tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post1108349469780201122..comments2024-03-28T14:15:36.649+00:00Comments on SCOT goes POP!: Why Nate Silver is wrongJames Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01516007141763230886noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-7626848382439130962013-08-14T22:34:19.106+01:002013-08-14T22:34:19.106+01:00john, etc,
It appears Nate Silver was spun.
Howe...john, etc,<br /><br />It appears Nate Silver was spun.<br /><br />However he has nowt to say about it on his Twitter feed as far as I can tell.<br /><br /> douglas clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11422060678908705962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-62181668568359801072013-08-14T14:02:06.206+01:002013-08-14T14:02:06.206+01:00Hi Andrew, I'm pretty sure the comments about ...Hi Andrew, I'm pretty sure the comments about the doubling of the oil price and the viability of wave power were made by John Curtice. The example of a potential game-changer that Nate Silver put forward was the Eurozone breaking apart, which I agree is an extremely odd suggestion, because the conventional wisdom is that an economic crisis would be a boon for the No campaign.<br /><br />I think Steve Richards was bang on the money last night when he suggested that the real game-changer would be if it looked like the Tories were heading for victory at the next general election (in my opinion that already does look highly likely, but arguably the public won't be convinced until and unless the Tories take a clear poll lead).James Kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01516007141763230886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-86905626755266167992013-08-14T13:49:08.006+01:002013-08-14T13:49:08.006+01:00Good points in the article and good to hear Nate S...Good points in the article and good to hear Nate Silver was wary about how his comments were spun. Those comments also betray a lack of understanding of the context and what might swing votes as I wrote here: http://www.scottishrepublic.eu/scottish/nate-silver-should-probably-stick-to-baseball/Andrew Andersonhttp://www.scottishrepublic.eunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-22374947364728956292013-08-14T10:13:33.745+01:002013-08-14T10:13:33.745+01:00Silver predicted major gains for the Lib Dems in t...Silver predicted major gains for the Lib Dems in the last British general election, and how did that turn out?Séamusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-84255638214617370582013-08-13T21:14:50.443+01:002013-08-13T21:14:50.443+01:00Excellent post, James.
Given John's comments,...Excellent post, James.<br /><br />Given John's comments, I'm amazed that the Scotsman front paged this story.<br /><br />I'm not much of a polling buff and therefore I'm not sure how reliable averaging the polls is. <br /><br />But surely for the Scotsman to spin this as an expert view (when all the guy did was quote a figure that even I could have quoted, and draw dubious conclusions from past referenda) was pretty poor journalism.<br /><br />Not, of course that I'm surprised to see poor journalism from the Scotsman. <br /><br />It seems they ignored the poll carried out on behalf of WoS, because it said things they didn't want to hear, and ran with this instead, because no matter how unreliable and unresearched it was, it was music to their Britnat ears.<br /><br />Of course, I have no problem with them spinning that we have no chance. It increases the chance of non-fanatic unionists, confident of an overwhelming victory, deciding that THEIR vote isn't necessary.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-38317591527337277592013-08-13T21:14:03.620+01:002013-08-13T21:14:03.620+01:00I don't there's anything wrong with using ...I don't there's anything wrong with using poll averages as such. It would obviously produce inaccurate figures some of the time (for instance the 1992 election, when every pollster had its methodology wrong) but there's a case to be made for saying that a polling average is less likely to be inaccurate than any other method you can think of. The problem is that there's a bit of leap between saying that "No appear to currently have a decent lead" and saying that "the fact that No are ahead means that they have effectively already won, even though the referendum will not take place until a year from now", which is a much more extraordinary claim. So the key to this is the almost religious belief that the No side can always expect to gain ground in any referendum. For that belief to have credibility, there needs to be some kind of explanation for why Quebec 1995 (and indeed to a lesser extent Montenegro 2006) drove a coach and horses through that "rule". What was so unique about that campaign? Silver is actually quoted in the Scotsman as mentioning the Quebec example, but he bizarrely attempts to use it as proof of his own claim - ie. "Yes were in a winning position and then lost". But that happened in the last week! Given that we're a year out from the Scottish referendum, surely the much more salient point is that Yes made up huge ground in Quebec in the months leading up to polling. How does Silver explain that away? We don't seem to have an answer.<br /><br />By the way, I see Alex Massie has linked to this post with the words "Silver...appears to have annoyed some Scottish nationalists today". Honestly, Alex, if Silver had annoyed me you'd know all about it (I refer you to numerous posts on this blog about Messrs Smithson and Baker). I do think he's wrong, but that's a different matter. Alex himself is making me somewhat dizzy with his musings on this subject, because it hasn't been that long since he was giving some credence to the idea that the campaign proper hadn't really started and the polls therefore didn't matter, which seems to flatly contradict today's verdict of "We are where we are and, right now, a little over a year from the referendum the Yes side are losing." His comment about the Wings poll is also pointlessly snide - I haven't seen anyone claim that the finding about whether Scots would want to join the Union now if we were independent means that the Yes side is "winning". But I have seen plenty of people claim that it tells us something interesting about underlying public attitudes, which it self-evidently does. And underlying attitudes matter. Did the fact that Alex Salmond led Iain Gray on personal ratings mean that the SNP were "winning" the Holyrood election back in the early weeks of 2011? Nope. But it did mean there was a plausible reason for thinking that the raw voting intention figures were not telling the whole story, and that Labour's lead was potentially soft. We all know what happened next.James Kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01516007141763230886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-77268885912837595202013-08-13T14:31:08.418+01:002013-08-13T14:31:08.418+01:00Spoke to Nate Silver today. He knows he has been s...Spoke to Nate Silver today. He knows he has been spun and generally prefers to keep a lower profile. His Referendum analysis is based on averaging the polls. He says the lowest No margin he has seen is 7% in favour of No. He was unaware of the WoS weekend poll. He has visited Scotland before, socially, and now gets most of his info from the Guardian. He was complimentary about blogs from those disputing his reported comments.johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-77782368351864974642013-08-13T01:21:26.628+01:002013-08-13T01:21:26.628+01:00Mentioning Quebec referendums is OK. After all, Ye...Mentioning Quebec referendums is OK. After all, Yes lost twice in Quebec. <br /><br />Looking at the detail of those campaigns is just not done. As The Times remarks today in its coverage of this non-story, the sizable No vote in 1980 didn't just result in Quebec getting nothing, it actually had powers taken away. (Take a bow Michael Kelly.) The Scotsman's not going to be printing that part of the story, is it? That's even even scarier than the major swing from No to Yes in 1994-1995.Angus McLellanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14238976801715524150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930120922627919768.post-29730848179947923782013-08-13T01:09:20.090+01:002013-08-13T01:09:20.090+01:00James, The latest Panelbase poll (and if memory se...James, The latest Panelbase poll (and if memory serves me correctly, the one before that) have men supporting Indy both in those likely to vote and in overall. No is relying on women for its majority. This is dangerous for them (and an oppertunity for the Yes campaign) as it most likely reflects woman's disengagement with formal political campaigns.Alasdair Stirlinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01282612686734280239noreply@blogger.com