Democrats respond to Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight’s prediction that Republicans are favorites to take Senate

Data wiz Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has predicted that Republicans are favorites to take back control of the U.S. Senate this November. Needless to say, Democrats aren’t happy with that and responded to Silver’s predictions.

Silver, who has become well-known for using polls to predict the outcome of political races, wrote Sunday that Republicans do have a chance to take back the Senate, which would give the GOP both houses of Congress. He amended his previous prediction that the Democrats would keep their slim majority.

According to The Washington Post, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Guy Cecil issued a memo Monday morning as a rebuttal to Silver’s post.

“Nate Silver and the staff at FiveThirtyEight are doing groundbreaking work, but, as they have noted, they have to base their forecasts on a scarce supply of public polls. In some cases more than half of these polls come from GOP polling outfits,” Cecil wrote.

He then pointed out FiveThirtyEight’s incorrect prediction for North Dakota and Montana in 2012. “In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecasted a 61% likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority. Three months later Democrats went on to win 55 seats,” Cecil added.

Silver famously predicted the 2008 Presidential election correctly and also predicted that President Obama would be re-elected in 2012.