Nate Silver: The Media Underestimated Hillary Clinton. It Overestimated Her Debate

[Godhumor]

Somehow, the media judged Clinton’s night to be way better than “pretty good.” CNN’s Van Jones declared Clinton’s performance to be “flawless” and compared her to Beyonce. Mark Halperin gave Clinton a perfect A. The New York Times, which has been very tough on Clinton, was full of praise for her tonight.

So you can expect the “Clinton comeback” narrative to prevail over the “Clinton in disarray” narrative — at least for a few news cycles.

The difference between FiveThirtyEight’s view of the debate and Mark Halperin’s or The New York Times’ is that we’ve been skeptical of the “Clinton in disarray” narrative for a long time. While Clinton isn’t “inevitable,” she has a lot of things going for her, with near-unanimous support from the Democratic establishment, high favorability ratings among Democrats (even as her ratings have fallen among independents), and a solid lead in national polls that appears to have stabilized recently. Nor are her opponents in much of a position to topple her. Sanders has won plenty of support from white liberal Democrats, but not very much from Hispanics, African-Americans or white moderates. Joe Biden isn’t running yet and would have lots of potential problems if he did, especially given his extremely late start to the race. Martin O’Malley is at 0.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

From our vantage point, then, declaring a “Clinton comeback” is a bit like declaring Tom Brady or LeBron James to be the comeback player of the year. Clinton didn’t have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last night’s debate — by a lot.
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538 Staff gave Clinton an A- versus a B for Sanders.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/first-democratic-debate-hillary-clinton/

I self-deleted another post on this topic, as it was about Nate tweeting his thoughts on the debate. Since then he wrote up a more complete article that is more apropos for an OP.

[murielm99]

1. Go, Hillary.

We all knew she would shine in the debates. Hillary is going to make a great President.

[Fearless]

2. You do realize that if you read the article

It's saying that the media is making things up right?

[workinclasszero]

5. Read this part though...

Clinton didn’t have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last night’s debate — by a lot.

[Fearless]

7. That has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING in ANY context

You've literally just drudged up a random sentence that alone seems pro-Hillary and suggested that it some how negates the fact that Bernie won the debate.

So you're basically saying she didn't have to win the debate... so she clearly won the debate.


You're not even talking it circles, more like squiggles.

[randome]

15. All Clinton had to do was not stumble. Apparently she and Sanders both did very well.

But 'very well' adds up to more for Clinton than it does for Sanders. Clinton is still way ahead in the polls.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Godhumor]

18. He said Clinton won but the media is exaggerating her performance

538 staff have Clinton an A- versus a B for Bernie.

[workinclasszero]

3. President Hillary Clinton is going to be awesome!

From our vantage point, then, declaring a “Clinton comeback” is a bit like declaring Tom Brady or LeBron James to be the comeback player of the year.


Clinton didn’t have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last night’s debate — by a lot.

[Fearless]

8. Brady WAS voted come back player of the year...

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4800984

[trumad]

16. Yeah after a season ending injury Several years ago..

Nice try though.

[eridani]

13. Becasue nothing says "awesome" like endless war n/t

[reformist2]

4. That's cute how Nate pretends his 538 isn't part of the establishment.

[Eric J in MN]

6. I was surprised by how well Hillary Clinton did.

Not because I thought her campaign was "in disarray."

But because she was smoother tonight than she was in her debates with Obama I watched 8 years ago.

[moobu2]

9. Everybody at my house thought Hillary

was almost perfect. Bernie was okay, but he just said the same stuff he always says in every speech. Boring really.

[mhatrw]

10. Yeah, helping the average US citizen is boring.

"evolving" is so much more exciting!

[cprise]

11. Yes, her "I'm a Progressive" moment was refreshingly different

from the Hillary we knew from NAFTA to the TPP.

[enid602]

12. HIllary

It seemed she was not really debating Bernie, but rather her detractors. Not a bad strategy.

[Gothmog]

14. Nate Silver has some great analysis

The meme that the Clinton campaign is in disarray was really dumb. The Clinton campaign is a well oiled machine and is doing great

[trumad]

17. Q the Nate knows nothing meme from the Bern supporters.