Larry Sabato Says Nate Silver’s Senate Predictions Are ‘Ridiculous’

Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, responded to Nate Silver on NewsmaxTV, appearing with Steve Malzberg on The Malzberg Show. Silver was just ostracized by Democrats for admitting Republicans are likely to retake the Senate. Sabato called Silver’s analysis “ridiculous,” but not for the reasons you may infer from other headlines.

Larry Sabato runs the renowned Crystal Ball, a political forecast publication, which he says is actually more precise the Nate Silver, the founder and head of FiveThirtyEight.

“The Crystal Ball has projected this for months, if you listen carefully to what he said, we’ve actually been more precise than he has,” Sabato said. “He said that Republicans would get six seats plus or minus five. What does that mean?”

The numbers focused on by ABC reporter Jon Karl and other media who ran the story, were 6 and 11 net pickup seats for Republicans. The predictive model used by Silver has a margin of error of 5, which is how Karl got to the possible 11-seat gain. But that also means Republicans could only pick up 1 net seat. For Sabato, and myself despite agreeing with Silver that the net pick up could be much bigger than 6, the idea of only 1 net gain is “ridiculous” when we examine the individual races.

South Dakota is lost to the Republicans, likely for the next several decades. Sabato, as well, agrees. West Virginia, too, will be represented by a split delegation after the 2014 midterm elections with Manchin and Capito a WV duo. Again, Sabato agrees.

But this is where Sabato and I part ways.

Montana, according to Sabato, “will be close but the Republicans have a slight edge.” It is worth noting that he made comments very similar to these regarding West Virginia. In fact, it wasn’t more than a few months ago he rated West Virginia a “Toss-Up,” while we have had the race going Republican for some time, waiting for him and others to come around.

Montana, I suspect, will soon have a deeper shade of red on the Crystal Ball Senate Map, more or less resembling the “Likely Republican” rating on our 2014 Senate Map Predictions. Steve Daines has a large advantage for myriad reasons, but you can read our rating and race analysis on Montana can be here.

I could do back and forth on states and ratings, but we I will end this on a positive note, one in which even I can again agree with the guys at the Virginia Center for Politics. “It’s going to be a good Republican year. The question is, is it going to be a great Republican year?”