“[Nate] Silver’s facts are being fired like bullets into the heart of the Romney campaign.”
Dan Hodges has a great piece in The Telegraph today titled “Nate Silver, the geeky statistician who is single-handedly dismantling the myth of Mitt-mentum”. It goes into great detail about the fantasy world that the Romney campaign is trying to hypnotize American voters with, creating a completely false narrative that Obama is on the ropes and they are in the lead with all the momentum.
As Hodges so perfectly shows, it’s a complete sham. And, thanks to Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times, most people aren’t buying it.
My favorite quote in the article is this:
At the moment, [Nate] Silver’s facts are being fired like bullets into the heart of the Romney campaign.
I got a taste of the Romney treatment today myself. I’m on their mailing list and I got an email from Romney Campaign Manager Matt Rhoades with the Subject “Romney leading among independent voters”. In the email was this impressive graph:
Amazing, right? I mean just look at that lead. And it’s growing, too. Looks to me like Obama doesn’t stand a chance.
Except, just as a tether back to reality, Independents are not going to decide this election. The swing states are going to decide it and, in the swing states, President Obama is clobbering Mitt Romney. Ohio. Wisconsin. Nevada. Iowa. New Hampshire. Colorado. Virginia. He’s ahead in all of them.
Here’s Nate Silver’s analysis from today in terms of electoral votes which is, of course, what really matters:
Notice anything different about that graph compared to Romney’s? Of course you do. Mitt Romney is not only not ahead of President Obama, he’s behind and the momentum is with Obama, not him.
It’s the biggest and most public snow job in my lifetime. Almost impressive, actually. Fortunately, as Hodges points out, the mainstream media is not buying it, thanks, largely, to Nate Silver.
Nate Silver is Mitt Romney’s nemesis. Not intentionally; although he admits to being an Obama supporter, his whole career is predicated on getting his predictions right. Like he did in 2008, when “Poblano” accurately predicted the result of 49 of the 50 states, and all 35 senate races.And it is that reputation for accuracy that is so damaging to the Romney campaign’s attempt to sustain their precious “momentum” narrative. People listen to Silver. And over the past 48 hours, the narrative is starting to shift. “Mitt-mentum? Not so fast” – US News & World report. “Romney’s Momentum Seems To Have Stopped” – Political Wire. “The momentum myth” – Washington Post.
It’s nice when journalists do their job, isn’t it?
Heck, they’re even slamming Romney for the lie he told today about Jeep leaving the USA. Look at these headlines from the Google search I did on “Romney Jeep Lie”:
I think I’m getting one of Chris Matthews’ thrills up my leg.
[Romney photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog]
