by David Safier
Today's premier political number cruncher is Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. His predictions are right ridiculously often, not only picking which candidate will win, but regularly getting closer than anyone else on what the margin will be.
That said, Silver is handicapping the House's chances of passing the healthcare bill that came out of Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee. He thinks it will pass by a narrow margin, about 222-212.
He also rates the chances of various Reps voting for the bill. Here are the chances he gives of our five AZ Dems voting Aye:
Kirkpatrick: 5.8%
Mitchell: 15.4%
Giffords: 21.5%
Grijalva: over 99.5%
Pastor: over 99.5%
Doesn't mean anything, of course. It's just one man's prediction. But he sure doesn't make three of our House Dems look very good.
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I’ll offer two opinions. One is that regardless of what any given member of congress has said, that their vote depends upon their desire to become re-elected. Until 50% of Northern Arizona decides that government health care is better, the likelihood that Kirkpatrick will vote for it is closer to 5.8% than 51% (in my opinion).
I (Kirkpatrick’s Libertarian opponent in 2008) didn’t really note many questions on government health care during the general election cycle. Kirkpatrick focused on assurances that she wasn’t planning to vote for gun confiscation.
As for Mr. 538 and his prediction on the overall vote, I will say that his underlying pro-government bias probably skews his numbers by at least 5 votes which means that in the end his prediction probably says that it could go either way (shocking, I know).
As for making Mitchell/Kirkpatrick/Giffords “look good” – hey, the day those three vote for more socialized medicine is the day that (51%) the voters of CD-5/1/8 think that more government health care is a good thing. The representatives are often times, just that, representative of the people. Figure that eh?
P.S. Is there any way I could bet against the government health care plan – with actual dollars?
Silver is way off base.
I was on a town hall conference call with Kirkpatrick last week in which she said that she will vote for the bill.
I suppose that nothing is ever 100% certain but I believe her (and she did stand up to critics on the call and continue to express her support) and for him to rate her as 5.8% tells me that he’s not paid attention to what she’s said on the topic.