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Nate Silver May Stop Doing Forecasts Out Fear of Influencing Elections
Nate Silver told an audience at Washington University in St. Louis that he may give up his election forecasts after 2014 or 2016 if they are having an undue influence on elections.
Silver said, “The polls can certainly affect elections at times,” Silver said. “I hope people don’t take the forecasts too seriously. You’d rather have an experiment where you record it off from the actual voters, in a sense, but we’ll see. If it gets really weird in 2014, in 2016, then maybe I’ll stop doing it. I don’t want to influence the democratic process in a negative way. I’m [hoping to make] people more informed, I don’t want to affect their motive because they trust the forecasters.”
Nate Silver’s concern is nothing new. For as long as there has been public polling, there have always been concerns about the influence of polls on elections. However, I don’t think his forecast influences elections. The valuable service that Nate Silver provides is that he holds pollsters accountable, and he raises the bar for quality polling.
Silver’s forecast has also have the added benefit of getting millions of people interested in polling and statistics. He is helping people learn that not all polls are alike. Some polls really are better than others. The message is that reliable polls deserve to be taken more seriously.
Beyond Nate Silver’s forecast, polling is already a part huge of the political and media election narrative.
For some less scrupulous individuals and organizations, polling has become a partisan activity. Conservatives conducted their own flawed polls in an attempt to create the illusion of Romney momentum in 2012. We live in an era where one side of American political discourse is inventing their own facts. Nate Silver’s forecast takes the partisanship out of polling, and places the emphasis back on the math.
Nate Silver is cutting through the partisan noise. His concerns about influencing elections seem misplaced. What Silver is really doing via his forecast is presenting a clearer picture of the direction that an election is going in. This is why his work is valuable, and needed now more than ever.
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9 Responses to Nate Silver May Stop Doing Forecasts Out Fear of Influencing Elections
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Chris Moses
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 1:04 pm
That would be sad. @ Nate… Before you consider, please be aware that you are a nice way to level the playing field, giving an accurate look at the makeup of the country, and taking credibility away from the SuperPAKs that are truly destroying balance in the election process. I would say you do more for the democratic process than ANYTHING Karl Rove spits out.
Tom
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 1:11 pm
This is crazy. Facts are a bad thing? Since when? Silver was the only one who got it right. The Right was trying to influence the election with their flawed polls. They use them to justify election and voting problems. Without Nate Silver we would have no point of reality.
Neon Vincent
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 10:30 pm
“Silver was the only one who got it right.”
Nate got it right, but he wasn’t the only one. So did Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium. In fact, Sam did a better job on the Senate contests than Nate did, calling North Dakota and Montana correctly. Nate’s model predicted that the GOP would get them and it was wrong.
djchefron(Moderator)
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
Something tells me his employers,the New York Times told him he have to make a choice.
Either join us in our make believe world of impartiality or go back to your website where you can talk about facts to the few people who visit 538.
David Brooks must be laughing his ass off.
Sugapea
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Recently Nate Silver predicted…San Francisco would win the SuperBowl. Perhaps that’s the reason he’s going to take it easy now. Obviously, some people lost money on his prediction.
luciboo
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 7:29 pm
Nate Silver was my guiding light during the campaign. Every talk show and “news” broadcast kept yelling over and over it’s a tie between Obama & Romney. All my friends those for Obama and those pro Romney kept yelling they are tied. Nate’s blog was the only thing I could refer to in order to know the truth.
It would be truly a loss to democracy to think the truth has to be kept quiet while the propaganda can rage on.
Shiva(Moderator)
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Welcome to reality. The one place you can be sure nothing is as it seems
PBerg
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Oh, Nate, why would Scientific evaluation of the numbers and odds have anything to do with influence? You don’t really think Right Wingers are going to break down and vote Democratic, because you have called the race, do you???
djchefron(Moderator)
Feb. 15th, 2013 at 7:18 am
Not about Silver but it is about the NYT and it makes you wonder about whose agenda they’re favoring.
This is about electric cars.
First,Motor trend named the Tesla the car of the year. Link here.
2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S
Shocking Winner: Proof Positive that America Can Still Make (Great) Things
Read more: www.motortrend.com/ofthey...
Now we have the Times review
Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/1...
The NYT reviewer flat out lied.
I don’t know what world he lives in but in this youtube world everything gets recorded
A Most Peculiar Test Drive
www.teslamotors.com/blog/...
Now Nate Silver can blow smoke up your arse with that lame excuse but somethings fishy is going on at the Times and it ain’t sister Sarah’s halibut casserole