The Scandal Test

By Karen Tumulty | June 29, 2008 | +

So it’s my last day of vacation, and I can report that Texas is even hotter in the summer than I remembered. While I’ve been away, I’ve been indulging my need for a politics fix with what is of late one of my favorite websites. Today, baseball statistician Nate Silver entertainingly devises what he calls the Electric Minor Political Scandal Acid Test, which consists of five criteria to determine whether a scandal story is likely to have much of an impact. He then tests Brand X’s report that Cindy McCain didn’t pay overdue taxes on her La Jolla condo, and decides:

The La Jolla story passes three out of the five questions on the EMPSCAT. Medium-impact, but not spicy.

I’ll be back to real work on Monday.

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@TIMEPolitics

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