Poblano, who has wowed Kossacks with his detailed election analyses and in-depth background Diaries like this one at Daily Kos and at his own FiveThirtyEight.com blog, got some well-deserved attention today from the National Journal.
As Mark Blumenthal writes:
Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data. His model predicted a 17-point victory for Barack Obama in North Carolina and a 2-point edge for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana.
Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina. Looking back at Poblano's efforts in Pennsylvania, pollster Dick Bennett decried the models as "stepwise regression run amok." Slate's Mickey Kaus predicted failure for "a sophisticated model that ignores... what's been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright."
But a funny thing happened. The model got it right. ...
Moreover, the predictions were more accurate than any of the pollsters' results, as indicated by the graphic below (modified from a chart created by Brian Schaffner of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies).
Poblano is just another example - albeit an exemplary one - of how a blogger with a brain and an obsession benefits us all. We don't know if he does this from a basement in his pajamas, but who cares? Kudos to you, sir.