Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Freakonomics: Midterm Edition

The NYT's Freakonomics blog has a forum out today on the congressional midterms featuring yours truly. Yeah, I wanted to toot my horn a bit, but I also wanted to point you toward Justin Wolfers' forecast, which is brilliant.  Basically, Wolfers is arguing that it is far worse for a pundit to be uninteresting than wrong, so he proceeds to predict big wins by Democrats next month:
And if I’m wrong? We both know there won’t be any real consequences. I’ll be sure to sell some clever story. You know, there was weather on election day (hot or cold, wet or dry — it all works!) and this messed with turnout. Or perhaps, This Time Was Different, and my excellent forecast was knocked off course by our first black president, by rising cellphone penetration or a candidate who may not be a witch. I’ll remind you how I nailed previous elections.... I’ll bluster and use long words like sociotropic, or perhaps heteroskedastic. And I’ll remind you that my first name is Professor, and I went to a prestigious school. More to the point, if I’m wrong, I’m sure we’ll all have forgotten by the time the 2012 election rolls around. Shhhh… I won’t tell if you won’t.
Definitely worth the read.

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