…if it ain’t got that swing, as Duke Ellington once put it.

And so it is when it comes to tonight’s gubernatorial elections. As the graph below from Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight shows…

…the Gubernatorial vote is not only a lousy indicator of where the electorate is as related to a future Presidential vote, it is no indicator at all (that’s what the flat red line means).

Now, the pundits will give themselves hernias tomorrow trying to wrest something meaningful out of something that statistically isn’t worth the cost of the electrons it takes to light up your television screen. But the deal is that we will all have to wait until the 2010 mid-term elections to find out which way the political wind is really blowing in America.

My suggestion: Find a few good DVDs to rent, or start a new hobby.

Because, while pundits have to pundit and talking heads have to talk, none of it will be worth listening to.

© 2009, Mac Williams. All rights reserved.

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