For the life of me I cannot understand why, when a political analyst produces a range for their prediction of election results, Ed Fitzgerald would arbitarily pick the lowest number of the range. Logic would suggest that if a fair-minded person were going to reduce a range to a single number, they would pick the mid-point in that range.

My predections were, 4-6 seat loss for Republicans in the Senate (the midpoint would be 5, the final result was 6), a GOP loss of 6-8 governorships (midpoint 7, final 6) and 20-35 in the House (midpoint 27.5, as of 11/19, it is 29).

Is someone wants to quibble about us being off by one seat in the Senate and governorships and 1.5 seats off in the House, fine, go ahead, but to pick the lowest number in a range is methodologically nonsense and grossly unfair.

Mr. Cook:

Thank you for your note.

I did not approach this election as a non-partisan analyst, I approached it as a very concerned Democrat (as I clear stated in my explanatory notes) with a vital interest in understanding what was likely to happen in the election. As such, and since I included prediction of both partisan and non-partisan analyists, I did not want to be lulled by perhaps overly optimistic predictions of a Democratic win, I wanted instead as conservative an estimate of what would occur as possible.

This is why I decided to use the lower number whenever an analyst provided a range of numbers except when the analyst specifically flagged a number in the middle of the range as the most likely result, in which case I used that number.

(In the penultimate report of my survey, I also ran the numbers using the highest number in the ranges and found that the resulting averages where not significantly different from those that resulted using the lower estimates. This was because only a few analysts -- 9 to be exact -- resorted to ranges instead of specific projections. [Correction: Although 9 analysts had ranges, only 4 of them, including Cook, did not indicate a preferred number for the House pick-ups.])

Larry Sabato, for instance, in his prediction for the House had a range of 25-33, but said that 29 was the most probable, so I used 29 for his line. If you thought that the most likely outcome within your range of 20-35 was something close to the midpoint of that range ( 27 or 28 ), perhaps you might have made that clear in your report.

I will concede this, however, that in my aftermath report, I did not make the conceptual leap to change from the conservative prediction model I had been using before the election to one designed to best represent the projection of each analyst, and so I simply re-used the same numbers I had used before. (The chart was, basically, simply a re-sort of the previous one.) I regert that error, and I will make an effort to correct in when I re-do the chart again -- which I plan to do once all the House races are decided.

As for the contention that the midpoint best represents your prediction, I'm not sure I totally agree with you. 27.5, after all, is the midpoint not only of your prediction (20-35), but also of an infinite number of other predictions: 19-36, 18-37, 17-38, 16-39 etc. If Joe Blogger had predicted a Democratic gain of 14-41 seats, would you believe that he should be credited with the same accuracy as you, simply because your projections both shared a midpoint of 27.5?

But, really, it seems to me that the best way to insure that your predictions aren't mispresented is to make them a little more specific and less broadly general. A 15 seat range, after all, is hardly the model of pinpoint accuracy.

I'm sorry, your reply assumes that I have misrepresented your figures, and I don't believe that is the case, for reasons that I think I've adequately explained. In any event, your figures are publicly available, and as long as they remain so, I will continue to use them in any way that I deem appropriate.

Since you have been kind enough to offer me advice, please allow me to reciprocate. My suggestion to you, is that you might consider working a bit harder to provide predictions that are more specific and less broad and general, since it opens you up to the suspicion that you are deliberately playing it safe and hedging your bets. That's understandable, I suppose, but you are a professional analyst (the dean, according to some) who supposedly understands the political process better than most, with inside information and insight drawn from experience, and yet your predictions were so broad as to be practically useless, and you didn't end up doing all that much better than many amateur analysts.

Finally, if you believe that the failings, whatever they may be, of journalism.com are the sine qua non of the criminal lack of journalistic excellence in our political media, I suggest you take a giant step backwards and reconsider the contemporary media landscape, which includes the preference for conventional wisdom over skeptical inquiry, the dissemination of partisan received ideas in the guise of neutral reporting, collusion with official leaking for obvious political purposes, the profusion of anonymous sourcing even by outlets that in theory disallow it, print journalists doubling as pundits on TV, and steganography masquerading as reporting. It's a cesspool that in no way serves the vital function that the fourth estate was intended to provide, of keeping the public informed and acting as a brake on the use and misuse of government power. That a minor website repeated the, perhaps, errant work of an even more insignificant blogger, just doesn't stack up against that, however annoyed you personally might be about it.

[click on the chart for a larger view]