Nate Silver Wants to Ruin His Career

For those on both sides of the political spectrum we have seen some very unfortunate firsts this election cycle. Perhaps there was always an undercurrent of this sort of thing, perhaps the new social media like Twitter, make it much more apparent, but now it seems that we are at a point where we no longer believe or accept any reports that we do not agree with.

Think about this, if your child gets a grade that he does not like it can be because the teacher has it out for him. If you lose a basketball game it is because the officiatiing was terrible. Yesterday watching my son play AAU basketball I heard a parent tell his son in a break in the game, " that fat ref has it out for you." Seriously in a million years how a parent can be so shortsighted as to be that way I cannot imagine. And, with my wife, and some very good friends in education I can tell you that the aforementioned scenario is commonplace.

It should be no surprise then of what we see now from reputable, national organizations. If the unemployment report comes in at a number that bodes well for the President than those on the right question it's validity. If a poll comes in that says that Governor Romney has made gains in a state those on the left question the makeup of the poll and state that it must be an outlier.

Which brings us to Nate Silver. Nate Silver is a statistician. This is what he does. It is his career. Still our friends on the right, including very serious publications such as The National Journal are speculating that Silver is picking and choosing which polls to include in his numbers so as to produce reports that show the President's likelihood of being reelected in the best light.

Silver's Five thirty eight blog which produced numbers in both 2008 and 2010 far superior to any other poll or polling model has, in the last year, been run by The New York Times. The Times as liberal as the Journal is conservative might well like to see the President win reelection but it just seems silly to think that Silver would be skewing his numbers.

Silver has used the same model from the beginning of the campaign season. Nothing has changed. His models have been transparent. He has recently written a book that outlines his theories of prediction.

Does this mean his numbers are correct. Of course not. And if he is wrong he will certainly suffer for it, professionally and otherwise. However as Silver states in his book a wrong prediction is either because of a failure to read a polling model correctly, or a failure in setting up a model. Clearly one cannot change the model in the middle of a campaign, even if, in some cases, his poll shows numbers not common.

Here is the sneaky truth however. The traditional polling measurements, Gallup, Rassmussen, etc do show Romney in a better light, Silver shows the President's chances of an electoral victory as superior. However it should be noted that many other pollsters using methods and formulas in the ballpark of Silver's show Obama ahead in the same way.

In the last weekend we heard that Virginia was now an Obama lean and Ohio might be moving toward Romney. In short no one knows. Except this. Nate Silver says that not one state, let me repeat that, not one state shows in his numbers a different winner than when he first polled them in June.

Silver's model, as I saw someone tweet is being used by Democrats as garlic to a vampire but that does not mean it is wrong. It is becoming apparent that he will be very wrong or very right.

However whatever the outcome to suggest that a professional statistician would be skewing the model would be to suggest he has decided he no longer wishes to be taken seriously. No one, in his right mind, would think that was Silver's goal.

So I do not know who will win but due to the nature of the political climate here is a post election headline. Pre Election skewed polls by Silver created a self fulfilling prophecy for Obama.

Of course the next step after that will be some small government Republican saying that polls have to be sanctioned and approved by the government. If you think I am wrong you are not paying attention.