"In some cases, [Nate] Silver tends to attribute successful reasoning to the use of Bayesian methods..."

"... without any evidence that those particular analyses were actually performed in Bayesian fashion."

For instance, he writes about Bob Voulgaris, a basketball gambler,

Bob’s money is on Bayes too. He does not literally apply Bayes’ theorem every time he makes a prediction. But his practice of testing statistical data in the context of hypotheses and beliefs derived from his basketball knowledge is very Bayesian, as is his comfort with accepting probabilistic answers to his questions.

But, judging from the description in the previous thirty pages, Voulgaris follows instinct, not fancy Bayesian math. Here, Silver seems to be using “Bayesian” not to mean the use of Bayes’s theorem but, rather, the general strategy of combining many different kinds of information.

Is Nate Silver "concerned that during future elections, the accuracy of your predictions will lull readers into a mindset of 'it has been foretold, therefore I needn’t bother to vote'"?

Yes, "a bit."

Did Nate Silver "enjoy getting the ire of pundits (not the few who actually critiqued your method, models, or assumptions, but those who just dismissed your work wholesale)"?

At some point in the last few weeks of the election, I guess I decided to lean into the upside outcome a little bit in terms of pushing back at the pundits in my public appearances — as opposed to emphasizing the uncertainty in the model, as I had for most of the year....

Stupid poker analogy: part of playing well is in maximizing the amount of value you get from a hand in the event that things go well, in addition to mitigating your losses if they don't.

"So why is compromise so hard in the House?"

"Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress."

But the answer could be this instead: individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives. Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk.

"Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than..."

"... her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics."

Observes Nate Silver, and yet 31% of Democrats own guns (compared to 58% of Republicans). 31% seems like a lot to me, especially when you consider that women are more likely to be Democrats. Women are less likely to own guns, but not by that much: 37% to 48%.

Americans like their guns, and yet the elite class is suddenly adamant about gun control. I think it's funny that those who act like they're so much wiser than the clinging-to-their-guns peasants so often let it show that they don't know what they're talking about.

"There is, of course, no way to monitor the conversations that take place in living rooms around the country. But we can measure the frequency with which phrases related to gun policy are used by the news media."

Says Nate Silver, whose methodology requires countable things, under the headline "In Public ‘Conversation’ on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift." ("Conversation" is in quotes, because it's not really a conversation.)

What he's found is that the phrase "gun control" is much less common than it was years ago, while "gun rights" and "Second Amendment" have grown steadily. What does it mean? Nate Silver guesses — or purports to guess — quite badly (I'd say):

The change in rhetoric may reflect the increasing polarization in the debate over gun policy. “Gun control,” a relatively neutral term, has been used less and less often. But more politically charged phrases, like “gun violence” and “gun rights,” have become more common. 

If "gun control" is avoided, it's because those who would like to push it believe the public doesn't like it! It's not that we used to be more neutral and have become more politically charged.

Those who advocate greater restrictions on gun ownership may have determined that their most persuasive argument is to talk about the consequences of increased access to guns — as opposed to the weedy debate about what rights the Second Amendment may or may not convey to gun owners. 

Weedy debate? As if those who speak in terms of constitutional rights are in the weeds. This presentation of rights is quite disgusting: 1. People believe in their rights, and it's that real belief that gives life and endurance to our rights; 2. This belief in gun rights endured over time, even as elite legalists largely believed they were just about nothing (so it's not an abstruse, academic topic but nearly the opposite); and 3. The Second Amendment doesn't "convey" rights it refers to a right and declares that it "shall not be infringed."

There was a time when rights were real to liberals. Now, oh, let's not talk about some text that may or may not transmit who knows what to us.

"Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a formidable presidential candidate in 2016."

Says Nate Silver, the proven genius.

"Democrats Unlikely to Regain House in 2014."

Nate Silver explains.

Nate Silver got everything right, didn't he?

Steel yourself, people. Nate Silver is now a god. The Nate naysaying cannot survive.

Bow down, oh ye lowly questioners of the unknowable algorithm!

IN THE COMMENTS: Brent says:

Silver has won this fiscal conservative over. Having debated why Silver was wrong for weeks with my brother-in-law, I have conceded that Silver is great at what he does. It took balls to give Obama a 92% chance of winning, when everyone else was calling it a draw. Calling it a draw was a coward's move by the other pollsters. I believed all the conservative hype about turnout and over sampling of D's. It gave me hope and was easy to believe.

And didn't it seem as though Silver was providing that service to the timorous Dems who read the NYT?

Next time around, I am simply watching Silver's blog and considering it accurate. If he calls if for the other guy, I am not going to look for excuses as to why he is wrong. If he turns out to be wrong, then that will be great news for me. But it will be much easier to deal with the results in the end. 

All hail The Great Nate Silver!

"Those who emphasize 'objective' political facts at the expense of 'subjective' values have strained out the soul and significance of politics."

"It is an approach, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, 'that stores the sand and lets the gold go free.'"

Says Michael Gerson, in another one of those Nate-Silver-is-wrong columns.

The problem with the current fashion for polls and statistics is that it changes what it purports to study. Instead of making political analysis more “objective,” it has driven the entire political class — pundits, reporters, campaigns, the public — toward an obsessive emphasis on data and technique. Quantification has also resulted in miniaturization. In politics, unlike physics, you can only measure what matters least.

Is your soul weary of all these polls? Do you somehow know something in your subjective, intuitive guts that is never measured in Mr. Silver's algorithm?

"I do not know Nate Silver. I have never spoken to Nate Silver."

"I do not know how old Nate Silver is or anything about Nate Silver’s existence. I am not even sure Nate Silver is his real name. That sounds like a stage name, one that a numbers geek would pick because he secretly dreams of being a cowboy...."

Nate Silver says the polls say "Romney's Momentum Has Stopped."

Because, you must understand, "a body in motion tends to stay in motion. That is, it ought to imply that a candidate is gaining ground in the race — and, furthermore, that he is likely to continue to gain ground."

Romney peaked last Friday, and the "slightly favorable trend" is Obama's. Obama's chance of winning is, as of yesterday, 71%, up from 68.1% Tuesday.

By the way, there is a 10.5% chance that Wisconsin's electoral votes will be decisive, making us the third most-likely-to-be-decisive state (after Ohio and Virginia).

And The Washington Post just endorsed Obama:

[E]conomic head winds and an uncompromising opposition explain some of [Obama's] failures — and render that much more impressive the substantial accomplishments of Mr. Obama’s first term....

What kind of case has Mr. Romney made for himself?... The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes.

ADDED: There's no way to know what Obama really believes either. It's mentally unbalanced to allow such pedestrian realities to make you sad.

The distinct possibility of a 269 to 269 tie in the Electoral College.

Yesterday, I clicked my best guesses on the "Create Your Own" Electoral College map, and it came up 269 to 269! (In case you're wondering: I gave Obama Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and I gave Romney Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida.) I was shocked!

We talked about this topic 3 weeks ago, when Nate Silver speculated about it (and noted that the constitutional method for producing an outcome is quite likely to give the election to Romney). At the time, Silver said it was "quite unlikely":

Of the 25,001 simulations that we ran on Monday, a 269-269 tie came up in 152 model runs, or about 0.6 percent of the time.

Still, this probability has roughly doubled from a few weeks ago, when the chances had been hovering at about 0.3 percent instead.

I have no idea what the probability is now, but I'm sure Silver could run thousands of simulations and wow us with a very specific number. I'll just note that last night, using my intuition, it was the most likely outcome.

Here's what the 12th Amendment says about determining the winner:

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote...

Romney takes the lead in the Politico tracking poll for the first time since last May.

With 49 to Obama's 47%, Romney has picked up 3 points since the last poll, a week ago.

Women propelled Romney’s move into first place in the poll — a majority of which was conducted before the Hofstra debate. Obama’s 11-point advantage a week ago among the crucially important group dwindled to 6 points. The Democratic incumbent still leads 51 to 45 percent with women, but Romney leads by 10 points among men.

Here's Nate Silver's analysis of the gender gap — "'Gender Gap' Near Historic Highs" — published yesterday, using, among other polls — last week's Politico numbers:

The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men — a 20-point difference. 

Silver had this year's gender gap at 18, with Politico contributing the number 20 to his average of 9 polls. He depicts the gap with 2 Electoral College maps, "recalibrated" to add 9 points to the polls in every state first to Obama and then to Romney, which might represent a hypothetical in which only women vote and a hypothetical in which only men vote, even though Silver doesn't say that — either because it's upsetting to talk about radical disenfranchisement or because the hypothetical would change the country so radically that it would make zero sense to plug in the numbers from existing polls.

In scenario #1 Obama is more ahead than Romney is in scenario #2. Silver's prestidigitations somehow, once again, hearten the Obamaphiles in the NYT readership, but the underlying numbers have shifted. Why, after all these efforts at making women feel especially bonded to Democrats, has the greater gap developed with men going Republican? Perhaps that question contains its own answer: The blatant appeals to women don't win women so much as they lose men.

Nate Silver allays post-Pew anxieties.

"There are two smarter questions to ask about the Pew poll."

First, is it really likely that Mr. Romney leads the race by 4 points right now? The consensus of the evidence, particularly the national tracking polls, would suggest otherwise. Instead, the forecast model’s conclusion is that the whole of the data is still consistent with a very narrow lead for Mr. Obama, albeit one that is considerably diminished since Denver.

It might be granted that the situation is more ambiguous than usual right now. But our forecast model looks at literally all of the polls; it estimates Mr. Romney’s post-debate bounce as being 2.5 percentage points, not quite enough to erase Mr. Obama’s pre-debate advantage.

There now. Feel better?

Pew: Romney 49%, Obama 45%.

Among likely voters. Last month, Romney trailed by 8 points. That means Romney has picked up 12 points!

People even like Romney more!

Coming out of the debate, Mitt Romney’s personal image has improved. His favorable rating has hit 50% among registered voters for the first time in Pew Research Center surveys and has risen five points since September. At the same time, Obama’s personal favorability rating has fallen from 55% to 49%.

And women are evenly divided:

Currently, women are evenly divided (47% Obama, 47% Romney). Last month, Obama led Romney by 18 points (56% to 38%) among women likely voters.

Romney picked up 18 points with women!

ADDED: Over at Nate Silver's blog at the NYT, commenters are begging him to update his latest post, which is from last night and has the reassuring title "National Polls Show Signs of Settling." His readers need absorbing this news:

Where are you Nat? Reassure about the Pew poll...

Silver's all about processing/massaging the data, and he does seem to minister to the sensitivities of NYT readers.

UPDATE: Shortly after midnight, Silver answered the call for help. (I'll do a new post about it.)

"New Polls Raise Chance of Electoral College Tie."

Says Nate Silver, speculating about something that would require "a deterioration in his polls between now and Nov. 6 — or that the polls have overestimated his standing across the board." (Overestimated? Do you think?)

Mitt Romney would probably win such an election, because Republicans will probably control a majority of state delegations in the incoming House of Representatives.

"In the span of just two weeks, Mitt Romney has gone from seeming quite vulnerable to the near-inevitable Republican nominee."

Nate Silver says, noting that since December 13, Romney's gone from 42% to 72% at Intrade, and opining that even 72% seems low. (Here's the Intrade chart, and you can see that Romney's just back where he was before, following a brief plunge. Meanwhile, here's what happened to Newt.)

Can you visualize a scenario in which Romney does not emerge as the winner? Silver tries. He notes that Romney's numbers are low for a frontrunner, and you can tell that plenty of Republicans still resist him. Yes, but what could happen? He might do poorly in Iowa. Silver's numbers show that Romney might get as much as 36% in Iowa, but "as little as 8 percent, which could drop him all the way down to fifth or sixth place."

Even a third-place finish in Iowa, much less something worse, might now be viewed as disappointing for Mr. Romney, increasing the risk of either a loss in New Hampshire or a close call that made Mr. Romney vulnerable heading into South Carolina and Florida....

My view is that the probability of these scenarios is higher than is generally acknowledged.... [but] there’s still that issue of one of the other candidates actually having to defeat him. One of the more likely scenarios is that Mr. Romney does take some bruises in the early states, whether at the expense of Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Perry, Mr. Huntsman or even Mr. Paul. But then the other candidate runs out of steam. Mr. Romney recovers and wins, perhaps after a strong performance in Michigan on Feb. 28, on Super Tuesday.

What are the chances that someone not currently running will win the GOP nomination?

Nate Silver analyzes it and finds "a small but nontrivial chance that the Republican nominee could be someone like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie."

"It gets a little lonely over here in Siberia from time to time" was the wry whine from the under-included Jon Huntsman at the debate last night.

But does he have serious cause for complaint? Personally, I would love to hear from Thaddeus McCotter. Remember him? He was kept out of the debates entirely because he didn't hit a point in the polls — 1% — that was within the margin of error. Huntsman, benefited by inclusion in multiple debates, still hasn't worked his percentage up above the 1% mark.

It makes sense for the moderators to apportion the time with some regard to the polls! One-percenters are lucky to be included in the debate at all, especially this late in the game, when they've proven, over the weeks, that they are not gaining ground. Huntsman's poll numbers are flatlining.

This was a prime-time network debate. It wasn't wrong, at this point, to use some approach other than egalitarianism. They had equality of opportunity at the start of what has been a long series of debates. At some point, meritocracy kicks in. The people have shown they're most interested in comparing a set of 4 or 5 of the candidates to each other, and those on the outs should be grateful that they're given a shot at all.

The question isn't why is Huntsman getting so many fewer questions than Romney/Cain/Perry/Gingrich. The question is why is he getting so many more questions than Thaddeus McCotter?

And here's a news report revealing that CBS consciously chose poll-based proportionality. The Bachmann campaign got its hands on some internal CBS email:

In the email string, CBS News’ political analyst John Dickerson said that Bachmann was “not going to get many questions during the debate and she’s nearly off the charts,” a reference to the Minnesota congresswoman’s low standing in the polls....

“There’s nothing that can be done now. The debate’s over,” [Bachmann spokeswoman Alice] Stewart said. “They assured us prior to debate that it was going to be a fair and level playing field and it certainly wasn’t. We didn’t want to have to get the word out but they made it clear to us that it was going to be fair and it wasn’t.”

It's a level playing field if you view the game as beginning months ago! You had equal opportunity at the outset, but you've been doing poorly, and it's a meritocracy. Playing the "fairness" card now makes you sound like a liberal arguing for affirmative action... in a situation where there was no deprivation of opportunity at the outset.

Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton accused CBS of “disgraceful” actions that stemmed from an “arrogance” in thinking that “they can choose the next president.”

“Ron Paul consistently polls among the top three in the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire,” Benton said in a statement. “He is polling in double digits in most respected polls. 

Now, Paul does deserve attention, for the reason stated. But I think he got some great openings last night. He had the chance to distinguish himself as strongly opposed to all torture (defined unstingily) and to all undeclared wars. But he only had 90 seconds total, and so something beyond poll-based proportionality infused CBS's decisionmaking.

After the moderator Scott Pelley defended CBS's choices:

“I’ll tell you that the time for all of the candidates was limited. We had an hour and a half. We had eight candidates... I’ll also tell you we spent an enormous amount of time, several weeks, counting all of the questions of all the candidates, making sure everyone had a fair shot. Gov. Huntsman, who is polling around 1 percent at this point, made a point of coming up to me on stage and said, ‘I really appreciate how much you talked to the candidates who are not polling very high in numbers.’ So I think the candidates felt they were well treated.”

Oh, is Huntsman gunning for a network job? He's clever. Sucking up like that.

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene said:

A clever politician like Huntsman should know better than to joke about Siberia.

What if he had said "Nazi camp" instead?

"Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election."

Lots of detailed analysis from Nate Silver, who sums it up like this:

With Perry having slumped in the polls, however, and Romney the more likely nominee, the odds tilt slightly toward Obama joining the list of one-termers. It is early, and almost no matter what, the election will be a losable one for Republicans. But Obama’s position is tenuous enough that it might not be a winnable one for him.