Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010

Nate Silver

Activism Online
If you look at anything from the Obama campaign in '08 to the Tea Party movement, social media helps to organize that. I think there's some danger of people being like, "Well, if I follow someone's Twitter feed, that constitutes action." No, it's a first step toward action. But in general, we're becoming a more hip country, politically, and I think social media has something to do with that.

Too Much of a Good Thing
How much democracy do we really want? We think we want more and more of it, but maybe people are too impatient sometimes when they get together in groups. Maybe they're too eager to listen to people like themselves and not to people unlike them who have different opinions. And those things, I think, are dangerous, potentially.

Fivethirtyeight's Secret
I'm an independent, but I usually vote Democrat. We've always had a pretty sizable conservative audience, I think in part because we say, "Hey, we're going by the numbers. I think we can be fair. I think we can articulate both points of view."