TW: As you know we have followed Nate Silver at 538 as our primary polling source. They have done a fantastic job of not only providing info but providing it in an educational but non condescending manner. Silver has a face for radio but I can see him becoming the Mel Kiper of election forcecasting, a guy who hibernates then pops up every couple of years.
From Silver via HDnet:
"There are a couple fundamental things we're trying to do. One is take this big soup of polling and make sense of it. We rate the polls on how accurate they've been in the past and their sample size. We also look at whether polls tend to lean Republican or Democratic. Sometimes people think a state's moving a certain way when really, they're looking at results from a McCain-friendly pollster or an Obama-friendly pollster--but it may not be biased.
What are your plans for the site, once the election's over?
Silver: I think there are a couple different directions we could take it, and one will be to look at Congress. Whoever gets elected, you're going to see less gridlock--especially if Obama gets elected.
We could use the site to understand which congressmen vote for which bills, and why. Based on this person's district and history, we can say they should've voted for this bill and why. We can look at who are the swing votes in a piece of health care legislation.
We might also branch out. Any time you have (a set of predictive models), there are different ways to use it, like predicting movies that are going to be successful. We're really proud of the brand, and it'll continue on in some form."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10080885-38.html
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