NYT Pollster Nate Silver: 'I Don't Intend to Vote This Year'
The controversial New York Times pollster Nate Silver, who has been roundly criticized for his overly-optimistic Barack Obama polling, told Charlie Rose, on his PBS show on Tuesday: "I don't intend to vote this year."
Silver, responding to a Rose question that he had a political bias in favor of the President, added: "I'd say I am somewhere in-between being a libertarian and a liberal. So if I were to vote it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision, I suppose."
Before Silver made that claim he attacked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough's recent criticism of his numbers, as he huffed: "He's not using math...He's not using history...He's not using civics."
The following are the relevant exchanges from the October 30 edition of PBS's Charlie Rose show:
CHARLIE ROSE: You've heard this criticism. Joe Scarborough said you were "an ideologue and a joke." That the notion of 73, 74 percent [chance of an Obama win] was simply silly. And you fired back and said that Joe was "math-challenged." What is it that Joe doesn't understand?
NATE SILVER, NEW YORK TIMES, FiveThirtyEight.com: So the thing about - well Joe is not using a lot of different subjects that I learned in school. He's not using, he's not using math, number one. Where you can actually say how often does a two-point lead hold up? He's not using history in the sense you can actually use historical data to inform your opinion about things. So, you know I think there are very - he's not using civics. In that he's not looking at the Electoral College.
...
ROSE: The other argument is, against you, is that you are biased. That you acknowledge that you favor the President and that, therefore, that creeps into the numbers you look at.
SILVER: Well I don't intend to vote this year.
ROSE: You, you've heard - oh really?!
SILVER: Yeah. I don't - you know since I joined the Times I haven't, I haven't voted.
ROSE: They don't let you vote if you join the Times?
SILVER: No, it's my, it's my decision. That doesn't mean I don't have political views but-
ROSE: Right.
SILVER: But you know we -
ROSE: Your political views do favor the views of the President, rather than the views of Governor Romney.
-- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.
