberal complaining about the high cost of food, gas, insurance, no jobs, etc….JUST LAUGH IN THEIR FACE!
JamieW2at 10:29 PM November 07, 2012You’re awesome Nate Silver!  It was pretty great watching so many that bet against you or blew off your prediction of the winner, have to eat their words. Your top dog now, in the future no other poll will matter just yours.  And they are gonna come running to see what Nate’s numbers say.   Really Awesome.
…and I am Sid Harth@elcidharth.comImage