Good for a real laugh-Nate Silver's Projections in the Reid-Angle Race

[laughingliberal]

Angle's chance of winning: 83.4%

http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/forecasts/senate/nevada

:rofl:

[SlipperySlope]

1. It will also be interesting when he posts his analysis of how he got it wrong...

[laughingliberal]

2. Fear not. Naval gazing on schedule.

<snip> I riffed a little bit last night on why the public polls might have been wrong in Nevada; I speculated, for instance, that the fact that Mr. Reid is the sort of candidate whom one votes for unenthusiastically might have skewed the turnout models.

There is another theory, however, which was proposed to me last night by Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions.

“There is one overarching reason why the polls were wrong in Nevada,” Mr. Barreto wrote in an e-mail to FiveThirtyEight. “The Latino vote.”

His firm, which conducts interviews in both English and Spanish, had found that Latino voters — somewhat against the conventional wisdom — were relatively engaged by this election and for the most part were going to vote Democratic. Mr. Barreto also found that Latino voters who prefer to speak Spanish — about 40 percent of Latino voters in California meet this description, he told me — are particularly likely to vote Democratic. Pollsters who don’t conduct bilingual interviewing at all, or who make it cumbersome for the respondent to take the poll in Spanish, may be missing these voters.<snip>

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

:rofl:

[mwb970]

9. Naval gazing!

I didn't realize Silver was a sailor. (Or did you mean "navel gazing"?) :)

[Ken Burch]

7. He'll blame it on the Kenyan vote.

n/t.

[DFLforever]

3. Reid said his private polling always showed him with

a 5 or 6 point lead but I got the impression his campaign didn't at all mind if people thought his seat in greater jeopardy: it was better for fund raising,, GOTV etc.

[laughingliberal]

4. Reid did great. As he told an interviewer this morning, 40,000 votes in NV is a landslide

He's always said it's a mistake to count him out.

But, yeah, allowing his supporters to worry probably helped GOTV a lot.

Nate Silver, however, was giving me heart palpitations for a damned month and I hope he never vets a NV race again.

[DFLforever]

5. One thing I've learned about Reid in this election

is why he was elected majority leader. He may not be the greatest spokesman for Senate democrats but he's an incredibly shrewd, canny political operator. Plus, I think he knows how to keep the money rolling in.

[laughingliberal]

6. I've watched him operate for a while, now. I see it as 'iron fist in velvet glove.' nt

[craigmatic]

8. PPP was probably the closest pollster in the race.

[joeybee12]

10. Last Faux poll had Angle up 49-45...splashed across the front page of the

local rag...the LVRJ...which, if there is a God, should go out of business.

[w4rma]

11. Reid a political master. He's tough and shrewd. Never count him out.

Nate Silver only did an analysis of the polls done in that state. If the polls are bad, then the foundation for his analysis is bad. Blame the pollsters, not Nate.