In retrospect, the spring of 2008 could be seen, in terms of the tensions between the American mainstream media, internet and politics, as a big bang of sorts. It was the moment that most of the American media had already decided Hillary Clinton's victory in the Democratic primaries. Based on the polls and what was seen as undeniable momentum.
One of the main doubters of this approach was an anonymous blogger, who went by the pseudonym Poblano, and wrote to Clinton: "not so fast". Based on polls, along with demographic data that other pollsters simply had no interest in, Poblano predicted less than remarkable results for Clinton over someone named Barack Obama.
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And he was right. A blog with a lowly number of 800 daily visits, turned out to be the most precise forecaster out of all the veteran and reliable media outlets. That May, the man behind the chili pepper was revealed: Nate Silver, a numbers geek and sports fan. He dazzled again during the presidential elections, when he forecast with great precision the result in 49 out of 50 states. A year later Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, a label that was especially valid during the 2012 presidential elections, when he forecast precisely the results in all 50 states.
Silver was crowned the "Oracle of American Politics", even though he doesn't see himself as a prophet or fortune teller. His method, he explains simply, is just more relevant and scientific than what conventional media uses.
Silver was born in Michigan, defines himself as half Jewish, and has loved books since a young age. "I always felt like an outsider," he said in an interview to the UK Observer newspaper in 2012 where he also mentioned his early revelation of attraction to the same sex.
"I've always come from an outside point of view. I think that's important. If you grow up gay, or in a household that's agnostic, when most people are religious, then from the get-go, you are saying that there are things that the majority of society believes that I don't believe."
When Silver was asked in the same interview what made him feel different than others - his being gay or a super-nerd, he answered: ""Probably the numbers stuff since I had that from when I was six." And that's without mentioning his obsession with burritos, where he researched the perfect burrito, or his personal political leanings. "I am somewhere between a libertarian and a liberal," he said eight years ago on the Charlie Rose show, just in case his wasn't enigmatic enough.
A hit is just a hit?
Silver channeled his love for numbers towards his love for baseball, into a career in sports consulting. When he was just 25, he developed the PECOTA, Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, based on statistics and past behavior. If you've seen the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill from 2011, you can see the connection between that and the manager of the failing baseball team from the movie, who somehow manages to raise it up from the ashes.
Silver developed his method using data on the performance of players on the field to produce forecasts. He took the method and his research-based forecasting capabilities and decided to apply them to American politics, and guess what? Turns out data and past performance are a base for precise forecasts also on the brutal battlefields of DC.
"Sports and politics offer several obvious parallels," Silver explained in New York Magazine in 2008. "Both involve a competition, essentially between two teams. Both involve reams of statistical data available for devotees to sort through – or, more commonly, for intermediary experts to sort through, analyze, and then interpret for you … In baseball, at least, a hit is a hit. With polls, a yes isn't always a yes. Sometimes it's more like a 'maybe', or a 'yes, until I change my mind', or an 'I don't know, but I'll say yes anyway to get you off the phone.'"
Silver also claims the media is flooded with talented rhetoricians - but when it comes to the ability to analyze statistical data properly - there's a lot missing. According to him, the "experts" are speaking from a position, a problematic combination of ignoring important variables and a personal agenda. They, on their part, are happy with every fumble Silver has made over the years.
The power of uncertainty
Silver's most notorious fumble happened in the 2016 presidential elections. In June that year he predicted Hillary Clinton, whom he had predicted losing to Obama in the primaries eight years earlier, had a 71% chance of beating Donald Trump. While his website, fivethirtyeight.com (as the number of electorates) didn't predict Trump's victory in the elections, up until the election Silver did give Trump a 29% chance of winning. The Huffington Post pollster, for example, gave Trump only a 2% chance.
Silver was accused of inflating Trump's chances. After the victory, when the discussion focused on the relevance of polling, he – the one who gave Trump a real chance – was attacked in an op-ed in Current Affairs under the headline "Why You Should Never, Ever Listen to Nate Silver."
Even President Trump himself prefers to see Silver as someone who failed to predict his victory. In a tweet a few weeks ago the president quoted Silver when he said, "The Trump 2016 Victory was the most shocking political development of my lifetime". "That's only because you got it so wrong," the president added with a jibe, "This time there is far more enthusiasm even than 2016." Just the fact that the President of the United States is mentioning Silver at the height of the campaign shows how important he's become in the American political sphere.
Silver himself claims the loss he predicted for the elected president was proportional to the results. "Sometimes you don't need to be right. Just closer than others," he said. Thanks to statements like that, one can understand Margaret Sullivan, former public editor of the New York Times who responded to his leaving the newspaper for ESPN in 2013: "I don't think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture. He ... disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics."
Not that it bothers him. At 42, Silver is seen as the godfather of the prediction and statistical analyzing method that has become widespread. In the current race for president, he, like others, predicts that the way the president dealt with coronavirus (and the fact he got sick himself) will end his presidency, and he recently claimed that Trump has entered "underdog territory."
But just as Silver learned in 2016, much can change in three weeks. He most probably is feeling comfortable. "Nothing makes me happier than uncertainty," he once said. Just like everything in 2020, the only certain thing is uncertainty. Just as Nate Silver likes it.
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