All journalism is yellow.... always has been.... always will be...

I find most of the arguments made in this article already answered by Nate What do you mean all journalism is yellow? Are you saying Silver is cowardly or that this article is cowardly?

Silver answers most of the points raised in this article in his posts at the end of last week. It seems more like an article just trying to attack the person rather than go against the methods and statistics used by Silver. Cherry-picking only certains polls then doing much of the same supposed cheerleading for the opposition does not make a strong case.

"This is the type of analysis that walks a very thin line between forecasting and cheerleading. When you weight a poll based on what you think of the pollster and the results and not based on what is actually inside the poll (party sampling, changes in favorability, job approval, etc), it can make for forecasts that mirror what you hope will happen rather than what’s most likely to happen. This is also true of Silver’s dismissal of Romney’s lead in Gallup this week. While Romney is likely not up by seven points nationally, as the poll predicted, you can’t dismiss it while at the same time giving a twelve-day-old Marist/NBC Ohio poll a higher weighting than eight newer polls when Marist has leaned Obama this entire cycle.

All of this also completely ignores the fact that it is more important for Obama to cross the 50 percent threshold in national polls before Election Day than it is for Romney. While it’s impossible to know how the late deciders will break, the historical trend has been for them to break for the challenger. If the Real Clear Politics average is tied at 47 percent, the overwhelming odds are that the last 6 percent will break heavily to Romney. While that would not guarantee an Electoral College victory, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where Romney wins the national vote by more than a percentage point and loses the Electoral College."