Nate Silver nailed it last night, and it's paying off.
The New York Times' political statistician recently released a book, and in the last 24 hours sales have skyrocketed by 850% on Amazon.com, CNNMoney reports. "It is now the second best selling book on the site, behind only popular children's book, 'The Third Wheel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 7.'"
Prior to the election, Silver's methodology was called into question by pundits skeptical of his reliance on polling data, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and David Brooks of the New York Times. (Silver's model is based on what Ezra Klein described as "little more than a sophisticated form of poll aggregation." If Silver had been wrong, the polling would have been wrong.) Yet Silver's model correctly forecast the winner in all 50 states. Florida, which he gave Obama a 50.3% chance of winning, is still up in the air -- but the 50.3% forecast more or less accounts for that.
Silver has been a huge asset to the Times since his model correctly forecast the outcome in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 election. In the days and hours prior to the election, roughly one out of every five visitors to NYTimes.com visited his blog, FiveThirtyEight.
Late last month, Silver acknowledged that his reputation was on the line in this election. “I'm sure that I have a lot riding on the outcome," he said. "I'm also sure I'll get too much credit if the prediction is right and too much blame if it is wrong."
Whether Silver's reputation should be determined by the accuracy of his forecasts -- it is an open and feverish debate -- the fact of the matter is that 2012 earned Silver more web traffic, money, and fame than he has ever had before. He won re-election with one hell of a mandate.
Silver did not respond to requests for an interview.
Read more about: Nate Silver
Silver, 34, a University of Chicago graduate and the computer expert who gave Obama a 90 percent chance of winning re-election, predicted on his blog, FiveThirtyEight (for the number of votes in the Electoral College), that the president would get 51 percent of the popular vote as he predicted each of the 50 states, including all nine battlegrounds.
"Nate Silver, right," said Bill Burton, who moved from the White House to the pro-Obama super political action committee Priorities USA Action.
Gallup's daily national tracking poll put Republican nominee Mitt Romney ahead by 5 percentage points until it was suspended because of superstorm Sandy, and a final national survey released Monday gave the Republican a 1-point advantage.
"These polls are designed only to measure what is happening at the time of that poll in terms of the national popular vote" and are not "designed to be predictive," Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport said.
With the count in Florida still to be finished, Obama was leading Romney nationwide by 2 percentage points, 50 percent to 48 percent, and won a decisive Electoral College victory.
Two university-based pollsters joined Silver in correctly predicting Obama's win, and one of them will be dead-on about the electoral vote tally.
Drew Linzer, an assistant professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta and a former pollster based in California, predicted Tuesday morning on votamatic.org that Obama would end the race with 332 electoral votes and Romney 206.
Sam Wang, a Princeton University professor of neuroscience, posted his final prediction — that Obama would likely get 303 electoral votes to Romney's 235 — on the school's election blog at 2 p.m. Tuesday. He revised Obama's total downward from 332 based on late polls Tuesday.
Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, hasn't been called by The Associated Press. Its outcome will determine which of those professors' final forecasts was accurate.
— Bloomberg
The New York Times' political statistician recently released a book, and in the last 24 hours sales have skyrocketed by 850% on Amazon.com, CNNMoney reports. "It is now the second best selling book on the site, behind only popular children's book, 'The Third Wheel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 7.'"
Prior to the election, Silver's methodology was called into question by pundits skeptical of his reliance on polling data, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and David Brooks of the New York Times. (Silver's model is based on what Ezra Klein described as "little more than a sophisticated form of poll aggregation." If Silver had been wrong, the polling would have been wrong.) Yet Silver's model correctly forecast the winner in all 50 states. Florida, which he gave Obama a 50.3% chance of winning, is still up in the air -- but the 50.3% forecast more or less accounts for that.
Silver has been a huge asset to the Times since his model correctly forecast the outcome in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 election. In the days and hours prior to the election, roughly one out of every five visitors to NYTimes.com visited his blog, FiveThirtyEight.
Late last month, Silver acknowledged that his reputation was on the line in this election. “I'm sure that I have a lot riding on the outcome," he said. "I'm also sure I'll get too much credit if the prediction is right and too much blame if it is wrong."
Whether Silver's reputation should be determined by the accuracy of his forecasts -- it is an open and feverish debate -- the fact of the matter is that 2012 earned Silver more web traffic, money, and fame than he has ever had before. He won re-election with one hell of a mandate.
Silver did not respond to requests for an interview.
Read more about: Nate Silver
WASHINGTON—
— Nate Silver was right. The Gallup Poll was wrong.Silver, 34, a University of Chicago graduate and the computer expert who gave Obama a 90 percent chance of winning re-election, predicted on his blog, FiveThirtyEight (for the number of votes in the Electoral College), that the president would get 51 percent of the popular vote as he predicted each of the 50 states, including all nine battlegrounds.
"Nate Silver, right," said Bill Burton, who moved from the White House to the pro-Obama super political action committee Priorities USA Action.
Gallup's daily national tracking poll put Republican nominee Mitt Romney ahead by 5 percentage points until it was suspended because of superstorm Sandy, and a final national survey released Monday gave the Republican a 1-point advantage.
"These polls are designed only to measure what is happening at the time of that poll in terms of the national popular vote" and are not "designed to be predictive," Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport said.
With the count in Florida still to be finished, Obama was leading Romney nationwide by 2 percentage points, 50 percent to 48 percent, and won a decisive Electoral College victory.
Two university-based pollsters joined Silver in correctly predicting Obama's win, and one of them will be dead-on about the electoral vote tally.
Drew Linzer, an assistant professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta and a former pollster based in California, predicted Tuesday morning on votamatic.org that Obama would end the race with 332 electoral votes and Romney 206.
Sam Wang, a Princeton University professor of neuroscience, posted his final prediction — that Obama would likely get 303 electoral votes to Romney's 235 — on the school's election blog at 2 p.m. Tuesday. He revised Obama's total downward from 332 based on late polls Tuesday.
Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, hasn't been called by The Associated Press. Its outcome will determine which of those professors' final forecasts was accurate.
— Bloomberg
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