Sorting through it all

I was heartened this morning to find that the #1 most emailed article on NYTimes.com was a profile of Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight.com. I followed 538 religiously this campaign season. As the article today points out, Silver, a 30-year-old numbers whiz, started the website partially out of frustration with the mainstream media's treatment of polling data—i.e., the fact that the media often treat unequal polls equally. At FiveThirtyEight, Silver instituted a poll ranking system, so that trusted polls like Quinnipiac and Rasmussen get the credence they deserve, while obscure polls using faulty sample groups get their come-uppins. When a poll was published that suggested some shifting trend, Silver would delve headfirst into why the poll got the result that it did. (See "Anatomy of a Polling Disaster.") Often, he would find some monumental error with the way the poll was conducted, and he would give that poll a poor ranking. From this kind of astute analysis, Silver made it far easier to make sense of the way public opinion of the presidential election was progressing. Previously, when the media found one of these faulty polls, which Silver calls "outliers," they would trumpet it as a shift in the direction of public opinion (sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy). Now, such polls are relegated to the scrap heap, and future polls from those organizations are treated with deserved skepticism.

I don't watch much TV anymore, so I didn't realize that Silver had also gained significant attention as a pundit, but it makes sense. I'm happy about this for two reasons. First, he's young, and it's fantastic to see that young people doing creative things get rewarded. Second, and more importantly, we live in a new internet age, in which more and more information is constantly being tossed at us from all directions. Even the most educated people get thrown off by this constant stream of data, thus it's extremely helpful when someone like Nate Silver comes along, with a scientific or mathematical solution to sort through it all. Silver's increasing popularity bodes well for people like him, and for the education of society generally.

Finally, I'm sympathetic to Silver's point about what happens to his website, now that the election's over. He intends to continue using FiveThirtyEight to predict congressional votes on Obama initiatives, but he admits that the popularity of his site will likely dwindle.

“That’s the paradox,” [Silver] said. “You would think that you elect this guy and you want him to effect change, and then he gets elected, and people don’t care about bills being passed.”

Touché, Nate. Isn't a lack of curiosity how we got into this mess in the first place?

Voters Who Wear Black Robes

Some who wear black robes get to vote. Some don't.

You wouldn't know it from recent media coverage, but the Supreme Court continues to hand down decisions and quite often, they suck. Within the last few weeks, the Court upheld an Indiana law requiring all voters to show a photo ID. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court said that the law, which is heavily supported by those (Republicans) who purport to fear voter fraud and heavily opposed by those (Democrats) who actually fear voter suppression. While the proponents of the law could show no actual evidence of voter fraud, a majority of the Court clearly believed them.

Well, nothing like a quick reality check. In the Indiana primary today, a dozen nuns, all in their 80s and 90s, showed up to vote but were turned away — by one of their own! — because they did not have driver's licenses. Moreover, they were denied provisional ballots because it would be impossible for them to get processed by the Indiana DMV within the necessary 10-day period before the state certifies the election. Some of the nuns — one was 98 — showed up in wheelchairs with outdated passports. The story is really quite appalling. Read it here.

I mention the bit about media coverage because of an outstanding study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The nonpartisan group does empirical research, tracking which media outlets are covering which stories, and how much. The PEJ concluded that last week, in all the coverage of the 2008 campaign, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was mentioned in 42% of the stories, while Sen. Hillary Clinton (she's still running for president, folks) was mentioned in 41% of stories. This is troublesome.

According to the PEJ study, of all the stories last week, the campaign ranked first, receiving 38% of the coverage. Understandable, perhaps. Coverage of the Supreme Court, by the way, was 10th, at 1%.

Too bad for the nuns. Like the justices, they wear black robes, too, but I guess their votes don't matter.