Every election puts the media at odds with Nate Silver, the celebrated out election forecaster who derides Washington punditry for being devoid of data.
But as the election comes to a close, the Huffington Post has written a lengthy criticism of Silver for trending his site's forecast toward Donald Trump. And Politico reports that "Nate Silver Rages at Huffington Post Editor in 14-part Tweetstorm."
That might be a polite way to put it, though:
The Huffington Post's Ryan Grimm had accused Silver of "unskewering the polls," a term that the right-wing had used before the Mitt Romney-Barack Obama election. Conservatives had claimed polls were skewed and then launched an effort to "unskewer" them. Of course, it turned out there was nothing wrong with the polls and Obama really would win.
Grimm said Silver's forecasting model, showing the election tightening and Trump on the rise, is "causing waves of panic among Democrats."
"He may end up being right, but he's just guessing," wrote Grimm. "A 'trend line adjustment' is merely political punditry dressed up as sophisticated mathematical modeling."
Boy, did that set off Silver. Here's the rest of his response on Twitter.
He followed up with this defense of his rant:
Trump has in the past proven a problem for Silver's modeling. Silver issued an apology of sorts after the Republican primary, when FiveThirtyEight regularly dismissed Trump's chances of winning. He has at times during the general election put Trump's chances much higher than they are now, warning President Trump was a real possibility. The latest FiveThirtyEight election forecast as of 12:23 p.m. PT had Trump with a 35 percent chance of winning the election.
