As a political scientist, I’m part of community of scholars who are committed to exchanging ideas with the goal of building our understanding of politics, including elections. That means a commitment to transparency, and a free exchange of ideas. Nate, understandably, has a different purpose, but it means no one has seen the moving parts of his model. Without that transparency, we can’t learn from it. Since there are so many good political science models out there with results as good as Nate’s – and because I only have so many hours in the day! – I focus on the models that are transparent. That’s no knock on Nate. And he’s doing fine on his own!

You may be right about the tax returns. But I will point out that all the supposed “gaffes” – Big Bird, the 47% remark, “you didn’t build that” didn’t seem to alter the results too far from what we predicted back in September. That suggests they either didn’t have a big impact, or they cancelled each other out. I tend to think the failure to release the tax returns falls in that category, but I could be wrong.

1) Where is Nate Silver’s name?

2) As the dust settles, I agree that Romney did the correct thing in not releasing his tax returns, but for different reasons than yours. They would have been so embarrassing that a defeat would have become a disaster.

Your devoted reader,

Marty Lapidus

I’ve removed your old email address. Meanwhile, remember that today is the first day of the 2016 presidential campaign – and so it begins again!

Also, yours is a valuable opinion on this site – you expose my mostly liberal students and colleagues to another perspective, so I hope you keep posting comments. I am very proud that this site encourages the (polite!) exchange of differing perspectives, rather than degenerating into one of those echo-chambers sites where liked-minded people sit and worship from the same hymnal.