Algorithmic Overlord Nate Silver got it right, to the chagrin of many - The Globe and Mail

12-11-28 10:08 PM

Algorithmic Overlord Nate Silver got it right, to the chagrin

of many
JILL MAHONEY
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Nov. 07 2012, 12:18 PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 07 2012, 12:28 PM EST

President Barack Obama wasnt the only big election winner in the United States: Political polling geek
Nate Silver finally got revenge over the pundits.
Throughout the campaign, Mr. Silver was the focus of often bitter attacks for his consistent high odds in
favour of Mr. Obamas re-election. In the end, however, the statistician and blogger won a flood of plaudits
for correctly predicting [http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/] the presidential results in all 50 states,
providing Florida holds for Mr. Obama.
I, for one, welcome our new Algorithmic Overlord, tweeted [https://twitter.com/greenfield64] political
analyst Jeff Greenfield.
Mr. Silver and big data are the absolute, undoubted winner of this election, wrote Mashables Chris
Taylor [http://mashable.com/2012/11/07/nate-silver-wins/].
Mr. Silver, who blogs for The New York Times, is the most prominent among a small group of polling
analysts who have long forecast that Mr. Obama would prevail over Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
They include Sam Wang, a neuroscientist who started the Princeton Election Consortium
[http://election.princeton.edu/] blog, and Drew Linzer, a political scientist who runs the Votamatic
[http://votamatic.org/] polling blog. The only state the three men differed in calling was razors-edge
Florida.
During the campaign, the analysts predictions, which were grounded in their aggregation and analysis of
polling data, often contrasted starkly against the prognostications of pundits.
What does this victory mean? Mr. Taylor wrote on Mashable Wednesday. That mathematical models
can no longer be derided by gut-feeling pundits. That Silvers contention TV pundits are generally no
more accurate than a coin toss must now be given wider credence.
On the wrong side of the analysis divide were a host of commentators including The Wall Street Journals

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Algorithmic Overlord Nate Silver got it right, to the chagrin of many - The Globe and Mail

12-11-28 10:08 PM

Peggy Noonan, who wrote on Monday that she believed Mr. Romney was quietly rising
[http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/] and that the polls were missing the Republicans momentum.
Mr. Silver, who founded the website FiveThirtyEight, was directly criticized by MSNBCs Joe Scarborough,
who labelled him a joke [http://gop12.thehill.com/2012/10/scarborough-fires-shot-at-natesilvers.html] for calculating Mr. Obamas chances of winning last week at more than 70 per cent. (Before
the polls closed Tuesday, Mr. Silver had revised that figure to north of 90 per cent.)
Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue [that] they
should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next 10 days, because
theyre jokes, Mr. Scarborough said.
A Politico article last week suggested Mr. Silver could be a one-term celebrity
[http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/10/nate-silver-romney-clearly-could-still-win147618.html] if Mr. Romney won.
Some of the attacks on Mr. Silver were personal. Dean Chambers, founder of Unskewed Polls
[http://www.unskewedpolls.com/], which has been widely attacked for unscientific methodology, wrote
an op-ed [http://www.examiner.com/article/the-far-left-turns-to-nate-silver-for-wisdom-on-the-polls?
cid=db_articles] calling Mr. Silver a man of very small stature and a thin and effeminate man with a
soft-sounding voice. He also accused him of routinely giving his beloved Obama disproportionate odds
of winning. (Mr. Chambers view? He predicted [http://www.examiner.com/article/mitt-romney-willwin-the-presidency-with-275-electoral-votes] that Mr. Romney would become president with 275
electoral votes.)
Mr. Silvers record in predicting the 2012 election is a slight improvement over his 2008 forecast. Then, he
predicted 49 out of 50 states correctly, faltering only on Indiana, which Mr. Obama won with a 1 per cent
margin.
However, even Mr. Silver, who first gained public attention for his baseball forecasts, has noted that his
poll analysis is not wizardry.
People treat it like its Galileo, something heretical, he said
[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-nate-silver-stephen-colbert-obama20121106,0,2963364.story] during an appearance Monday on The Colbert Report. There are many things
that are much more complicated than looking at the polls and taking an average and counting to 270,
right?

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