Nate Silver: "Trump ... Not So Much"

Nate Silver

Political prognosticator Nate Silver, who correctly predicted which candidate would win every state in the 2012 presidential election, said on September 9 that Trump is dead meat. Silver just can't say exactly when that "sell-by" date will be reached.

Silver thinks Trump won't be the Republican nominee because he's "not conservative enough."

"He's not really a Republican," Silver pointed out. "He's very far to the right on immigration, but he also wants socialized medicine," Silver said. "He wants to tax the rich, right? There's an alternate reality in which he decided to run as a Democrat instead — he wouldn't have to change his policy positions all that much."

Silver said that at this stage, polls haven't yielded much accurate predictive information." People haven't given [the candidates] more than two seconds' worth of attention ... Calm down — it's not a tennis match where you're going back and forth all the time," Silver said. "Keep calm."

I'm perfectly calm, occasionally subject to periods of anguish, frustration, and rage. Otherwise, serenely calm.

Gov. Patsy's True Colors

Data and polling guru Nate Silver rates our dear McCrory, who has yet to distinguish his ideological "brand" from that of his Clown College (because they're identical), as more conservative than Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Ohio Gov John Kasich, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.

Congratulations, North Carolina voters! You've put us in the running for most backward state in the Union.

Nate Silver, Math, and Those Who Spit Nails

If you don't know who Nate Silver is, you really should. He correctly called the outcome of the electoral vote in 2008 for 49 of 50 states. He missed Indiana, which went to Obama. (Those Hoosiers! So bequieted by their conservatism that they sometimes appear deceased, and then they go and do something wholly unexpected. Richard Mourdock, better call your office!) More remarkable, Silver correctly predicted the winners of all 35 Senate races in 2008. He uses math.

And he's making some -- many -- talking heads on TV sputteringly mad. Joe Scarbrough on Morning Joe:

"Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president is going to win? Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 percent chance — they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning. And you talk to the Romney people, it's the same thing," Scarborough said. "Both sides understand that it is close, and it could go either way. And anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes."

That outburst led Charles Pierce to observe that Mr. Scarbrough had "engaged in a remarkable feat of Being Stupid." Hee.

For a fairly complete run-down on the math Nate Silver is promoting, and the outrage being expressed against him, here's a very good account of the history (hattip: The Impolitic).