{"id":24658,"date":"2012-01-27T12:46:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T18:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=24658"},"modified":"2012-01-23T07:50:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T13:50:40","slug":"intelligent-political-metacommentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligent Political (Meta)Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From the NYTimes by Nate Silver<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

During the Republican nominating contest, competing paradigms have arisen for how to interpret the evidence from polls, voting results and other tangible indicators of success or failure. The paradigms present profoundly different conclusions about the most likely outcome.<\/p>\n

One might be called \u201cMore of the Same.\u201d It asserts that the traditional rules of engagement in a nomination race still apply, and that the empirical evidence from past contests is reasonably powerful.<\/p>\n

That\u00a0evidence<\/a> looks something like this: Although the nomination is technically decided by delegate counts, and somewhat less literally by the preferences of rank-and-file voters, ultimately the nominee is determined by a sort of open negotiation among the party elite, which includes elected officials, major donors and the partisan news media, among others\u2026.<\/p>\n

The competing paradigm might be called \u201cThis Time Is Different.\u201d It asserts that a fundamental change has occurred in America\u2019s political culture, or that a temporary shift is especially salient in this year\u2019s Republican race.<\/p>\n

Under this interpretation, elite support and the\u00a0ground game<\/a> do not matter as much as usual. Instead, success is more idiosyncratic: personalities matter a lot, and nominations are determined based primarily on momentum and news media coverage.<\/p>\n

There is the potential under these rules for the process to be chaotic. Not only is there no guarantee that voters will \u201cfall in line,\u201d but they may actively rebel against presumptions that they will do so, leading to rapid changes in momentum, and increasing the potential that a party will nominate an \u201cunelectable\u201d or nontraditional candidate. Under this view, the best indication of voter sentiment at any given time is probably the polling \u2014 although it may be acknowledged or expected that the results will change rapidly\u2026.<\/p>\n

I have tried to weigh these competing paradigms in my coverage of the Republican race. But I had found the evidence for \u201cMore of the Same\u201d compelling after Iowa and New Hampshire. Suddenly, but not unexpectedly, according to the theory, everything seemed to have fallen into place. The Republican nomination race of 2012 more closely resembled the Democratic contest of 2004, in which there was some ambiguity about the outcome before the voting began, but one candidate \u2014 John Kerry \u2014 emerged as a clear front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire and never looked back.<\/p>\n

Then came South Carolina\u2026.<\/p>\n

In the case of presidential primaries, previous beliefs ought not be accorded all that much weight: Americans have not been picking presidential nominees in quite this way for all that long, and yet a presidential nomination process is complex. In more abstract terms, both conceptual and statistical models of the presidential nomination process may be\u00a0\u201coverfit\u201d<\/a> and draw too many conclusions from idiosyncratic examples.<\/p>\n

My view is that Mr. Gingrich\u2019s win in South Carolina alone is not enough to be paradigm-breaking. But if he follows it with a win in Florida, all bets are off. Not only would that represent further evidence of Mr. Gingrich\u2019s strength, it would suggest that we had been weighing the evidence incorrectly all along.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the NYTimes by Nate Silver: During the Republican nominating contest, competing paradigms have arisen for how to interpret the evidence from polls, voting results and other tangible indicators of success or failure. The paradigms present profoundly different conclusions about the most likely outcome. One might be called \u201cMore of the Same.\u201d It asserts that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1732],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-issues"],"yoast_head":"\nIntelligent Political (Meta)Commentary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the NYTimes by Nate Silver: During the Republican nominating contest, competing paradigms have arisen for how to interpret the evidence from polls,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Intelligent Political (Meta)Commentary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the NYTimes by Nate Silver: During the Republican nominating contest, competing paradigms have arisen for how to interpret the evidence from polls,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-27T18:46:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-01-23T13:50:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/\",\"name\":\"Intelligent Political (Meta)Commentary\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-27T18:46:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-01-23T13:50:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"From the NYTimes by Nate Silver: During the Republican nominating contest, competing paradigms have arisen for how to interpret the evidence from polls,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/01\/27\/intelligent-political-metacommentary\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Intelligent Political (Meta)Commentary\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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