McHenry County Blog

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New York Times 538 Blogger Admits Joe Walsh Won

November 30, 2010 By: Cal Skinner Category: 538, Joe Walsh, Melissa Bean, Nate Silver

Joe Walsh (Photo credit: Ryan Provenzano)

It’s almost a month after the November 2nd election and blogger Nate Silver has finally gotten around to writing about 8th District Republican Joe Walsh’s victory over three-term Democrat Melissa Bean.

Silver, whose blog “Five Thirty Eight” projected odds of victory for all congressional seats, was spectacularly wrong on Illinois 8th Congressional District.

Despite two public polls by WeAskAmerica showing Walsh and Bean within the margin of error, on election day, Silver was giving Bean an 88% chance of re-election.

Nate Silver gave Melissa Bean an 89% chance of winning the day of the election.

No mention of that massive miscue in today’s snippet about the contest:

“Illinois 8: After absentee and provisional ballots were counted, Melissa Bean, the Democratic incumbent, still trailed Republican Joe Walsh by about 300 votes. Ms. Bean admitted defeat, and Mr. Walsh became another tea-party backed candidate to become a tea-party backed representative.”

I have not seen an explanation of why Silver miscalled the races he did.

Comment (1)

Joe Walsh Comments on the Closeness of the Race

November 09, 2010 By: Cal Skinner Category: 538, 8th Congressional District, Joe Walsh, Melissa Bean, Nate Silver

An email from Joe Walsh:

Here are the odds that the New York Times Nate Silver, who writes "538" gave Melissa Bean of winning the day of the election.

Friends:

It’s been an amazing week. One week removed from election night, we remain absolutely confident in our victory — with virtually all of the absentee votes from Cook County in, our lead is 350 votes or so.

Approximately 600 absentee votes will be counted November 16 in Lake and McHenry Counties and we expect our margin to increase when those are tallied and the election results to be certified shortly thereafter.

In the meantime, I’m preparing to be your representative and will be heading to Washington, DC next week for freshman orientation.

Once the victory becomes official, we intend to have that victory celebration we weren’t quite able to enjoy last Tuesday night.

Rest assured as well, that we are diligently prepared to defend against any attempt to steal last week’s victory away from us.

We won’t let that happen.

Thank you for all your support,

Joe

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