Position Paper 1 - Political Pundits

Nate Silver

When following the news, you will notice the use of political pundits to discuss current issues or upcoming elections. Many of these political pundits are featured on major news broadcasts. Although many times they run a blog or social media accounts and make predictions from the comfort of their own home. Regardless of their political party, political pundits should give their opinions without bias and in their best judgment of the truth; however, this is not what often happens. Through research, finding evidence to predict a plausible outcome for elections or national crises should not be complicated and should be taken seriously. 

Through extensive research, I narrowed down a political pundit I thought I should examine. Nate Silver is an ABC News special correspondent and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight. Silver is a statistician who began as a sports pundit before predicting elections. His election predictions are commonly accurate; however, the news website TrendFollowing wrote an article stating not to "fall for his predicitions." The website claims Silver successfully predicted the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. In the 2012 presidential election, he predicted 50 out of 50 of the outcomes successfully; however, his predictions of the 2016 presidential election "hit the wall." TrendFollowing pointed out an article by Silver titled, "How I acted like a pundit and screwed up on Donald Trump." In this article, Silver admits that he ditched the statistics and leaned on educated guesses: 

"The big mistake is a curious one for a website that focuses on statistics. Unlike virtually every other forecast we publish at FiveThirtyEight — including the primary and caucus projections I just mentioned — our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model. Instead, they were what we “subjective odds” — which is to say, educated guesses. In other words, we were basically acting like pundits, but attaching numbers to our estimates."

Silvers's prediction accuracy increased for the 2020 presidential election despite his failed predictions in 2016. On his website, Silver and his team curated an interactive medium to see the statistics of each US state and election winner. He also updated his Twitter account often throughout the outcome of the election. 

 

 

In June 2021, he followed up with a Tweet with a link to an article from FiveThirtyEight regarding how accurate he was with his 2020 predictions. 

In other news, I have a (somewhat belated) review of our how 2020 election forecasts did. Overall we were quite happy and the forecasts were largely accurate and well-calibrated despite a bad year for the polls. But some things to think about for 2022/24.https://t.co/ivCsLKbVO0

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 8, 2021

Currently, Silver is covering the 2022 midterms. According to the House forecast, Republicans are set to win 70 in 100. The Senate forecast predicts the Democrats to win 69 in 100. Whether or not these statistics are a good representation of the polls, we will not know until the results of the 2022 midterm election. We should expect the statistics to be accurate based on Silver's track record; however, it is challenging to trust FiveThirtyEight's forecasts entirely after the 2016 election, when Silver overestimated the Democrats. 

The 2022 midterms forecast is represented on the same medium as the 2016 forecast. Along with the forecast are articles related to the midterm elections. These articles include,

How Black Americans Reshaped Politics in Georgia.

The Polls Still Do Not Show a GOP Bounce Back. 

How Americans feel about Republican Governors Sending Migrants to Blue Cities.

More Democrats than ever Support the Palestinian Cause, and that's Deviding the Party.

Latino Voters Shifted Right in 2020. What does that Mean for Arizona and Nevada this year?

Over the years, Silver has also written several books. One book is titled "The Signal and the Noise: Why So many predictions fail - but Some Don't." According to the description:

"Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty." 

The book was initially released in 2015, before being updated in 2016 after the presidential election. Silver's book has excellent reviews on Amazon and won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. The award is presented to authors with important books in science or mathematics. On Amazon, Silvers book has a score of 4.5/5 stars with 65% of all reviews being 5 stars. 

As previously mentioned, Silver predicts on content other than politics. Silver started his career by predicting sports outcomes, and he still does this on his website today. Along with sports, he also makes predictions in the area of science. Most of his science content is about COVID-19 and what the country should expect post-pandemic. Another illness that FiveThirtyEight covers is Monkeypox. There are also other scientific prediction silver makes on his website as well. 

FiveThirtyEight has podcasts and videos available as well. The podcasts include Politics, Hot Takedown, and Podcast-19. These podcasts are available on the website and on Apple Podcasts. The content of these podcasts can be explained in their titles. Hot Takedown is a sports podcast and Podcast-19 covers the Covid-19 pandemic. Like podcasts, FiveThirtyEight posts a number of videos that are included in articles throughout the website. These videos are included within its own tab on the website available for viewers. 

To stay updated on FifeThirtyEight's content, people can follow Silver's website on social media. These platforms include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and a newsletter. Followers can also purchase merchandise from FiveThirtyEight's store through the website. 

Based on Nate Silver's previous predictions, it is easy to presume that political pundits can get it right. Of course, this depends on what basis the pundits make their predictions. For example, Silver ignoring the statistics and making an "educated guess" during the 2016 presidential election decreased the probability of his prediction being correct. The reason people trust Silver's predictions is due him using numbers and factual evidence from the polls. Looking at political pundits on a broader scale, there are people who make predictions based on their political party; however, in regards to Silver, his correct predictions outweigh his failures. Through researching Nate Silver, I can see why his content is so popular, and why people trust his predictions.