Tag: Nate Silver
Polls Skewed Toward Democrats
4 percentage points
Amount the average Senate poll conducted in the final three weeks of this year’s campaign overestimated the Democrat’s performance, according to Nate Silver. The average gubernatorial poll was just as bad, also overestimating the Democrat’s performance by 4 points.
Majority of Americans Now Live in States Where Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal
165 million
The number of people living in states where same-sex marriage is legal, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to decline hearing a series of appeals cases, according to Nate Silver. The decision had the effect of immediately legalizing gay marriage in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, for a total of 19 states and the District of Columbia. “That means for the first time, same-sex marriage is legal for the majority of the U.S. population. The 26 states where the practice is not legal have a total population of about 151 million.”
Nate Silver Says Most Political Pundits are Useless
Obviously, there are SOME sports pundits who are total hacks. But I’d argue that MOST political pundits are completely useless; the outliers are the few who are actually worth reading.
— Nate Silver, in a Q&A on Deadspin.
GOP ‘Unskewed’ Poll Denier Dean Chambers, Who Is Obese, Attacks Nate Silver for Being ‘of Very Small Stature, a Thin and Effeminate Man’
The fact that Republicans are so desperate to discredit Nate Silver over his prediction that Mitt Romney has a less than a 25 percent chance of winning the presidency is a clear sign that desperation is setting in on the right.
But the oddest, and most childish, attack on Silver comes from polling conspiracy theorist Dean Chambers — he’s behind the “unskewed” poll website that reconfigures polling results so that Romney always comes out ahead. Based on the only photo of him that is widely available, Chambers appears to be at least 100 pounds over optimum for a man of normal height, and yet he issued a statement in which he insulted Silver’s appearance:
“Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.”
