For some folks on the right, reality still seems to be lagging about 24 hours behind.
The Critique of Nate Silver’s Pure Reason
Over at National Review Online (come on, who hasn't ventured over to a right wing blog or two today to fully savor the fruits of victory), Jonah Goldberg is still wondering today whether Nate is on to something or if his model is just full of malarkey. Follow me over the jump.
From the article:
Now, I have no idea whether Silver’s model is the psephological Rosetta Stone some hope — or fear — it to be. And no one else does either. The truth is that any statistician can build a model. They do it all the time. They make assumptions about the electorate, assign weights to polls and economic indicators, etc., and then they wait for the sausage to come out. No doubt some models are better than others, and some models are simply better for a while and then regress to the mean. But ultimately, the numbers are dependent on the values you place in them. As the computer programmers like to say, garbage in, garbage out.
It's true, any statistician can build a model. In fact, Dean Chambers built one called UnSkewed Polls. The difference is some people like Nate Silver ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING and people like Dean Chambers and Dick Morris are completely full of crap.
I’m not saying Silver’s just lucky or shoveling garbage. He’s a serious numbers guy. But so are the folks at the University of Colorado’s political-science department, whose own model is based on economic indicators. Its October 4 findings predicted Romney would win, as did many other models.
They couldn’t all be right.
He is right again...they couldn't all be right! Well Jonah, they weren't. This guy is un-freaking-believable!
Finally, the kicker:
What interests me is the way people talk about math as if it were divinely prophetic. They seem to subscribe to a religion that simply apes the terminology of science. To listen to many of Silver’s defenders, questioning his methodology is akin to rejecting evolution or the laws of thermodynamics, as if only his model is sanctified by the god Reason.
As if Nate needs defenders at this point! Wouldn't last night's results speak for themselves? Here we are on the day after the right were handed an electoral ass kicking of gargantuan proportions, and this dude is still questioning the determination of reason-minded people to trust Nate's math over baseless right wing propaganda.
One has to wonder if the Jonah Goldbergs of the world will ever get it. From the sound of it, it may be a while before conservatives stop counting yard signs and feeling the vibrations for evidence their candidate is winning.