President Obama now has a 91.6% chance of winning re-election, predicts the New York Times’ Nate Silver, via his FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver, who has been updating his model daily, is now updating his model twice daily, and predicts Obama winning with 50.9% of the popular vote and 314.6 electoral college votes.
“Among 12 national polls published on Monday, Mr. Obama led by an average of 1.6 percentage points,” Silver notes early this morning. “Perhaps more important is the trend in the surveys. On average, Mr. Obama gained 1.5 percentage points from the prior edition of the same polls, improving his standing in nine of the surveys while losing ground in just one.”
Barack Obama won election in 2008 with an historic landslide, including 365 electoral college votes against John McCain’s 173. Obama won with 52.9% of the popular vote against McCain’s 45.7%.