nate silver

Earlier this year when Arlen Specter was still a Republican, the Pennsylvania senator was among the harshest critics of Dawn Johnsen, the Indiana University law professor who is President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The OLC is the office that housed such Bush-era luminaries as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, [...]

It’s hard to dispute the game-changing nature of the joint New York Times op-ed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) in favor of climate legislation this past weekend, which brought the chances of a truly bipartisan bill from near zero to, well, somewhere much higher. Not only would Graham’s support mean another [...]

Following up on Chris Steller’s elucidation of the Senate recount in Minnesota that’s left most pundits scratching their heads, several new reports show Al Franken might be the slight favorite to take the seat.
Yesterday, Talking Points Memo reported that the Franken campaign’s numbers show the Democratic candidate trailing by just 50 votes, a significantly lower [...]

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie announced yesterday that he and four state judges will oversee the recount of votes in the U.S. Senate contest.
Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman holds a 206-vote lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken.
As Coleman’s margin has dropped by about 500 votes since Election Day, Republicans are stepping up their criticism [...]

Today I wrote about the possible Stevens effect — voters tell pollsters they’d never vote for a convicted felon and then turn around and do so in the voting booth.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who was convicted in Washington last month on seven felony counts of failing to disclose gifts on Senate disclosure forms, trailed his [...]

Just want to point out that fivethirtyeight’s polling chart for California’s Proposition 8 (to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage) looks exactly like a Jesus fish:

I’ll let you draw your own inferences.

Throughout this election cycle, many Democrats have assumed that Sen. Barack Obama must take a lead of more than one or two percentage points in the polls into Election Day because his actual numbers will get knocked down a notch by the so-called Bradley Effect — the idea that some voters disingenuously tell pollsters that [...]