Why has Obama been going to Florida? The only reasonable answer is that he is looking not only at the snapshot numbers someone like Nate Silver does a good job of reporting, but the trend, way ahead of current polling. Campaigns are very numerate.

For the same reasons, Chris Christie and Michael Blomberg feel safe throwing Romney under the bus.

Regarding Christie, I'm willing to assume that his praise on Obama is genuine, and not calculated. Christie has had to deal with an enormous disaster, and I can easily see him being grateful if the President has, in fact, been very helpful.

I should say, politicians who don't act innumerate in session.

Good point that they act extremely numerate (is that a word?) in how they respond to polling numbers.

Bloomberg is not a Republican anymore (He's an independent), for the record.

Politicians, by and large, are fairly numerate. Speechwriters rarely care about numbers, and policymakers care not at all.

> Politicians, by and large, are fairly numerate.

Got any data to back this up?

Politicians are highly numerate. They just lie about their incentives so the appear innumerate when misjudged.

Only politicians in the vanishingly small percentage of districts that are actually competitive.

Many of those districts are still competitive, just at the primary level instead of the general election.

Primary elections are only competitive when there isn't an incumbent. And even then rarely, because there is a candidate that the party favors.

Playing to the lowest common denominator. Any politician who says they don't read the news or polls is lying.