I selected the award winning political blog
FiveThirtyEight which I unfortunately discovered post-election. With the motto “Politics Done Right” the primary blogger
Nate Silver and his contributor
Sean Quinn analyze electoral data with the best of them but Silver doesn’t stop there. He concerns himself with everything related to the function (or
dysfunction) of government and all the imaginable
influences on the outcome of re-elections. And when the situation calls for it Silver ventures out into new territory for him and applies his reader friendly statistical analysis to a
comparison of the changing economic forecasts of economic professionals and academics. The variety is reminiscent of
Real Clear Politics but the Silver personality and the remarkably successful
(not to mention transparent) methodology elevate it.
By their nature as analysts of domestic presidential and legislative races, the duo produces no news content themselves. Instead they bring their unique approach to interpreting the data that they collect and catalog. Their blog seems to be geared towards a readership with an awareness of the political news events but that lacks the time to seek out and synthesize the related data.
Silver has a definite appreciation of my favorite aesthetic value: simplicity. His blog features a simple black, white, red, and blue logo and sans-serif font text. He has also carefully tagged all of the entries and presents the tags in an alphabetical list on the bottom of the reader’s right hand column. Overall it’s functionally intuitive and aesthetically pleasing.
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