NY Times’ Nate Silver Predicts 83.7 Percent Chance Of Obama Win
The New York Times’ Nate Silver continues to increase his predictions of a President Obama win, and now gives Obama an 83.7% chance of a second term. Silver’s model, which also predicts Obama will get 305 electoral votes, but a mere 50.6% of the popular vote.
Silver has been taking a tremendous amount of heat from the right wing, who have called him every name in the book. Frankly, it’s quite disgusting, especially given Silver’s repeated pronouncements that, when Romney still had a 30% chance on winning, Silver said that was pretty good.
“If you are following some of the same people that I do on Twitter, you may have noticed some pushback about our contention that Barack Obama is a favorite (and certainly not a lock) to be re-elected,” Silver wrote just yesterday:
I haven’t come across too many analyses suggesting that Mitt Romney is the favorite. (There are exceptions.) But there are plenty of people who say that the race is a “tossup.â€
What I find confounding about this is that the argument we’re making is exceedingly simple. Here it is:
Obama’s ahead in Ohio.
A somewhat-more-complicated version:
Mr. Obama is leading in the polls of Ohio and other states that would suffice for him to win 270 electoral votes, and by a margin that has historically translated into victory a fairly high percentage of the time.
The argument that Mr. Obama isn’t the favorite is the one that requires more finesse. If you take the polls at face value, then the popular vote might be a tossup, but the Electoral College favors Mr. Obama.
We shall soon see.
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