When I first discovered FiveThirtyEight.Com (courtesy of Down and Out of Sài Gòn on one of the American election threads here at LP, if I recall correctly), I thought of Nate Silver as America’s Possum. Coincidentally, there’s a profile of Silver published in New York magazine which makes some very similar points about the emergence of a statistician doing psephological wonkery as an avocation into a major source of expertise and information on elections as an article sounding that theme from Monash University Journalism Professor Chris Nash in the new edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.
Just think what elections would be like without Possums and Silvers! If all we had to rely on for psephological goodness was the dead tree media…
Aw shucks Kim, you keep saying these nice things and I’ll have to put you on my Christmas list
FiveThirtyEight is the best polling website I’ve ever come across. Maths nerds in the House.
Sam, if you like nerdy the Princeton Election Consortium is worth checking out:
http://election.princeton.edu/
It focuses more on snapshot style meta-analysis of polls and Sam Wang is comprehensively transparent in his methodology.
Ahh the joys of social facts. That’s a great article in NY Mag … is our equivalent really the ‘berra times??
Btw on FiveThirtyEight, Possum let me know if you’re looking for a photographer..
DK, I might take you up on that after this US election finishes. Drop me a line sometime.