538's Nate Silver starting to attract more and more Republican hate

[blazeKing]

Now Drudge is in on it! How dare Nate ruin the Faux Romney momentum!!

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/10/nate-silver-romney-clearly-could-still-win-147618.html

""If you tell me you think you can quantify an event that is about to happen that you don`t expect, like the 47 percent comment or a debate performance, I think you think you are a wizard. That`s not possible," Times columnist David Brooks, a moderate conservative, said on PBS earlier this month. "The pollsters tell us what`s happening now. When they start projecting, they`re getting into silly land."

Brooks doubled down on this charge in a column last week: "I should treat polls as a fuzzy snapshot of a moment in time. I should not read them, and think I understand the future," he wrote. "If there’s one thing we know, it’s that even experts with fancy computer models are terrible at predicting human behavior."

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today, Joe Scarborough took a more direct shot, effectively calling Silver an ideologue and "a joke."

"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.""


Then there were the bigoted attacks by the delusional unskewed polls guy. Clearly he's near the top of their hate list.

[kevink077]

1. idiots

These idiots should look at Intrade. Gamblers are probably the most accurate as they only care about the money. Obama has over 60 percent.

[Demsrule86]

28. Of course it is possible

Using mathematical formulas you cand predict all sorts of things...I guess these GOP idiots never took a statistics course. How do they suppose the Wall Street wizards had all those gambling programs ...math folks wrote them!

[flamingdem]

2. Nate will need to go into hiding after Obama wins at this rate

It's serious, these a-hole repukes are capable of anything

[Thekaspervote]

3. Mentally send Nate good vibes.. He knows it come with the territory

Let's hope he can take the heat. He's right, they know it and CAN'T stand it!!!

[BraKez2]

4. Nates latest tweet..

"I can't believe meteorologist used science and math to predict this storm. They must be magic wizards or something" you know who he was aiming that tweet at..

[Coexist]

6. that is awesome! Joe and the rest must've had to drop out of statistics

because it was too hard. Like most non-math majors do.

[Marmitist]

22. What's so hard about a multiple regression?

Or an ANOVA, or any other statistical analysis technique?

Fuck, that's not hard. What's hard is Differential Calculus, translated into the original Sanskrit!

[blue-kite]

27. You forgot Welsh! Try doing calculus in Welsh sign language.

[blazeKing]

10. Rassmussen and Gallup show Sandy landfall in Boston!!!!!

How dare the other polls show Southern New Jersey!! They must be liberals!

[Glamrock]

14. Haa ha ha

Yeah! Fuck David Brooks! That a-hole is right about as often as Bill Kristol.

[Glamrock]

15. Or

Joe Scarborough, for that matter.

[Demsrule86]

29. Romney has no momentum and is behind

NO way Romney has a 50 /50 chance of winning. Scarborough is an idiot...many think the so called Romney momentum is BS..and that Romney is behind and knows it...the stupid remark he made here in Ohio about the storm is not playing well either...because in fact we do have Sandy here in Northern Ohio...our lights were off all last night...just came back on...saw the Clinton...the big dog and Biden yesterday in Youngstown...they were both great...place was packed and it was raining and very windy. Going canvassing tonight...went Sunday and got some votes to the poll...my family voted on Friday.

[abumbyanyothername]

5. If they think it's 50.1

then they should use their UK or Cayman Islands bank accounts to bet at the punters and get 2:1 on their money.

And I would challenge them all, I will take unlimited action straight up on this election. Because I can just print money, by hedging with the books.

[octoberlib]

7. Right wing pundits have been beating up

on Nate ALL DAY on Twitter. It's just ridiculous.

[SingleSeatBiggerMeat]

8. Nothing Would Make Me More Proud....

Than to be ridiculed by complete losers like Drudge and that MSNBC frat-boy guy.

[BlueDemKev]

9. All I Know Is...

...Nate had better be RIGHT. His findings have been the only thing that has kept me sane over this last month.

[Jim Lane]

26. It's not just Nate Silver.

Most of the nonpartisan poll aggregators have been reporting the same conclusion ever since Romney clinched the nomination. Each site has its own formula for choosing the polls for inclusion (and, in some instances, weighting them) but they've generally been showing Obama with 270+ electoral votes.

This comment is prompted by your remark, "His findings have been the only thing that has kept me sane over this last month." You're the flip side of the Republicans for whom, apparently, Silver's findings have been the only thing that has bothered them over this last month. I don't understand why they're so hot under the collar about Silver, to the exclusion of the other analysts who reach the same conclusion.

[RomneyLies]

11. Nothing captures the Republican disdain for science more than the excoriation of Nate Silver

They cannot understand the concepts of statistics, ergo, Silver must be put to the stake and burned alive for his wizardry.

[jonpaulprime]

31. LOL

[meadowlark5]

12. Poor Nate

It's like the repuke's mission to intimidate and destroy people. Can't win, can't influence on merit, honor and good ideas, so they have to bully and hurt people that have different ideas and views. These kind of people are vile and suck shit.

[MrModerate]

20. But Silver is in an excellent position . . .

To tell them to go pound sand. As a representative of the reality-based community, he always starts three steps ahead of cloud-cuckooland dwellers.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

13. Must be marching orders from on high!

The republics always coordinate their messages. It will be a recurring them throughout the echo chamber.

[RomneyLies]

17. They're trying to rough up the ref

Nate is a statistician. He will not alter his model to suit their bullshit.

[texasleo]

16. effing idiots

nate isn't saying that he's going to win 73% of the vote.

[MrModerate]

18. Both simple math (like subtracting one number from 5 trillion) . . .

And complex math — such as statistical analysis — seem to be beyond the righties' comprehension.

Statisticians make data-driven predictions all the time. The whole world's technical infrastructure depends on it every moment of every day.

Morons.

[TroyD]

19. I don't know if it's been posted here yet, but

A couple days ago Nate was gay-bashed by a right-wing political site (The Examiner?) that said his projections were not to be trusted because he was effeminate-looking etc.

[Alekei_Firebird]

21. Wasn't that written by some fat slob?

[reformist2]

23. Nate's numbers are the product of statistical, scientific analysis, and Repugs can't stand it.

What's so ridic is that intrade is already showing the odds 2:1 for Obama anyway. All Nate is doing is showing that the polls actually indicate it's more like 3:1.

[DHelix]

24. This election will validate Nate in ways never seen before from a person in his position

After November 6th, especially if he's very close with each state prediction and the total EVs, Nate will immediately become the go-to guy for all future elections like nobody ever seen before. There will be HUGE money thrown at him from big networks. He'll be a bit like a nerdier John King with a touch screen setup and a huge salary if ever he wants it.

I hope he earns as much money as he wants but let's just hope he never sells out his process after this and alters his projections to make things seem closer and less dramatic and accurate in the future. I look at the Princeton system and wonder if he's already being somewhat apprehensive with his numbers where perhaps they are not.

He seems like a guy who really loves numbers and political science so I think we'll be fine and he'll be around for a long time. It will suck someday to see his numbers (like 2010) during a big Presidential Election all but guaranteeing that the candidate we like is going to lose but math is math so when that happens we'll just have to accept it and hope that something changes the direction.

[ailsagirl]

25. My advice to Nate: avoid small planes n/t

[jonpaulprime]

30. I needed to see this.

THANKS

[struggle4progress]

32. "We hate arithmetic, and I hate people who can do arithmetic!"

[FVZA_Colonel]

33. I know he was relatively unknown in 2008 (in political forecasting, not as a statistician in other

matters), but did he get anywhere near this kind of hate before?

[apnu]

34. Its all bluster.

I said last week, loudly, in my office (trader types 90% Republican) that Obama has a 70% chance of winning this on election day. I was citing Nate Silver and rounding down when I said it. Nobody in my office disagreed with me.

Today, none of them have changed that agreement. They're all preparing themselves for 4 more years of Obama and quietly crying in their drinks.

[Stuckinthebush]

35. I LOVE this

Why? Because Nate's modeling is testable. The proof is in the pudding. We will see next Tuesday how well his models worked. Then he can look at Joe and the right wing gang that can't shoot straight and say, "What was that you were saying about me?"

Of course, Joe will just find one blip where he wasn't 100% accurate and point to that as an example of how bad Nate is.

I can't stand the right wing blow hards.

[Egnever]

36. Poor guy gets it from both sides

This place dumped on him pretty well all last week