Nate Silver Writes on New York Times Blog About The Wise High Schoolers Who Predicted On FantasySCOTUS

June 29th, 2012

Who came out looking better than the pundits? Interestingly, it may be high school students.

High school students participating in a Supreme Court “fantasy league”sponsored by the nonprofit Harlan Institute had been about evenly divided in predicting the court’s decision, with 57 percent thinking the mandate would be overturned and 43 percent saying it would be upheld.

Nor did the oral arguments in the case, which substantially affected the conventional wisdom, alter the students’ opinions much. Instead, they had seen the case as a tossup from the beginning.

I suspect these students would have been wise enough to avoid some of the counterintuitive speculation about the decision’s political effects that you will now be seeing on television.

Read more at 538 Blog.