President Barack Obama easily won re-election, as was expected by the members of the reality-based community of statisticians based on the poll averages. His final electoral vote total will be either 303 or 332 depending on Florida. All those pundits who sneered at the statisticians and listened to their ‘gut’ which told them that Mitt Romney was going to win would do well to remember Carl Sagan’s response when he was asked what his gut feeling was about an issue for which there was no convincing evidence either way. He replied, “I try not to think with my gut.” If you want an exhaustive list of pundit predictions for the election, see here. Of course, one of the benefits of being a modern pundit is that there is no price to be paid whatsoever for not just being totally wrong but for being stupidly wrong by ignoring data. [Read more…]