RealClearPolitics
Encyclopedia
RealClearPolitics is a political news and polling data aggregator based in Chicago, Illinois
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. The site's founders say their goal is to give readers "ideological diversity." They have described themselves as frustrated with what they perceive as anti-conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

, anti-Christian media bias
Media bias in the United States
Media bias in the United States occurs when the media in the United States systematically presents a particular point of view. Claims of media bias in the United States include claims of liberal bias, conservative bias, mainstream bias, and corporate bias...

, and while some have suggested the commentary is conservative-leaning, the site includes columns and commentary from both sides of the political spectrum.

The site was founded in 2000 by former options
Option (finance)
In finance, an option is a derivative financial instrument that specifies a contract between two parties for a future transaction on an asset at a reference price. The buyer of the option gains the right, but not the obligation, to engage in that transaction, while the seller incurs the...

 trader
Trader (finance)
A trader is someone in finance who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. A broker who simply fills buy or sell orders is not a trader, as they are merely executing instructions given to them. According to the Wall Street Journal in 2004, a managing...

 John McIntyre and former advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...

 account executive
Account executive
The job role executive admin. covers various descriptions depending on the specific industry covering mainly marketing role.In IT organizations, an account executives is a senior management role, responsible for executing large contracts. Control of the Profit & Loss is one of the main...

 Tom Bevan. Forbes Media LLC
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

 bought a 51% equity interest in the site in 2007.

Origin

The Web site was founded in 2000 by McIntyre, a former trader
Trader (finance)
A trader is someone in finance who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. A broker who simply fills buy or sell orders is not a trader, as they are merely executing instructions given to them. According to the Wall Street Journal in 2004, a managing...

 at the Chicago Board Options Exchange
Chicago Board Options Exchange
The Chicago Board Options Exchange , located at 400 South LaSalle Street in Chicago, is the largest U.S. options exchange with annual trading volume that hovered around one billion contracts at the end of 2007...

, and Bevan, a former advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...

 account executive
Account executive
The job role executive admin. covers various descriptions depending on the specific industry covering mainly marketing role.In IT organizations, an account executives is a senior management role, responsible for executing large contracts. Control of the Profit & Loss is one of the main...

. McIntyre explained "[i]t really wasn't any more complicated than there should be a place online that pulled together all this quality information." They call what they do "intelligent aggregation." The site has grown in election-season spurts since it first went online. It has expanded from a two-man operation on a shoestring budget to a full-time staff of more than two-dozen employees overseeing the company's mainstay, RealClearPolitics, as well as eight smaller sites: RealClearMarkets, RealClearWorld, RealClearSports, RealClearScience, RealClearReligion, RealClearTechnology, RealClearHistory, and RealClearBooks.

Philosophy

In an interview with the conservative magazine Human Events
Human Events
Human Events is a weekly American conservative magazine. It takes its name from the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence...

, McIntyre described the philosophy behind the Web site as based on "freedom" and "common-sense values." Said Bevan, "We think debate on the issues is a very important thing. We post a variety of opinions." He further stated, "we have a frustration all conservatives have", which is "the bias in media against conservatives, religious conservatives, [and] Christian conservatives." When Nate Silver
Nate Silver
Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver is an American statistician, psephologist, and writer. Silver first gained public recognition for developing PECOTA, a system for forecasting the performance and career development of Major League Baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball...

 of rival site FiveThirtyEight.com
FiveThirtyEight.com
FiveThirtyEight is a polling aggregation website with a blog created by Nate Silver. Sometimes colloquially referred to as 538 dot com or just 538, the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college...

 claimed RealClearPolitics.com was rigging its averages to favor Senator John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

 and other Republicans, McIntyre denied having a conservative bent, stating, "We’re running a business, We have no interest in screwing around with that for partisan purposes.” Silver later backed away from the claim and said the two sites had a friendly rivalry and grudging respect for each other.

Format

Updated continuously, the RealClearPolitics sites, which are based in Chicago, aggregate content from a wide range of sources, sources that run the gamut of locations and political persuasions. Stories from the Washington Post and other large-circulation media frequently run alongside articles from such lesser-known papers as the Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, the paper had a 2008 weekly circulation of 900,197.- History :...

, while analyses from the liberal New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

may be paired with more conservative publications such as the Weekly Standard. McIntyre's purported objective is "to give readers ideological diversity. We're trying to stay immersed in the nation's political bloodstream at all times. That way, we can show you every small, little twist and turn, and give multiple sides to every story."

Ownership

Forbes Media
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

 announced on November 7, 2007 that it had acquired a 51% stake in RealClearPolitics.com. The founders will remain owners and management. In November, 2008, Forbes President and CEO Steve Forbes
Steve Forbes
Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes, Jr. is an American editor, publisher, and businessman. He is the editor-in-chief of business magazine Forbes as well as president and chief executive officer of its publisher, Forbes Inc. He was a Republican candidate in the U.S. Presidential primaries in 1996...

 sent a memo directing that the company's online brands, including Forbes.com, Investopedia and RealClearPolitics.com be combined.

RealClearPolitics also owns RealClearMarkets, RealClearWorld and RealClearSports. RealClearMarkets and RealClearSports were launched in November 2007. RealClearWorld, the international news and politics site, was launched in August 2008. RealClearScience and RealClearReligion launched in October 2010.

Original content

In addition to linking to external content, RealClearPolitics also provides original commentary.

Bevan and Kyle Trygstad write "The RCP Blog," which is hosted by TIME. Trygstad and Mike Memoli write the "PoliticsNation" blog. Doctoral student Jay Cost writes the "HorseRaceBlog." Veteran journalist Doug Clawson writes the "Media Watch" blog.

The site's political commentary, election analysis and polling averages have been featured in national media outlets, including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

, Investor's Business Daily
Investor's Business Daily
Investor's Business Daily is a national newspaper in the United States, published Monday through Friday, that covers international business, finance, and the global economy...

, and The Chicago Sun-Times. RealClearPolitics polling averages are used on MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

's Hardball
Hardball with Chris Matthews
Hardball with Chris Matthews is a talk show on MSNBC, broadcast weekdays at 5 and 7 PM hosted by Chris Matthews. It originally aired on now-defunct America's Talking and later CNBC. The current title was derived from a book Matthews wrote in 1988, Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who...

, Fox News, and the Web sites of CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...

 and the Washington Post.

Political poll averaging

Statisticians explain that it is sometimes misleading to average results from multiple polls. Richard Gott III, a professor at Princeton, and Wes Colley, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville
University of Alabama in Huntsville
The University of Alabama in Huntsville is a state-supported, public, coeducational research university, located in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees, and is organized in five...

, published findings in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modeling. New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

contributor Neil Tyson, wrote in an Op-Ed piece that “in swing states, the median result of all the polls conducted in the weeks prior to an election is an especially effective predictor of which candidate will win that election — even in states where the polls consistently fall within the margin of error.”

Reader accolades

New York Times columnist David Brooks
David Brooks (journalist)
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...

 said, "Some people wake up every morning with a raw egg and exercise. I wake up every morning with RealClearPolitics.com. It's the perfect one-stop shopping for the smartest commentary on politics and life." Howard Fineman
Howard Fineman
Howard Fineman is an American journalist who is senior politics editor at the Huffington Post. Prior to his move to Huffington Post in October 2010, he was Newsweek’s Chief Political Correspondent, Senior Editor and Deputy Washington Bureau Chief. An award-winning writer, Fineman also is an NBC...

, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

chief political correspondent, states that, "RealClearPolitics.com is a site that makes a credible effort to do the impossible: to provide a comprehensive, real-time (and not just Beltway- based) overview of the entire American political conversation."

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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