Well, heres some major kudos for Paul Krugman. In a Poll of pundits, and their accuracy, the results were basically dismal. You could have beaten most by tossing a coin. But some rated as good- and Krugman rated the top of them all.


Pundits Wrong Most Of The Time, Just Like You Always Imagined

students at Hamilton College under the direction of public policy professor P. Gary Wyckoff have subjected 26 of your favorite pundits to rigorous analysis.

As a part of their research paper, titled "Are Talking Heads Blowing Hot Air," the Hamilton College students "sampled the predictions of 26 individuals who wrote columns in major newspapers and/or appeared on the three major Sunday television news shows (Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and This Week) over a 16 month period from September 2007 to December 2008." They used a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “will not happen," 5 being “will absolutely happen”) to rate each prediction the pundits made, and then they evaluated each prediction for whether or not it came true.

What did they find? Basically, if you want to be almost as accurate as the pundits they studied, all you have to do is a) root through the cushions of your couch, b) find a coin, and c) start flipping it. Boom! You are now pretty close to being a political genius. If you are just as gifted at torturing metaphors, you are now "Thomas Friedman." Only nine of the 26 pundits surveyed proved to be more reliable than a coin flip.

THE GOOD: Paul Krugman, New York Times (highest scorer); Maureen Dowd, New York Times; Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania Governor; Chuck Schumer, New York Senator; Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader; Kathleen Parker, Washington Post and TownHall.com; David Brooks, New York Times; Eugene Robinson, Washington Post; Hank Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury

THE BAD: Howard Wolfson, counselor to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor/Fox News host; Newt Gingrich, eternal Presidential candidate; John Kerry, Massachusetts Senator; Bob Herbert, New York Times; Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC; Thomas Friedman, New York Times, David Broder, Washington Post (deceased); Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune; Nicholas Kristof, New York Times; Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State

THE UGLY: George Will, Washington Post/This Week; Sam Donaldson, ABC News; Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Senator; Carl Levin, Michigan Senator; Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Senator; Cal Thomas, Chicago Tribune (lowest scorer)

In their executive summary, the students note:

We discovered that a few factors impacted a prediction's accuracy. The first is whether or not the prediction is a conditional; conditional predictions were more likely to not come true. The second was partisanship; liberals were more likely than conservatives to predict correctly. The final significant factor in a prediction's outcome was having a law degree; lawyers predicted incorrectly more often.

Study: Pundits Wrong Most Of The Time, Just Like You Always Imagined


Well well- Libbie pundits more accurate than conservatives, and Paul Krugman the most accurate pundit of all. The Horror.