Pundits - Accurate Predictors Or Just Nonsense ?

We are living in the age of "punditry". It seems like all the news organizations currently make use of so-called "experts" (pundits) to explain the political or economic news to the general viewing public. Frankly, I don't think most of these pundits know much (if any) more than the people who are watching them.

Well, some scholars at Hamilton College wondered if many of these people really knew what they were talking about, so they decided to find out. They looked at a good sample of print and TV pundits and determined the accuracy of their predictions. Then they divided them into three categories -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good were right more times than a coin flip would have been right, the bad were about as good as if you had just flipped a coin, and the ugly were wrong so many times that flipping a coin would have been better than listening to them.

Each of the following pundits is given a prognosticator score ( the number of wrong answers subtracted from the number of right answers and divided by the number of predictions then multiplied by 10 - the higher the score, the better the prognosticator). They also have a political score (from 1 to 9 with the 1 being conservative and the 9 being liberal).

It doesn't surprise me that they found the most reliable of all the pundits was Paul Krugman (Pulitzer Prize winner in economics and NY Times columnist). The guy is usually right on target in my opinion. Here is the list:

The Good

PAUL KRUGMAN
political...............7.90
prognosticator...............8.2
right 15 out of 17 times

MAUREEN DOWD
political...............7.20
prognosticator...............7.3
right 9 out of 11 times

ED RENDELL
political...............6.20
prognosticator...............7.0
right 15 out of 20 times

CHUCK SCHUMER
political...............7.30
prognosticator................6.9
right 11 out of 13 times

KATHLEEN PARKER
political...............3.30
prognosticator...............6.7
right 4 out of 6 times

NANCY PELOSI
political...............7.70
prognosticator...............6.3
right 20 out of 27 times

DAVID BROOKS
political...............3.80
prognosticator...............5.8
right 13 out of 19 times

EUGENE ROBINSON
political...............6.90
prognosticator...............5.5
right 7 out of 11 times

HANK PAULSON
political...............2.56
prognosticator...............5.5
right 16 out of 22 times

The Bad

NEWT GINGRICH
political...............1.50
prognosticator...............3.5
right 13 out of 23 times

MIKE HUCKABEE
political...............1.90
prognosticator...............3.0
right 6 out of 10 times

HOWARD WOLFSON
political...............7.30
prognosticator...............2.8
right 11 out of 18 times

JOHN KERRY
political...............7.20
prognosticator...............2.5
right 7 out of 12 times

BOB HERBERT
political...............8.50
prognosticator................2.2
right 4 out of 9 times

ANDREA MITCHELL
political...............5.20
prognosticator...............2.2
right 9 out of 18 times

THOMAS FRIEDMAN
political...............6.00
prognosticator...............2.0
right 5 out of 10 times

DAVID BRODER
political...............4.70
prognosticator...............1.8
right 5 out of 11 times

CLARENCE PAGE
political...............7.30
prognosticator...............1.7
right 2 out of 6 times

NICHOLAS KRISTOF
political...............6.80
prognosticator...............1.7
right 6 out of 12 times

GEORGE WILL
political...............2.50
prognosticator...............0.8
right 18 out of 48 times

HILLARY CLINTON
political................6.90
prognosticator...............0.0
right 3 out of 6 times

The Ugly

SAM DONALDSON
political...............3.40
prognosticator...............-0.8
right 7 out of 25 times

CARL LEVIN
political...............7.20
prognosticator...............-1.1
right 3 out of 9 times

JOE LIEBERMAN
political...............4.00
prognosticator...............-1.2
right 6 out of 17 times

LINDSEY GRAHAM
political...............2.50
prognosticator...............-3.4
right 13 out of 41 times

CAL THOMAS
political...............1.50
prognosticator...............-8.7
right 1 out of 15 times

NOTE -- If a person hedged on a prediction, then that was not counted in figuring score.