Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Hannan / Presidential Politics Nate Silver and Fivethirtyeight.com: The Obama Supporters Blankie
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:40 PM
Worry not, fans of Obama. This man says izallgood.
By now, you've surely read an article about Obama supporters worried that just saying the words "it's in the bag" will jinx their candidate. Or, if you haven't, read this and you'll get the gist.
I am one such person. Although in every other facet of life I try to hew toward the reasonable (a subscription to Skeptic Magazine has been collecting dust on my Amazon wish list for months), I can still fall prey to the guttural chants and ritual animal sacrifice favored by the mystic set. Especially when it comes to two things: politics and baseball.
During the 2002 World Series, I risked the threat of blood loss and amputation by refusing to move a muscle while the San Francisco Giants were at-bat. It didn't work.
Now the same phenomena is happening, only this time it's with the election. This morning, I made a concerted effort not to wear anything too fancy (a relative term that, in this office, means not tucking in your shirt) for fear that it'd somehow be construed by the Political Gods as a celebratory gesture. The only thing that's kept my animal instincts in check are regular visits to Fivethirtyeight.com, the Obama supporters blankie...
For those unfamiliar, Fivethirtyeight is the brainchild of Nate Silver (the name is a reference to the total number of votes in the electoral college). Silver's name might not mean anything to those who don't know their Brewers from their brewers, but to baseball nerds he's a Messiah.
Silver created PECOTA, a forecast for player performance using statistical analysis. Basically, he's baseball's version of a fortune-teller, only with a way better track record.
Last year, Silver created Fivethirtyeight on the lark that his brand of baseball projections could work in politics (for a longer, and more entertaining look back at its origins, check out this piece from New York Magazine).
Here's Silver, and Fivethirtyeights, hypothesis in a nutshell: Rather than assuming every poll is created equal, why not give more weight to the ones who've predicted correctly in the past? Just as he attempted to do with baseball, Silver's goal in politics was to impose order. Some level of certainty into what had been, previously, a guessing game.
As such, Fivethirtyeight has become the place I run to in times of doubt. When I want to inject some life into the cold, beating vessel that is my statistics-loving heart. And there's no better way to do that than to follow the real-time slimming that is McCain's win projection pie slice (1.1%, at last count).
Ahh yes, almost down to nothing at all. Now all I've gotta do is sit here, motionless, until daybreak. Someone close my eyelids for me 'round midnight, OK? Thanks.
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