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Friday, Nov 30, 2012 5:05 PM UTC

Nate Silver: Politico is dumb

On Bill Simmons' podcast, Silver says the site tries to cover politics like sports, "but not in an intelligent way"

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Topics: Nate Silver, Politico, Bill Simmons,

Nate Silver: Politico is dumb

Joe Scarborough has apologized to Nate Silver. But it looks like the stats guru would still like a word with the folks at Politico.

In an appearance on Bill Simmons’ The BS Report podcast today, Silver took aim at the site, which dismissed him as a “one-term celebrity” in an article prior to the election. (Turns out Silver correctly called all 50 states for the second presidential election in a row.)

Silver says, according to Business Insider: “What’s remarkable for me is that you had some journalist for Politico who Tweeted out ‘All Nate’s doing is averaging polls and counting electoral votes? That’s the secret sauce?’ Well, yeah, and the fact that you can’t comprehend that very basic thing, that says more about you than it does about me, right?”

After Simmons calls the Politico hit piece “passive aggressive,” Silver replies that, “Politico is a ‘who won the day’ kind of thing, right? They’re trying to cover (politics) like sports, but not in an intelligent way at all. They want to create noise, basically.”

We’d say that’s about 99.94 percent right.

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David Daley is the executive editor of Salon. More David Daley.

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