Link to this one in there
https://disorderup.substack.com/p/moby-dick-is-a-useless-guide-to-polling?publication_id=1332463&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share&isFreemail=true&triedRedirect=true
Ingesting polls feels like an opportunity to define a variable: who will win the election? This tendency, I think, was exacerbated in 2008, when two things happened: a majority of the country wanted a change after the Bush years, and a guy blogging under the handle Poblano (later revealing himself as Nate Silver) started to make predictions, based on polling and demographic analysis, so accurate that they suggested some kind of second sight. The people badly wanted something, and a wizard turned up out of nowhere and told them they would get it, and lo it was so.
There are other factors, of course, but I think most stem from those two, and 2008 ushered us into a new era of Celebrity Nerds Who Can Tell The Future.
Poblano.
Wait a damn minute. I FUCKING REMEMBER NOW. HE WAS ON THE GREAT ORANGE SATAN
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/25/nate-silver-fivethirtyeight-abc-layoffs/
Readers only knew him as “poblano.”
A baseball statistician by day, the mysterious writer started dipping his toes in the political waters in a data-filled Daily Kos blog post published at 2:10 a.m., Nov. 1, 2007, titled “HRC Electability in Purple States.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/10/31/405019/-
Here is the headline: Clinton does a little better than Barack Obama and John Edwards in the Blue states. There is little difference between the three candidates in Red states. But Obama and Edwards do MUCH better than Clinton in Purple states. Numbers below the break for the math wonks amongst us.
Feels like five lifetimes ago.