Herman Cain

A series of posts on Nate Silver's blog about elections and polling examined Herman Cain's chances of winning the GOP nomination. Silver criticized pundits who dismiss Cain's prospects, arguing that historically, there have been few candidates analogous to Cain, who is doing well in public opinion polls but lacks the support from the GOP establishment that is generally considered necessary for victory. According to Silver, this lack of historical precedent undermines the ability of pundits to predict Cain's chances with any certainty. He argues that pundits generally fail to adequately acknowledge this uncertainty when they make predictions.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein countered that the dismissal of Cain's chances was justified, given that he lacks qualities that have seemed to be necessary for success in the past - such as establishment support and experience in national or state government. Bernstein goes on to argue that, in the absence of contrary evidence, it is unlikely that the rules governing primary success will simply cease to apply for this election. He further states that, even if this campaign is unexpectedly favorable for unconventional candidates, there is no reason to believe that Cain in particular will benefit - another candidate like Bachmann might gain an advantage instead.

While Silver's argument is technically correct - the chances of Cain winning the nomination are not actually zero - Bernstein makes a persuasive case that the numerous obstacles in the way of a Cain nomination allow us to be fairly confident in predicting that he will not win. However, I'm not sure Bernstein responds effectively to Silver's argument about the unpredictable combination of strong public support and limited establishment support - Bernstein's explanation of why we can assume that old rules do apply didn't really seem adequate to me. It will be interesting to see, over the next few months, whether public support will be sufficient to sustain Cain's campaign.

Note (11/13) - I meant to post this 2 weeks ago when these articles were written, and found today that I left it as a draft. The accusations about Cain that have emerged since these articles were written would seem to reinforce the claim that he has little chance of winning the nomination.