Carole Cadwalladr — Nate Silver: It’s the numbers, stupid

Nate Silver is a new kind of political superstar. One who actually knows what he’s talking about. In America, punditry has traditionally been about having the right kind of hair or teeth or foaming rightwing views. Silver has none of these. He just has numbers. Lots of them. And, on the night of the US presidential election, they were proved to be right in quite spectacular fashion.

For weeks and months, the election had been “too close to call”. Pundit after pundit declared that the election could “go either way”. That it was “neck and neck”. Only it wasn’t. In the end, it turned out not to be neck and neck at all. Or precisely what Nate Silver had been saying for months. On election day, he predicted Obama had a 90.9% chance of winning a majority in the electoral votes and by crunching polling data he successfully predicted the correct result in 50 out of 50 states.

“You know who won the election tonight?” asked the MSNBC TV news anchor, Rachel Maddow. “Nate Silver.”

Twitter went into meltdown. The blogosphere went Nate Silvertastic. Sales of his first book, The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction leapt 800% overnight and went to number two in the bestseller charts. And whole portions of the media decided that this wasn’t just a personal triumph for Nate Silver – it was the triumph of the nerds. One man and his mathematical model had bested an entire political class of journalists, spin doctors, hacks and commentators.

The Raw Story
Nate Silver: It’s the numbers, stupid
Carole Cadwalladr, The Observer

Suddenly, math and numbers dominate the narrative rather than words and spin. Is a trend developing?

Nate Silver — The Virtues and Vices of Election Prediction Markets

Nate on polls, prediction markets, and methodology.

The New York Times | Five Thirty Eight
The Virtues and Vices of Election Prediction Markets
Nate Silver

See also:

AlterNet
Republicans Desperate to Spin Romney as the Front-Runner Are Becoming 'Nate Silver Truthers'
Joshua Holland

David Rothschild | The election is over! (Results embargoed two weeks)

No good news for Gov. Romney from the prediction markets. Unless there's either a Romney surge or an Obama crash, the results are likely in.

Yahoo News | The signal
The election is over! (Results embargoed two weeks)
David Rothschild | Predictwise

Rodger Mitchell — The coming election: Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court is “forever”

Rodger points out that the coming election is really about the Supreme Court and judiciary. The right has realized this for a long time. It has long been the objective of conservatives to gain effective control of the judiciary.

After Citizens United the left is now waking up to the danger to liberalism posed by the current composition of the Supreme Court and that one more relatively young conservative justice would tip the balance hard right for some time to come, with potentially devastating social consequences decisions reflecting business interests and conservative morality.

This is a dynamic that greatly favors President Obama, since many on the left who would otherwise either pass or vote for a third party candidate to "send a message" will hold their noses and vote for the president again just because of the judiciary.

In the US, voting for a particular party is also voting for the composition of the judicial branch of government, and this aspect of voting is not subject to periodical review through future elections. Once federal judges are appointed it is for life, unless removed for cause, which is rare.

Monetary Sovereignty
The coming election: Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court is “forever”
Rodger Mitchell

Richard Reeves — Stockman Redux

As he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan called in a 34-year-old congressman from Michigan named David Stockman, considered by many to be the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment.

Stockman had impressed the new president by humbling the old man in practice debates before Reagan took on President Carter back in September.

“Dave,” said Reagan, “I’ve been thinking about how to get even with you for that thrashing you gave me in the debate rehearsals. So I’m sending you to the OMB (Office of Management and Budget).” Commented David Brinkley of NBC News: “He’s so fast with big figures that he scares old Washington hands.”

Stockman had only days to come up with a balanced budget that fulfilled Reagan’s campaign promises to cut taxes and build up the military. He was fast, but not necessarily accurate or truthful. Not by a long shot. What he did was use a pre-Reagan-projected budget with a $75 billion deficit the first year. But he already knew the real figure would be more than $600 billion after totaling Reagan’s new programs. On the revenue side, he used asterisks instead numbers. Lots of asterisks.

Stockman retired after four years, wrote a book, a confessional of sorts, went to Wall Street and made a lot of money. He turned down interview requests and kind of faded away.

Until last week, when he wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times. The headline was: “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan.”

truthdig
Stockman Redux
Richard Reeves

As they say, "it takes one to know one.