FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver today takes aim at some of the polls crying doom and gloom for House Democrats previously thought to be safe, cautioning that the volume of losses may not be as bad as some fear. Many of the polls are either partisan-affiliated, or were “robopolls” that used automated scripts rather than live interviewers, or both. Polls with an …
Read More »Tag Archives: Nate Silver
Nate Silver Predicts Republican Landslide In State Governor Races
In states with a 50% or more chance of flipping their governorships, elections prognosticator Nate Silver predicts that the vast majority of the changes will be in the GOP’s favor. (Although Florida’s race is still a statistical tie, it is listed at the top because current governor Charlie “Closet Case” Crist is technically an independent.)
Read More »Nate Silver’s Senate Forecast
That’s an awful lot of red, but Silver still says that the Democrats have a 76% chance of holding the majority. The Senate seats most likely to flip to the GOP are below. Note that Silver gives Sharron Angle a 66% chance of deposing Harry Reid.
Read More »U.S. House Forecast Update
Nate Silver’s latest forecast gives the Democrats only a 35% chance of holding their majority in the House. Republicans are assigned a 65 percent chance of taking over the House by our forecasting model, up slightly from 62 percent last week. They are projected to control 224 House seats in the new Congress, up a single seat from 223 last …
Read More »Latest Forecasts From Nate Silver
More at FiveThirtyEight.
Read More »Gay Rights A Low Priority Issue For Both Parties In 2010 Campaign
Nate Silver explains his chart: I studied the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates for the House in the 33 Congressional districts currently labeled toss-ups by The New York Times political desk. Although a few candidates did not highlight particular issues on their official Web pages, and a few others remain engaged in primaries where there is no …
Read More »Nate Silver’s 2010 Senate Predictions
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight makes its debut as part of the New York Times today, where he gives us the above predictions for this year’s Senate races. It looks like Silver is predicting that the Democrats will lose about seven seats, yet retain a slim majority.
Read More »Nate Silver On Marriage Polls
Nate Silver: Something to bear in mind is that it’s only been fairly recently that gay rights groups — and other liberals and libertarians — shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise. While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things …
Read More »NATE SILVER: 250 Million People Live In Jurisdictions With Full Marriage Equality
Nate notes this about his graph: The big spike you see in 2008 is California recognizing gay marriage through the courts, and then un-recognizing it through the passage of Proposition 8. Right now, it’s possible to marry your same-sex partner in Buenos Aires, in Mexico City, in Ames, Iowa, and in Pretoria, South Africa, but not in San Francisco. With …
Read More »NYT Takes Over Nate Silver
The New York Times has taken over hosting of FiveThirtyEight, the popular elections prognostication site run by statistics guru Nate Silver. Mr. Silver, a statistical wizard, became a media star during the last presidential election season for his political projections based on dissections of polling data. He retains all rights to FiveThirtyEight and will continue to run it himself, but …
Read More »Nate Silver Crunches Fast Food
Stats guru Nate Silver takes a look at KFC’s infamous Double Down versus other fast food fare. On his chart above, the Double Down is the benchmark by which other items are compared. I’ve created an index based on the amount of fat, sodium and cholesterol that the Double Down and a variety of comparable sandwiches contain as a portion …
Read More »Divorce Rises In States With Same-Sex Marriage Ban
Stats guru Nate Silver has crunched the numbers and reports that states with bans on same-sex marriage have a higher rate of divorce. In Massachusetts, the divorce rate has plunged over 20% in the five years since same-sex marriage became legal there. States with a constitutional ban have seen an overall increase in divorce.It would be fantastic to get Nate …
Read More »Nate Silver On Maine Vote
Statistics whiz kid Nate Silver is calling Maine’s Yes On 1 a 5-2 underdog in tomorrow’s vote. The Odds: A statistical analysis I conducted last month, which was based on the results from previous gay marriage referenda in other states, gave the Yes on 1 side just an 11 percent chance of prevailing, although the fraction rises to 32 percent …
Read More »Talking Points From Maine’s Yes On 1
Nate Silver provides the below list of insanity from Yes On 1’s email to folks planning to call in to Maine’s talk radio stations.Nate Silver: So, paraphrasing somewhat, the arguments that the Yes on 1 campaign seems to be making are as follows: 1. The new law won’t make gay marriage equal to straight marriage. Instead, it will create a …
Read More »Nate Silver On Maine’s Chances: GOOD
Nate Silver, the geeky guru of poll prognostication who accurately called the vast majority of the 2008 election results, has conducted an intensive examination of the Maine marriage battle. According to Silver, the marriage ban is likely to fail. Maine is the third least-religious state in the country, according to Gallup, with only 46 percent of that state’s residents saying …
Read More »Could GOP Retake House In 2010?
Andrew Sullivan points us to this piece by the Kreskin of politics, Nate Silver, who says that the GOP stands a decent shot at retaking the majority in the U.S. House in 2010. The current state of the generic polls gives the Democrats .412/(.412+.377) = 52% of the two-party vote. Going to the graph, we see, first, that 52% for …
Read More »Nate Silver Breaks Down The NY Senate
Stats geek guru Nate Silver has trained his analytic powers on the marriage vote in the NY Senate. Based on recent public statements and press accounts, we count 5 Democrats — Shirley Huntley of Queens and George Onorato of Queens, Ruben Diaz of the Bronx, Darrel Aubertine of Cape Vincent, and William Stachowski of Buffalo — as definitively being opposed …
Read More »Time Is On Our Side
Stats guru Nate Silver has done his usual brilliant number crunching and made estimates on how long it will take each state to reaching the tipping point at which ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage would fail. Go to the above link for Silver’s explanations of how he reached his conclusions. Below is a map/timeline made by a Silver fan, …
Read More »Nate Silver Calls The Oscars
Nate Silver, our stats geek hero for his freakishly accurate calling of the 2008 election, has turned his superpowers on this Sunday’s Oscars. His picks: Supporting ActorHeath Ledger………………….85.8%Supporting ActressTaraji P. Henson……………..51.0%Lead ActorMickey Rourke……………….71.1%Lead ActressKate Winslet…………………..67.6%Best DirectorDanny Boyle,Slumdog Millionaire….…….99.7%Best PictureSlumdog Millionaire……….99.0%Silver only gives Milk a 1% chance of winning Best Picture, but says it does have a tiny chance of pulling …
Read More »Nate Silver For The Win
Stats god Nate Silver interviewed radio host John Ziegler, the guy behind How Obama Got Elected, a cry-baby site that selectively asked some Obama supporters a bunch of misleading and unfactual questions, therefore proving that all Democrats are dum-dums. Let’s just say that the interview doesn’t go too well and ends with “Fuck you.” Click. Dial tone. Here’s the video …
Read More »