WOW....Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com was PERFECT this election!!!

[KansasVoter]

Next election, in 2010, he is the only guy we need to pay attention to!

He guessed EVERY Electoral Vote correctly. Including Omaha!

And his national percentage for Obama and McCain was exactly right!!

[Oceansaway]

1. geez, i need tips on the Lotto #'s...n/t

[RoyGBiv]

2. He's a good number cruncher ...

His talent seems to be in applying appropriate weights to various polls.

Really all he did was average the polls, but he did it with more than a little intelligence behind the averaging, i.e. he didn't just thrown them all together and divide, unlike some people whom I'll avoid naming.

[chimpymustgo]

3. Did he look at Senate races? Looks as though that's where there were election hi-jinks.

[GodlessBiker]

4. We was perfect except for Indiana. He had that in pink, lean McCain.

[JohnnyCougar]

5. No, he wasn't.

He didn't guess Indiana, and he missed the Omaha vote. Other than that, he was pretty dead on. He missed Indiana and Omaha probably because of the massive imbalance in the ground games in those areas.

He even had Missouri going to McCain by .2%, which is exactly what it ended up as.

[FormerDittoHead]

8. Yes. Let's not assign too much skill when he could have just been lucky.

First off, as of last Monday, I'm unaware of any pollster who thought McCain was going to win. Each pollster has their own methods, and most of them have been "the most accurate" at one time or another. Many commissioned polls are doomed from the start (like national polls, rather than likely voters, etc). Is that the fault of the pollster? I don't think so.

Kind of reminds me of the stock pickers / fund managers the financial media parade out after every financial event / run up who predicted that things would happen as they did - THIS time. I always find it funny that often, you hadn't heard of them before, nor in my experience do you often hear of them again.

Some, like the Motley Fools, have a good run up (like the Fools did during the dot-com boom) and then make a living regurgitating financial textbook basics while their long-term results boil down to market averages.

If Mr. Silver strikes gold AGAIN, I'll give Mr. Silver some kudos. Otherwise I'd chalk it up to luck.

[malik flavors]

6. His electoral vote was off by about 15, actually. But, his pop. vote was dead on.

[progressiveforever]

7. Wasn't electoral-vote.com dead on also?