Skewed Polls, Yo: Democrats Slam Nate Silver for His GOP Senate Takeover Production, Saying He Makes a Lot of Mistakes

Silver didn't actually predict a GOP Senate takeover; he only said the GOP was a "slight favorite" to take majority control. But even this was enough to spur Democrats into Heretic Denouncement mode.

But of course it doesn't take much to do that. That's their preferred mode of expression these last thirty years.

Democrats aren't taking Nate Silver's latest Senate prediction lying down.

In an unusual step, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Monday issued a rebuttal the famed statistician's prediction—made a day earlier—that Republicans were a "slight favorite" to retake the Senate. Silver was wrong in 2012, the political committee's Guy Cecil wrote in a memo, and he'll be wrong again in 2014.

Note that the Democrats have cited his predictions just this very cycle, to gin up the base:

[I]n fundraising pitches this cycle, Democrats regularly invoke his earlier prediction that the battle for Senate control was a "toss-up" [.]

But in the memo, Cecil argues that Silver's track record is less than stellar....

In truth, Silver's suggestions that Republicans are favorites to win the Senate matched the assessment of most analysts in Washington.

Silver's tentative forecast is here.

When FiveThirtyEight last issued a U.S. Senate forecast — way back in July — we concluded the race for Senate control was a toss-up. That was a little ahead of the conventional wisdom at the time, which characterized the Democrats as vulnerable but more likely than not to retain the chamber.

Our new forecast goes a half-step further: We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats’ position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama’s approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions.

His chart of the likely winners of all Senate seats up for election (not just the swing seats being vigorously contested) has Mary Landrieu's reelection as a 50/50 proposition.

Polls don't mean everything and are often wrong. Still, as between the guy saying "Skewed polls, yo!" and the guy saying "Polls are usually right," I'd rather be the latter. I was the former in 2012, and it was pretty awful.

posted by Ace at 11:55 AM

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