Nate Silver
Born	Nathaniel Read Silver (1978-01-13) January 13, 1978 (age 34)[1] East Lansing, Michigan
Residence	Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Education	A.B., Economics (2000)
Alma mater	University of Chicago East Lansing High School
Occupation	Statistician, journalist
Known for	PECOTA, FiveThirtyEight.com
Website
fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, psephologist, and writer. Silver first gained public recognition for developing PECOTA,^[2] a system for forecasting the performance and career development of Major League Baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball Prospectus from 2003 to 2009.^[3]

In 2007, writing under the pseudonym "Poblano," Silver began to publish analyses and predictions related to the 2008 United States presidential election. At first this work appeared on the political blog Daily Kos, but in March 2008 Silver established his own website, FiveThirtyEight.com. By summer of that year, after he revealed his identity to his readers, he began to appear as an electoral and political analyst in national print, online, and cable news media.

The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions—he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states—won Silver further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by 0.9%. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.

In April 2009, he was named one of The World's 100 Most Influential People by Time.^[4]

In 2010, Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog was licensed for publication by The New York Times.^[5][6] The newly renamed blog, FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus,^[7] first appeared in The Times on August 25, 2010. In 2012, FiveThirtyEight won a Webby Award as the "Best Political Blog" from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Early years[link]

Nate Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, the son of Sally Silver, a community activist, and Brian D. Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University.^[8] He was an early math wizard.^[9] According to journalist William Hageman, "Silver caught the baseball bug when he was 6.... It was 1984, the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. The Tigers became his team and baseball his sport. And if there's anything that goes hand in glove with baseball, it's numbers, another of Silver's childhood interests. ("It's always more interesting to apply it to batting averages than algebra class".^[10])

As a student at East Lansing High School, in 1996 Silver won first place in the State of Michigan in the 49th annual John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters.^[11]

Silver first evinced his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait, East Lansing High School's student newspaper, from 1993–1996.

In 2000, Silver graduated with Honors with an A.B. degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon. He spent his third year at the London School of Economics.^[12]

Career synopsis[link]

Economic consultant and baseball statistician[link]

After college graduation in 2000, Silver worked for three and a half years as an economic consultant with KPMG in Chicago. When asked in 2009, "What is your biggest regret in life?" Silver responded, "Spending four years of my life at a job I didn’t like".^[13] While employed at KPMG, however, Silver continued to nurture his life-long interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers. He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker.^[14]

In 2003, Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus (BP), after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest. After resigning from KPMG in 2004, he took the position of Executive Vice-President, later renamed Managing Partner of BP. In addition to providing executive functions, Silver maintained and further developed PECOTA as well as wrote a weekly feature column under the heading "Lies, Damned Lies". In this column he applied sabermetric techniques to a broad range of topics in baseball research—including, among others, forecasting the performance of individual players, the economics of baseball, metrics for the valuation of players, and developing an Elo rating system for Major League baseball.^[15]

Between 2003 and 2009, Silver was a co-author of the Baseball Prospectus (ISBN 0-7611-3995-8) annual book of Major League Baseball analysis and forecasts as well as a co-author of other books published by Baseball Prospectus, including Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning (New York: Workman Publishers, 2005) (ISBN 0-7611-4018-2), Baseball Between the Numbers (New York: Basic Books, 2006) (ISBN 0-465-00596-9), and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book (New York: Basic Books, 2007) (ISBN 0-465-00284-6).

He was an occasional contributor of articles about baseball to ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the New York Sun and The New York Times.^[16]

Political analyst and blogger[link]

In November 2007, while still working for Baseball Prospectus, Silver began to write about politics, specifically the 2008 U.S. Presidential race. Until the end of May 2008, this writing was under the pseudonym "Poblano" and appeared on Daily Kos or on his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, which he launched in March 2008. In June he began to publish political analysis under his own name, including in his blog, newspapers, and The New Republic. He first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning on June 13, 2008.^[17]

Shortly after the November 4 election, ESPN writer Jim Caple observed, "Forget Cole Hamels and the Phillies. No one in baseball had a more impressive fall than Nate Silver.... [R]ight now Silver is exhausted. He barely slept the last couple weeks of the campaign – 'By the end, it was full-time plus' – and for that matter, he says he couldn't have kept it up had the campaign lasted two days longer. Plus, he has his Baseball Prospectus duties. 'We write our [Baseball Prospectus 2009] book from now through the first of the year,' [Silver] said. 'I have a week to relax and then it gets just as busy again. In February 2009 I will just have to find an island in the Caribbean and throw my BlackBerry in the ocean'".^[18]

Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.^[19] In an intervew, Silver described his first book-in-progress as about "the value and limitations of predictions, looking at such diverse industries as fashion design, hurricane forecasting, and the search for extraterrestrial life".^[20][21][22] Silver's book The Signal and the Noise is scheduled for publication in September 2012.

He was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009,^[23] and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference (March 2009).^[24]

While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data," in Esquire^[25] as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times^[26] and the Wall Street Journal.^[27] He also tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker.^[28]

The success of his FiveThirtyEight.com blog and the accuracy of his detailed forecasts of the 2008 U.S. Presidential race marked the effective end of Silver's career as baseball analyst, though he continued to devote some attention to sports statistics and sports economics in his blog. In March 2009, he stepped down as Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus and announced that he had handed over responsibility for producing future PECOTA projections to other Baseball Prospectus staff members, but that he intended to continue as a writer for BP, including for BP's partner, ESPN.com.^[3][29] In April 2009, he appeared as an analyst on ESPN's Baseball Tonight. However, after March 2009, he published only two "Lies, Damned Lies" columns on BaseballProspectus.com.

While continuing to write his FiveThirtyEight.com blog, he took on some freelance statistically oriented projects. In November 2009, ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index (SPi),^[30] developed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.^[31] He published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems.^[32]

In April 2010, Silver took an entirely different assignment for New York Magazine, creating a quantitative index of "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York".^[33]

In June 2010, it was announced that Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com blog would be moving to the The New York Times, a platform from which it would begin to be published online in August 2010. In addition, Silver would be contributing content to the print edition of The Times as well as to the Sunday Magazine.^[5] This transition occurred on August 25, 2010, with the online publication of Silver's first FiveThirtyEight column in The Times.^[34]

Baseball analysis: 2003–2008[link]

Silver uses a wide variety of research methods and statistical tools in his writings about baseball. However, he has developed three tools that are identified with his name. The best known and most enduring is his forecasting system, PECOTA, which remains a signature product of Baseball Prospectus.

PECOTA[link]

PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers. It is designed primarily for two uses: fans interested in fantasy baseball, and professionals in the baseball business interested in predicting the performance and valuation of major league players. Unlike most other such projection systems, PECOTA relies on matching a given current player to a set of "comparable" players whose past performance can serve as a guide to how the given current player is likely to perform in the future. Unlike most other such systems, PECOTA also calculates a range of probable performance levels rather than a single predicted value on a given measure such as earned run average or batting average.

PECOTA projections were first published by Baseball Prospectus in the 2003 edition of its annual book as well as online by BaseballProspectus.com. The formulae have been updated steadily since then. Silver produced the annual PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009. Beginning in Spring 2009, Baseball Prospectus took responsibility for future editions and products based on the forecasts.^[3]

Other tools[link]

Because of the dependence of earned run average statistics on factors over which a pitcher may have little control, sabermetricians have developed several defense independent pitching statistics, including Defense-Independent ERA. One that Silver has created for quick calculations that do not require detailed adjustments for the park or era in which a pitcher is performing is the "QuikERA" or QERA.^[35] It may be useful for early- or mid-season assessments of a pitcher's performance, since it attempts to reduce the effect of luck in summarizing a pitcher's ERA.^[36] Silver explains,

I call this toy QuikERA (QERA), which estimates what a pitcher's ERA should be based solely on his strikeout rate, walk rate, and GB/FB ratio. These three components — K rate, BB rate, GB/FB — stabilize very quickly, and they have the strongest predictive relationship with a pitcher’s ERA going forward. What’s more, they are not very dependent on park effects, allowing us to make reasonable comparisons of pitchers across different teams.

The formula for QERA is as follows: QERA =(2.69 + K%*(-3.4) + BB%*3.88 + GB%*(-0.66))².

Note that everything ends up expressed in terms of percentages: strikeouts per opponent plate appearance, walks per opponent plate appearance, and groundballs as a percentage of all balls hit into play.^[37]

Silver also developed a formula, which he called the "Secret Sauce," to predict whether Major League teams are likely to be successful in the playoffs if they somehow manage to reach them.^[38] This formula comes out of research that he initially conducted and published with Dayn Perry.^[39] The formula claimed that, although during the regular season having an excellent offense above all else may get a team to the playoffs, once in the playoffs a team's success depends much more on strong defense, including pitching.^[40] In other words, teams that prevent the ball from going into play, catch it when it does and preserve late-inning leads are likely to excel in the playoffs".^[41]

Notable critics of the "secret sauce" formula included Tom Tango and Mitchel Lichtman, co-authors of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.^[42] Criticism focused on the formula ignoring logical assumptions and relying too heavily on best-fitting sample data that may not be predictive for out-of-sample data.^[43]

For a few years Baseball Prospectus published Secret Sauce figures for every Major League team on its statistics page.^[44] In the 2010 season, Baseball Prospectus stopped using the Secret Sauce method as an indicator of playoff success because teams that ranked higher in secret sauce than their opponents only won 54% of their playoff series since the formula was put into use.^[45]

Political analysis: 2007–present[link]

Silver describes his own partisan orientation as follows in the FAQ on his website: "My state [Illinois] has non-partisan registration, so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time (though by no means always). This year, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama".^[46] With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections, Silver states, "Are [my] results biased toward [my] preferred candidates? I hope not, but that is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible".^[46]

Silver describes his ideological orientation as one of "rational progressivism":

I regard myself as a rational progressive. I believe in intellectual progress – that we, as a species, are gradually becoming smarter. I believe that there are objectively right answers to many political and economic questions.

I believe that economic growth is both a reflection of and a contributor toward societal progress, that economic growth has facilitated a higher standard of living, and that this is empirically indisputable. I also believe, however, that our society is now so exceptionally wealthy – even in the midst of a severe recession – that it has little excuse not to provide for some basic level of dignity for all its citizens.

I believe that answers to questions like these do not always come from the establishment. But I also believe that it is just as important to question one's own assumptions as to question the assumptions of others.^[47]

FiveThirtyEight[link]

2008 U.S. elections[link]

On November 1, 2007, Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos.^[48] Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game in a manner that would enlighten a broader audience. Silver reports that "he was stranded in a New Orleans airport when the idea of FiveThirtyEight.com came to him. 'I was just frustrated with the analysis.... I saw a lot of discussion about strategy that was not all that sophisticated, especially when it came to quantitative things like polls and demographics'”.^[49] His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew a lot of attention, including being cited by The New York Times Op-Ed columnist William Kristol.^[50]

In March 2008, still using the pseudonym "Poblano," Silver established his own blog FiveThirtyEight.com, in which he developed a system for tracking polls and forecasting the outcome of the 2008 general election. At the same time, he continued making forecasts of the 2008 Democratic primary elections. That several of his forecasts based on demographic analysis proved to be substantially more accurate than those of the professional pollsters gained visibility and professional credibility for "Poblano".^[51]

After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6 the popularity of FiveThirtyEight.com "really exploded. Silver recalls the scenario: 'I know the polls show it’s really tight in NC, but we think Obama is going to win by thirteen, fourteen points, and he did.... Any time you make a prediction like that people give you probably too much credit for it.... But after that [Silver's and the website's popularity] started to really take off. It’s pretty nonlinear, once you get one mention in the mainstream media, other people [quickly follow suit]'".^[52]

On May 30, 2008, Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers.^[53] On June 1, 2008, Silver published a two-page Op-Ed article in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics.

"My fulltime occupation has been as a writer and analyst for a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. In baseball, statistics are meaningless without context; hitting 30 home runs in the 1930s is a lot different than hitting 30 today. There is a whole industry in baseball dedicated to the proper understanding and interpretation of statistics. In polling and politics, there is nearly as much data as there is for first basemen. In this year's Democratic primaries, there were statistics for every gender, race, age, occupation and geography – reasons why Clinton won older women, or Obama took college students. But the understanding has lagged behind. Polls are cherry-picked based on their brand name or shock value rather than their track record of accuracy. Demographic variables are misrepresented or misunderstood. (Barack Obama, for instance, is reputed to have problems with white working-class voters, when in fact these issues appear to be more dictated by geography – he has major problems among these voters in Kentucky and West Virginia, but did just fine with them in Wisconsin and Oregon)".^[54]

As a CNET reporter wrote on election eve, "Even though Silver launched the site as recently as March, its straightforward approach, daring predictions, and short but impressive track record has put it on the map of political sites to follow. The Washington Post featured Silver in its 14th annual election prediction contest this year, and he'll be reporting on Tuesday night's results with Dan Rather on HDNet".^[55]

Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia (missing only the prediction for Indiana). As his model predicted, the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race. The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim, including abroad,^[56] and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator.^[57]

[edit] Transition to The New York Times

On June 3, 2010, Silver announced on FiveThirtyEight.com,

In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of the New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.^[5]

The transition to the new blog FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus sponsored by The New York Times took place on August 25, 2010, with the publication online of Silver's first article, "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats".^[58] From then until the mid-term elections of 2010 in November, Silver's blog focused almost exclusively on developing forecasts of the outcomes of the 2010 U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives as well as state gubernatorial contests. Silver's Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared on November 19, 2010, under the heading "Go Figure".^[59] It was later titled "Acts of Mild Subversion".^[60]

2010 U.S. elections[link]

Shortly after 538 relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state Governorships. Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling. Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections.

2012 U.S. elections[link]

Although throughout 2011 Silver devoted a lot of attention on his blog to the 2012 Republican party primaries, his first effort to handicap the 2012 Presidential general election appeared as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine a year prior to the election: "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election".^[61] Accompanying the online release of this article, Silver also published "Choose Obama’s Re-Election Adventure," an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables: President Obama's favorability ratings, the rate of GDP growth, and how conservative the Republican opponent would be.^[62] This analysis stimulated a lot of critical discussion.^[63]

While publishing numerous stories on the Republican primary elections, in mid-February 2012 Silver reprised and updated his previous Magazine story with another one, "What Obama Should Do Next".^[64] This story painted a more optimistic picture of President Obama's re-election chances. A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama," explained how the model and the facts on the ground had changed between November and February.^[65]

Mainstream media[link]

Silver's self-unmasking at the end of May 2008 brought him a lot of publicity, much of it focused on his combined skill as both baseball statistician-forecaster and political statistician-forecaster, including articles about him in the Wall Street Journal,^[66] Newsweek,^[67] Science News,^[68] New York Magazine,^[69] and his hometown Lansing State Journal.^[70]

In early June he began to cross-post his daily "Today's Polls" updates on "The Plank" in The New Republic.^[71] Also, Rasmussen Reports began to use the FiveThirtyEight.com poll averages for its own tracking of the 2008 state-by-state races.^[72]

This added exposure provided him with opportunities to appear on CNN's American Morning and D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,^[73] MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNBC's Fast Money,^[74] Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, HDNet's Dan Rather Reports, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!,^[75] PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show,^[76] and The Rachel Maddow Shows on both Air America Radio and MSNBC, as well as to contribute essays and op ed columns to The New Republic,^[77] the New York Post,^[78] the Los Angeles Times,^[79] and Newsweek.^[80]

New York Magazine, on October 12, 2008, referred to Silver as "The Spreadsheet Psychic": "a number-crunching prodigy who went from correctly forecasting baseball games to correctly forecasting presidential primaries".^[81] Other commentators drew a parallel between Silver's baseball prognosticatons and his election forecasting in 2008: "The Tampa Bay Rays and Barack Obama have made 2008 the year of the surprise contender, though one man predicted both successes before nearly anyone else – and he sees a general election landslide for Obama over John McCain on Tuesday".^[82]

The celebrity that this attention brought to Silver sometimes took a curious form, including articles on Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip^[83] and a Facebook group entitled "There's a 97.3 Percent Chance that Nate Silver Is Totally My Boyfriend".^[84]

Throughout 2009 through 2012, Silver appeared several more times as a political analyst on national television, most frequently on MSNBC^[85] but also on CNN^[86] as well as Bloomberg Television,^[87] PBS,^[88] NPR,^[89] "Democracy Now!",^[90] The Charlie Rose Show,^[91] ABC News,^[92] and Current TV.^[93]

Book[link]

• Nate Silver. The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail – But Some Don't. New York: Penguin, 2012. ISBN-13 978-1-59-420411-1. In Press (publication date: September 27, 2012).

Recognition and awards[link]

• In September 2008, FiveThirtyEight became the first blog ever selected as a Notable Narrative by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.^[94]

• On the day after the first McCain-Obama Presidential Debate, Time Magazine's Joe Klein observed on the magazine's "Swampland" blog: "If there's been a rookie of the year in this year's presidential campaign coverage, it's Nate Silver—a baseball stats guy who has turned his talents to politics and produced some of the most creative slicing and dicing of polling numbers at his website fivethirtyeight.com. Today's offering is typical Silver: he takes the snap polling results and weights them according to the issues the voters considered most important—and finds that Obama won, according to the cross tabs, on the more important issues, thereby accounting for his snap poll victories".^[95]

• October 7, 2008: Silver appeared as a guest on "The Colbert Report".^[96]

• November 2008: Crain's Chicago Business profiled Silver as one of Chicago's "40 under 40" notable young entrepreneurs.^[97]

• November 9, 2008: the New York Times called Silver "perhaps the most unlikely media star to emerge" out of "an election season of unlikely outcomes" and described FiveThirtyEight with its almost five million page views on Election Day as "one of the breakout online stars of the year".^[98]

• December 2008: Newsweek.com identified Silver's November 3, 2008 article "What to Watch For – An hour-by-hour guide to election night"^[99] as the 4th most viewed story on Newsweek.com in 2008.^[100]

• December 2008: Silver was named by Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins as the #1 of the "Ten Things that Managed to Not Suck in 2008, Media Edition". "The uncanny, poll-wrangling, stats-freaking Nate Silver took it upon himself to demonstrate that some level of governable, rational reality could be brought to bear on the confusing world of competing tracking polls, and along the way all but cemented the geek-chic trajectory of this election season".^[101]

• December 2008: named by The Daily Beast as one of the "Breakout Stars of 2008": "Breakout Swami: NATE SILVER. In 2007, Nate Silver was mainly known as a world-class seamhead,[1] a Baseball Prospectus geek who could do sexy things with ERAs. Then he started applying his statfreak principles to presidential politics under the pseudonym Poblano. When he finally outed himself in June 2008, it was clear that Silver and his website www.FiveThirtyEight.com had everyone’s number—his primary projections became gospel. In the end, though, Silver only correctly predicted how 49 of the 50 states would vote. Better luck in 2012".^[102]

• February 2009: named by James Wolcott in Vanity Fair as one of the "Winners of 2008": "No shiny arrow shot swifter and loftier from obscurity to quotable authority than Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight.com site became the expert sensation of the election season.... Not only did his disciplined models and microfine data mining command respect, his prognostications hit the Zen mark on Election Day.... Silver also became an instant cable-news savant, his geek-genius glasses and owlish mien worthy of a Starfleet sub-adjutant whose quadratic equations coolly foil an attack from a Romulan vessel while the senior officers are frantically poking at their touch screens".^[103]

• January 2009: Silver was named by Forbes.com to its third annual "Web Celeb 25," which "track[s] the biggest and brightest stars on the Web, the people who have turned their passions into new-media empires. From stay-at-home moms to geek entrepreneurs, these are the people capturing eyes, influencing opinion and creating the new digital world".^[104]

• April 2009: Silver was named as one of the "Rolling Stone 100: Agents of Change".^[105]

• April 27, 2009: named "Blogger of the Year" by The Week in its 6th annual Opinion Awards. The commendation stated: "Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com was arguably the most important blogger of the 2008 presidential election, translating a flood of poll numbers into a narrative that was both compelling and trustworthy. By Election Night — when Fivethirtyeight.com declared the race for Obama at 8:46 p.m., an hour and 14 minutes before the mainstream media did — Silver had already established himself as the most reliable caller of the political horse race".^[106]

• April 30, 2009: Silver was named one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by TIME Magazine.^[4]

• December 2009: Silver was recognized by The New York Times Magazine in its "Ninth Annual Year in Ideas" article for his "Forensic Polling Analysis" of the possible falsification of data by a polling firm.^[107]

• 2009: named "Speaker of the Year" by the intercollegiate Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA).^[108]

• November 2010: John F. Harris, Editor-in-Chief of Politico writing in Forbes Magazine listed Nate Silver as one of seven bloggers among "The Most Powerful People on Earth": "The New York Times recently began hosting Nate Silver's delightfully granular blog about the numbers that underlie politics".^[109]

• May 2011: Presented the Henry Pringle Lecture at the Columbia Journalism School.^{[110][111][112]}

• March 2012: Crain's New York Business featured Silver as one of New York City's "Forty Under Forty" notable young entrepreneurs.^[113]

• May 2012: FiveThirtyEight won a Webby Award for "Best Political Blog" from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in the 16th annual Webby Awards.^[114]

Personal life[link]

Nate Silver is a grandnephew of Leon Silver, geologist.

After residing in Chicago, Illinois for twelve years, Silver moved to New York City in 2009.^[115]

Silver has long been interested in fantasy baseball, especially Scoresheet Baseball. While in college he served as an expert on Scoresheet Baseball for BaseballHQ.^[116] When he took up political writing, Silver abandoned his blog, The Burrito Bracket,^[117] in which he ran a one-and-done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago.^[118]

In 2010, Out magazine included Silver among their top 100 LGBT people of the year.^[119]

In his spare time, Silver uses his analytical approach at the poker table where he plays semi-professionally.^[120]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

	Baseball portal
	Journalism portal
	Biography portal

Blogs[link]

• Nate Silver's Baseball Prospectus article archive (2003–2009)
• Nate Silver's The Burrito Bracket (2007)
• Nate Silver's diaries as "Poblano" on Daily Kos (2007–2009)
• FiveThirtyEight.com archive from pre-NYT period (2008–2010)
• FiveThirtyEight/NYT (2010– )

Other[link]

• Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight on Twitter
• Leigh Bureau speaker profile
• Video of Silver discussing his methodology for polling aggregation on Bloggingheads.tv (August 21, 2008)
• TED 2009 video of talk about race and the 2008 U.S. presidential election

Herman Cain
Cain in October 2011
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
In office 1995–1996
Preceded by	Burton A. Dole, Jr
Succeeded by	A. Drue Jennings
Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
In office 1992–1994
Preceded by	Burton A. Dole, Jr
Succeeded by	A. Drue Jennings
Personal details
Born	(1945-12-13) December 13, 1945 (age 66) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Gloria Cain (m. 1968) «start: (1968-06-23)»"Marriage: Gloria Cain to Herman Cain" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Herman_Cain)[1]
Children	Melanie Cain Vincent Cain
Residence	Sandy Springs, Georgia, US[2]
Alma mater	Morehouse College (BS) Purdue University (MS)
Occupation	Business executive, radio host, columnist
Religion	Baptist[3]
Website	cainconnections.com

	This article is part of a series about Herman Cain	Herman Cain
2012 presidential campaign Political positions 9–9–9 Plan This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House 9-9-9 An Army of Davids

Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945)^[4] is an American author, business executive, radio host, syndicated columnist, and Tea Party activist from Georgia.^[5][6][7] He was a candidate for the 2012 U.S. Republican Party presidential nomination.^[5]

Cain grew up in Georgia and graduated from Morehouse College in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics.^[8] Cain pursued graduate studies at Purdue University, and graduated with a Master of Science in computer science in 1971,^[9] while also working full-time for the U.S. Department of the Navy.^[10][11][12] In 1977, he joined Pillsbury Company where he later became vice president.^[13] During the 1980s, his success as a business executive at Burger King prompted Pillsbury Company to appoint him as chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, in which capacity he served from 1986 to 1996.^[14]

Cain was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from 1989 to 1991.^[15] He was deputy chairman, from 1992 to 1994, and chairman, from 1995 to 1996, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.^[15] In 1995, Cain was appointed by Newt Gingrich to the Kemp Commission,^[16] and was a senior economic advisor to the Bob Dole presidential campaign.^[17] Cain became the CEO of the National Restaurant Association,^[18] in which he served as president and CEO from 1996 to 1999.^[18][19] During the Presidency of Bill Clinton, Cain publicly opposed the Clinton health care plan of 1993, about which he questioned the president at a town hall meeting.^[20] Cain has served as a member of the board of directors of several companies, including Aquila, Inc., Nabisco, Whirlpool, Reader's Digest, and AGCO.^[14][21][22]

In May 2011, Cain announced his presidential candidacy. His proposed 9–9–9 tax plan, along with his debate performances, made him the Republican front-runner in fall of 2011, during which he briefly led President Obama in the polls.^[23] In November his campaign struggled to deal with allegations of sexual misconduct, which resulted in Cain suspending his campaign on December 3.^[24][25][26] The Pew Research Center reported that, of the Republican candidates, "Herman Cain was the most covered candidate in 2011."^[27][28] After suspending his campaign, Cain first endorsed Newt Gingrich,^[29] and then on May 15, 2012 Cain endorsed Mitt Romney.^[30]

Family and personal life[link]

Herman Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Lenora Davis Cain, a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and Luther Cain, Jr., who was raised on a farm and worked as a barber and janitor, as well as a chauffeur for Coca-Cola Company president Robert W. Woodruff. Cain has said that as he was growing up, his family was "poor but happy." Cain related that his mother taught him about her belief that "success was not a function of what you start out with materially, but what you start out with spiritually". His father worked three jobs to own his own home – something he achieved during Cain's childhood – and to see his two sons graduate.^[12][31][32]

Cain grew up on the west side of Atlanta, Georgia, attending school and Rev. Cameron M. Alexander's Antioch Baptist Church North in the neighborhood now known as The Bluff. Eventually Cain's father saved enough money and the family moved to a modest brick home on Albert Street in the Collier Heights neighborhood. He attended Archer (public) High School, graduating in 1963.^[33]

Cain married Gloria Cain (née Etchison), of Atlanta, soon after her graduation from Morris Brown College in 1968.^[34][35] His wife of 43 years is a homemaker, with experience as a teacher and a librarian.^[34] The couple have two children and three grandchildren.^[34]

In 2006, Cain was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in his colon and metastases to his liver and given a 30-percent chance of survival. Cain underwent surgery and chemotherapy following the diagnosis, and has since reported that he is in remission.^[36]

Disclosures filed during his campaign in 2011 categorized Cain's wealth as of that time as being between $2.9 to $6.6 million, with Cain's income for both 2010 and 2011 combined being between $1.1 to $2.1 million.^[37]

Cain also serves as an associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta, which he joined at the age of 10.^[38] The church is part of the National Baptist Convention^[39] and is politically liberal and theologically conservative; the church's senior pastor, Rev. Cameron M. Alexander, does not share Cain's political philosophy.^[40][41]

Education and career[link]

Cain grew up in Georgia^[8] and graduated from Morehouse College in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics.

Accepted for graduate studies at Purdue University, Cain received a Master of Science in computer science there in 1971,^[9] while he also worked full-time as a ballistics analyst for the U.S. Department of the Navy as a civilian.^[10]

After completing his master's degree from Purdue, Cain left the Department of the Navy and began working for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta as a computer systems analyst. In 1977, he moved to Minneapolis to join Pillsbury,^[42] soon becoming director of business analysis^[43] in its restaurant and foods group in 1978.^[14][44]

Burger King[link]

At age 36, Cain was assigned in the 1980s to analyze and manage 400 Burger King stores in the Philadelphia area. At the time, Burger King was a Pillsbury subsidiary. Under Cain, his region posted strong improvement in three years.^[13][45] According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury's then-president Win Wallin said, "He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together."^[14] At Burger King, Cain "established the BEAMER program, which taught our employees, mostly teenagers, how to make our patrons smile" by smiling themselves. It was a success: "Within three months of the program's initiation, the sales trend was moving steadily higher."^[46]

Godfather's Pizza[link]

Cain's success at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him president and CEO of another subsidiary, Godfather's Pizza. On his arrival on April 1, 1986, Cain told employees, "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive."^[14] Godfather's Pizza was performing poorly, having slipped in ranks of pizza chains from third in 1985 to fifth in 1988.^[13] Under Cain's leadership, Godfather's closed approximately 200 restaurants and eliminated several thousand jobs, and by doing so returned to profitability.^[37] In a leveraged buyout in 1988, Cain, Executive Vice-President and COO Ronald B. Gartlan, and a group of investors bought Godfather's from Pillsbury.^[13]

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City[link]

Cain served as Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from January 1, 1989 to December 31, 1991.^[15] He became a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992.^[15] He served as deputy chairman from January 1, 1992 to December 31, 1994, and then as its chairman until August 19, 1996,^[15] when he resigned to become active in national politics.^[47]

National Restaurant Association[link]

Cain left Godfather's Pizza in 1996 and moved to Washington, D.C. From 1996 to 1999 he served as CEO of the National Restaurant Association, a trade group and lobbying organization for the restaurant industry, on whose board of directors he had previously served.^[18] Cain's lobbying work for the Association led to a number of connections to Republican lawmakers and politicians.^[37] Under Cain's leadership, the Association lobbied against increases to the minimum wage, mandatory health care benefits, regulations against smoking, and lowering the blood-alcohol limit that determines whether one is driving under the influence.^[48]

Cain was on the board of directors of several companies, including Aquila, Inc., Nabisco, Whirlpool, Reader's Digest, and AGCO, Inc.^[14][21][22]

After Cain's term with the restaurant advocacy group ended in 1999, he returned to Omaha for about a year, then moved to his hometown of Atlanta in 2000.^[49]

Media work[link]

Cain writes a syndicated op-ed column, which is distributed by the North Star Writers Group.^[50]

Cain appeared in the 2009 documentary An Inconvenient Tax.^[51] From 2008, until February 2011, Cain hosted The Herman Cain Show on Atlanta talk radio station WSB.^[52][53] On January 19, 2012, Cain began working for WSB again by providing daily commentaries, while occasionally filling in for Erick Erickson and Neal Boortz.^[53]

Recognition[link]

Cain received the 1996 Horatio Alger Award^[54] and has received honorary degrees from Creighton University, Johnson & Wales University, Morehouse College, University of Nebraska, New York City Technical College, Purdue University, Suffolk University, and Tougaloo College.^[21]

Political activities[link]

Role in the defeat of 1993 Clinton health care plan[link]

Cain publicly opposed the Clinton health care plan of 1993. As president-elect of the National Restaurant Association, he challenged Bill Clinton on the costs of the employer mandate contained within the bill and criticized its effect on small businesses. Bob Cohn of Newsweek described Cain as one of the primary opponents of the plan:

The Clintons would later blame "Harry and Louise", the fictional couple in the ads aired by the insurance industry, for undermining health reform. But the real saboteurs are named Herman and John. Herman Cain is the president of Godfather's Pizza and president-elect of the National Restaurant Association. An articulate entrepreneur, Cain transformed the debate when he challenged Clinton at a town meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. Cain asked the president what he was supposed to say to the workers he would have to lay off because of the cost of the "employer mandate". Clinton responded that there would be plenty of subsidies for small businessmen, but Cain persisted. "Quite honestly, your calculation is inaccurate," he told the president. "In the competitive marketplace it simply doesn't work that way."^[20]

Joshua Green of The Atlantic has called Cain's exchange with Clinton his "auspicious debut on the national political stage".^[55]

Conservative politician and former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp was so impressed with Cain's performance that he chartered a plane to Nebraska to meet Cain after the debate. Cain credits Kemp with his becoming interested in politics.^[56]

Senior advisor to 1996 Dole campaign[link]

Cain was a senior economic advisor to the Bob Dole presidential campaign in 1996.^[17]

2000 presidential campaign[link]

Cain briefly ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000; he says it was more about making political statements than winning the nomination. "George W. Bush was the chosen one, he had the campaign DNA that followers look for." However, Cain went on to state, "I believe that I had a better message and I believe that I was the better messenger."^[57] After ending his own campaign, however, he endorsed Steve Forbes.^[58]

2004 U.S. Senate candidacy[link]

In 2004, Cain ran for the U.S. Senate in Georgia and did not win in the primaries. He was pursuing the seat that came open with the retirement of Democrat Zell Miller. Cain sought the Republican nomination, facing congressmen Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins in the primary. Cain and Collins both hoped to deny Isakson a majority on primary day in order to force him into a runoff.^{[citation needed]} Collins tried to paint Cain as a moderate,^[59] citing Cain's support for affirmative action programs, while Cain argued that he was a conservative, noting that he opposed the legality of abortion except when the mother's life is threatened.^[60] Cain finished second in the primary with 26.2% of the vote, ahead of Collins, who won 20.6%, but because Isakson won 53.2% of the vote, Isakson was able to avoid a runoff.^[61]

Americans for Prosperity and America's PAC[link]

Starting in 2005, Cain worked for the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) alongside Mark Block. Block would later become campaign manager for Cain's 2012 Presidential run and would be joined in Cain's campaign by several other AFP employees. Cain continued to receive honorariums for speaking at AFP events until he announced his campaign for the Republican nomination.^[62] Cain's senior economic advisor during his 2012 presidential campaign, Rich Lowrie, who helped devise Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan, had served on the AFP board.^[63] In 2006, Cain voiced several radio ads encouraging people of color to vote Republican; the ads were funded by a group called America's PAC and its founder J. Patrick Rooney.^[64]

2012 presidential campaign[link]

Cain speaking at the Ames Straw Poll in August 2011.

In 2010, "Cain addressed more than 40 Tea Party rallies, hit all the early presidential states, and became a YouTube sensation."^[8] On September 24, 2010, Cain announced that he was considering a run for president in 2012 on the Republican Party ticket.^[65] In December, Cain was the "surprise choice" for 2012 GOP nominee in a RedState.com reader poll.^[8] Cain announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on January 12, 2011,^[66][67] and officially announced his candidacy on May 21 in Atlanta.^[68]

Straw poll victories[link]

A popular speaker, Cain's addresses to conservative groups were well received,^[69][70] and in late September and early October 2011, Cain won the straw polls of the Florida Republican Party, TeaCon, and the National Federation of Republican Women's Convention.^[71][72] "My focus groups have consistently picked Herman Cain as the most likeable candidate in the debates," says GOP pollster Frank Luntz. "Don't underestimate the power of likability, even in a Republican primary. The more likeable the candidate, the greater the electoral potential."^[71][73]

9–9–9 Plan[link]

In July 2011, an advisor suggested that his campaign's tax policy plan be called "the Optimal Tax", but Cain rejected the name, saying "[w]e're just going to call it what it is: 9–9–9 Plan."^[74] The plan would replace the current tax code with a 9-percent business transactions tax, a 9-percent personal income tax, and a 9-percent federal sales tax. During a debate on October 12, Cain said his plan "expands the base," arguing that "[w]hen you expand the base, we can arrive at the lowest possible rate, which is 9-9-9."^[75] An analysis released to Bloomberg News by the campaign claimed that the rate for each of the three taxes could in fact be as low as 7.3%, but "poverty grants" — which Cain has described as a lower rate in targeted "empowerment zones"^[76] — necessitated a national rate of 9%.^[75] Paul Krugman has criticized the plan, saying it shifts much of the current tax burden from the rich to the poor.^[77] Arthur Laffer,^[74] Lawrence Kudlow,^[78] the Club for Growth,^[79] and Congressman Paul Ryan^[80] have spoken favorably of "9-9-9". On October 21, Cain told a crowd in Detroit that the plan would be 9-0-9 for the poor, saying that "if you are at or below the poverty level ... then you don't pay that middle 9 on your income."^[81] Cain's 9-9-9 plan attracted skepticism from his fellow candidates at numerous Republican debates.^[82]

Allegations of sexual misconduct[link]

Cain in Scottsdale, Arizona in November 2011.

In late October 2011, Politico reported that Cain had been accused by two women of sexual harassment and misconduct during his time as CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s.^[19][83] Harassment accusations have since been made by two additional women. Cain denies all allegations of sexual misconduct, while acknowledging that the restaurant organization made financial settlements to the complainants. Two of the four women have come forward publicly: Sharon Bialek and Karen Kraushaar.^[84]

On November 28, 2011, Cain asserted that a woman named Ginger White would be claiming to have had an affair with him, and that the allegation was not true.^[85] An interview with White was aired an hour later on Fox 5 in Atlanta. In the interview, White said the affair lasted 13 years and ended right before Cain announced his presidential campaign.^[86] On November 30, 2011, Herman Cain denounced allegations of sexual harassment and adultery as "character assassination" during an event in Dayton, Ohio.^[87]

Campaign suspension[link]

On December 3, 2011, Cain announced he was "suspending" his campaign for the presidency following allegations of sexual harassment and adultery, which he denied,^[88] but were widely considered responsible for the sharp drop in his poll numbers.^[89]

Cain’s Solutions Revolution[link]

On January 4, 2012, Cain announced the "Cain’s Solutions Revolution". Cain's stated goal is to get commitments from members of Congress to support the 9-9-9 Plan before the 2012 elections.^[90] Cain stated that he started a new movement because the "biggest comment I got when I ended my candidacy was to keep 9-9-9 alive. That's what this is about, and I'm going to keep it alive with what I'm calling Cain's Solutions Revolution."^[91] In order to promote this movement, Cain is using both a bus tour and a new website.^[92] New York magazine stated that "it's Cain's earnest effort to keep 9-9-9 alive and focus on solutions."^[93] On January 20, 2012, Cain spoke at Stephen Colbert's "Rock Me Like a Herman Cain: South Cain-Olina Primary Rally".^[94] The Huffington Post reported that the crowd size was between 3,000 and 5,000 people. It has been called "the largest campaign rally so far during this GOP presidential primary season",^[95] and "the biggest political rally of the primary season".^[94]

State of the Union response[link]

For President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address, the Tea Party Express chose Cain to give its second annual response.^[96] After Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave the official GOP response,^[97] Cain delivered his speech at the National Press Club.^[98] The speech was streamed live on the Tea Party Express website.^[97][99] Cain referred to Obama's address as a "hodgepodge of liberal ideas," adding that there were "no big ideas that would impact job growth" and "no big ideas that would stimulate economic growth in this country".^[100]

Bibliography[link]

• "The Intangibles of Implementation" in the technical journal Interfaces (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1979, pp. 144–147), published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
• Leadership is Common Sense (2nd ed.). Tapestry. November 2000 [first published 1997]. ISBN 978-1-930819-02-3. 
• Speak as a Leader. Lebhar-Friedman Books. December 1999. ISBN 978-0-86730-782-5. 
• CEO of SELF. Tapestry. August 2001. ISBN 978-1-930819-04-7. 
• They Think You're Stupid. Stroud & Hall. June 10, 2011 [first published 2005]. ISBN 978-0-9796462-7-0. 
• This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House. Threshold Editions. October 2011. ISBN 978-1-4516-6613-7. 
• 9-9-9 An Army of Davids. Velocity Mascot. May 1 2012. ISBN 978-1-62086-030-4. 

See also[link]

Conservatism portal

• Political positions of Herman Cain

References[link]