This election has led to more than its fair share of bad punditry. As a general principle we should be merciful. If we were forced to ignore everyone who has been wrong on occasion, there would be no one left to listen to. This site included. However sometimes people make predictions that are so poor that we really should ignore them at least until they find the heart to explain their mistake. Sam Wang, whom we have criticized previously, made just such a mistake with respect to the Arizona primary. Mr. Wang's poorly conceived contention was that John Kasich's decision to play in Arizona would cost Ted Cruz victory there.
The reason Mr. Wang made this prediction was that it fit with his already defined narrative suggesting that Kasich needed to get out of Cruz's way in a lot of states to optimize Cruz's chance of wining a contested convention. We explained in an earlier post why that narrative was wrong, but at least there was a theory. In Arizona there was no theory. What happened was that Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz by more than double the amount of votes that John Kasich got. The huge giant missing piece from Wang's analysis was that it simply assumed that what would have been the Rubio vote could be reassigned in some fashion to other candidates. In fact so much of the intended Rubio vote had already been cast that Rubio ended up beating Kasich in Arizona. This impending dynamic was clear to all analysts who were watching the race closely. There was always simply too much early vote for anyone to catch Trump. In the end the early vote was considerably larger than 2/3rd of the total. Not being on top of this aspect of the vote, to the point where you assume Rubio supporters could be reassigned, strongly suggests Mr. Wang was simply not paying attention. You should not make predictions when you are not paying attention.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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