Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? We answer this question using a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from August 1 to November 1, 2010 and data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional elections provided by the Federal Election Commission. … With over 500 million active users in 2012, […] Read more »
How Twitter can help predict an election
… For nearly a century, conventional wisdom has argued that we can only truly know what the public thinks about an issue if we survey a random sample of adults. An entire industry is built on this view. … Digital democracy will put these campaign professionals out of work. New […] Read more »
Nate Silver addresses assembled statisticians at this year’s JSM
Nate Silver of 538 fame gave the President’s invited address this year at the Joint Statistical Meeting in Montreal. Nate began his talk by pointing out that because of his efforts to bring statistical rigor to topics usually covered by journalists he is often portrayed as a kind of statistical […] Read more »
Here’s How Republicans Can Take Over the Senate
One difference between professional athletes and fans, and between coaches and cheerleaders, is that while all of them see opportunities for their teams, the athletes and coaches are more likely to also see, and at least privately acknowledge, potential pitfalls. The 2014 Senate races, which are really a fight over […] Read more »
Silver’s switch may not succeed
Nate Silver’s move to the ESPN mother ship may be the best thing for all concerned. … I started pondering this many years ago, probably before [Nate] Silver was born, about the marketability of polls, the kind that Silver enjoys bundling. I wanted to be able to syndicate poll results […] Read more »
The White House Is Not a Metronome
In a series of articles last week, the writer Megan McArdle asserted that Republicans have about a 75 percent chance of winning the White House in 2016. “Mostly, the White House flips back and forth like a metronome,” she wrote. “Voters just get tired after eight years.” As other commentators, […] Read more »