Two liberal bloggers came the closest to predicting North Carolina's presidential race.
Nate Silver, a statistics nut who runs the Web site FiveThirtyEight.com, and Kirk Ross, who writes the Exile on Jones Street blog about the legislature, both predicted Barack Obama would win the state. Silver said by 0.6 percentage points; Ross by 0.5 to 1.5 points.
The actual margin, according to uncertified results from the State Board of Elections, was 0.3 points.
The two were among 16 bloggers, pundits, professors and consultants who predicted an Obama win in the Tar Heel state, according to an informal tally by Dome the week before the election.
Because of the narrow margin, the 13 who predicted a McCain win (including the Eight Ball) shouldn't be too ashamed, except maybe the four conservatives who predicted a win by three or more points — Sen. Richard Burr, Red State editor Erick Erickson, blogger Ed Morrissey and editor Fred Barnes.
And no points go to the five mainstream sources who refused to make a prediction (Rothenberg Political Report, Congressional Quarterly, Cook Political Report, New York Times and MSNBC.)
Comments
Re: Ross, Silver take the gold in punditry
November 10, 2008 - 9:45am — AwakeReaderSo what? Please use a little critical thinking on this point. It means nothing to predict the race. It helps no voters or citizens to hear endless daily polls in the press. Why do we have these polls? What if we had no polls reported until the actual poll on election day? In that case we would actually hear from the campaigns on the issues. Wow, what an idea! Please think of who actually benifits from all the polling and you will see why we don't need it. Prediction is not a science, it is opinion. All these Obama predictors could have been made wrong by any overnight incident that got out the last days of the campaign, and then all the McCain predictors would have won. It means nothing. It harms our political life.
Re: Ross, Silver take the gold in punditry
November 10, 2008 - 9:30am — ryanteaguebeckwith (author)I'll have another post up sometime today on the results of the office pool.
— RTB
Re: Ross, Silver take the gold in punditry
November 10, 2008 - 9:26am — DustinIngallsI'd like to point out that my office pool prediction for this blog was remarkably close to the actual result: 49.8% for Obama, 49.3% for McCain, and 0.8% for Barr. Actual result, last I checked: 49.7% for Obama, 49.4% for McCain, and 0.6% for Barr.