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I just looked at the nearly final returns, and compared with the predictions in that were updated as of this morning.

It looks to me like Nate Silver correctly predicted every single state.  Including Florida.  In the morning I'll check how closely he nailed the popular vote.  Right now Romney is ahead by a hair, but most of California is not in yet, which will clearly change that.

From an alternate universe, can give a lesson in how NOT to interpret polls.﻿
Robert Grady's profile photoMaxwell Whitaker's profile photoAntonio Yon's profile photoJohn Pilman's profile photo
Wow, that's incredible. Amazing work!﻿
Nate, lets take a ride to Vegas!﻿
Wow, thanks for that "alternate universe" link. That is...astounding. As much as I dislike partisanship, I haven't seen anything from the left so decisively delusional as that.﻿
It gets better.  Nate has consistently given Ohio about 50% odds of being the "tipping point" state.  Looking at I see that the tipping state is indeed Ohio!

Update oops.  Nope.  It is right now, but once we have polling data for Hawaii, Colorado will wind up in that slot.  Oh well.﻿
When you say "correctly predicted," do you mean the percentage points within some margin of error, or just which candidate came out ahead?  (The former would obviously be a lot more impressive than the latter... I'm wondering how close the percentage predictions actually were.)﻿
Nate is from the future. Clearly... Wait... I'm not Nate!﻿
Nate Silver is coming for Neil DeGrasse Tyson's crown﻿
It is sad, and Nate Silver said it himself more or less (on Colbert), is that his methodology is not particularly complex and revolutionary. It is just that the standard for reporting is so low for the rest of the pundits.﻿
Thank goodness I listened to Nate Silver rather the Joe Scarborough.﻿
Yup, Obama is already ahead in the popular vote.

I still think we need to get rid of the electoral college﻿
Amazing we were discussing at school tonight﻿ looks like a bizzaro version of 538... One not driven by the cold hard numbers but of a very clear pro-conservative anti-reality bias.... Hilarious!﻿
+Antonio Yon: Wouldn't actually be of much use. The reason Nate Silver is so good is that he's not a pundit or a pollster, he's a trained, experienced statistician. He doesn't guess, and he doesn't get lucky. He just does the math.

And if you took him to Vegas, the only advice he'd give you is not to play, because all the games are tilted so that unless you cheat some way, the house always wins.﻿
haha, unskewed gave it to Romney by five in the exit polls.﻿
I think it's a good thing to give Barak OBAMA another chance.﻿
With all due respect. +Justin Oroz , thats like asking to get rid of one's eyes because one is short sighted. ﻿
Or its like getting rid of an outdated election system in favor of one that allows peoples' votes to count in states that are decidedly one party or the other. ﻿
Who needs a poll? I was expecting Obama to win. I was hoping he wouldn't win, but I was expecting him to (most of the time); though.. Romney? Hmm.. I wonder how many elections between 2 jokers this country will tolerate before they've had enough.﻿
The repuppetnuts have lost their mojo. They're flaccid to the changing demographics of America.

Old white guys will NEVER rule this country again. America values all people, and this win is good on so many levels.

The bigots, and religious zealots will be ignored now. We move forward beyond the noise in favor of an America without war, without hatred and without the stupid of the old ways of doing thlngs.

Congratulations Obama, but mostly thanks go to those of us who support America for new tomorrows.﻿
wow! Americans have decided, that's a good lesson for those country practicing false democracy.﻿
and americas deficit continues to grow...hope china doesnt own the U.S. before this term is over....wake up America﻿
and Nate Silver shall hence forth be known as Nate Gold﻿
+james bridgeman since I have been alive the deficit grows at a much slower rate when a democrat is the president, even shrank one year. Increased every year a republican was president since I have been alive. Reagan with the highest deficit growth rate in 1982.﻿
It's official...REPUBLICANS TRULY ARE DELUSIONAL! What math were they using to get to these numbers? What methodology did they use? Is it the same methodology that they use for all their other political ideologies? If so, maybe it's the methodology. ARE YOU HEARING THIS REPUBLICANS!!! These "intellectual" republicans were off by so much doesn't it make you reconsider what other calculations they're completely delusional about. Or were they just lying? Either way, don't they lose credibility?﻿
Nate Silver has to be on an ego trip right now, for sure.﻿
This is the exact same situation that Nate saw in his first rock star role as a baseball statistician. He saw an imprecise system of anecdotal evidence, bad correlations, and poor analysis in the name of chest-beating. He introduced a better model that ignored legacy affectations instead looked at empirical evidence, (PECOTA for those who want to look it up) that revolutionized the comparison and forecasting abilities of baseball players. He took the same grief from the suddenly-irrelevant old guard and eventually proved them all wrong. Ten years down the road and he's done it again with political forecasting models.

I do believe it's more than just observation without the proselytizing. He's using the same data that's available to everyone but the secret sauce is in how much weight is given to each data point. That's what makes models valuable and not just simply assembling the data pointing to the top result.

Back in those heady, halcyon days, there was a term in baseball circles called wish-casting. It differed from forecasting in that it's what the caster wished for and backed up with non-correlative data. That's what most political analysts do. They wishcast.

Oh, and +Antti-Ville Tuunainen , I recognize your valid points. It was quip, meant to be glib but to be fair, I'd like to think that maybe someone like +Nate Silver would be able to find an edge to exploit. It's been done before.﻿
Is that the model Billy Beane used at the Oakland As?﻿
+chris currence notwithstanding the fact that many democrat pundits were just as bad. Silver's achievement is a rejection of partisan hackery on both sides whose predictions were far less accurate.﻿
Nate Silver's background as a baseball statistician makes him uniquely adept at interpreting political polls. Specifically, the WARP/VORP/PECOTA concepts seem directly applicable to determining the quality and accuracy of polling firms. This is probably best represented by Florida where the raw polling average shows Romney up 0.7 but Silver's adjustments show Obama up 0.2; Silver knows what each poll implies in relation to every other poll (including the relationship between state and national polls) and was able to suss out the fact that Obama was actually ahead in Florida by just a sliver.

I can't wait for the full popular vote to be counted to see just how close it is to Silver's 50.8 to 48.3 prediction.﻿

(Doh... I think I just rehahsed what +Antonio Yon said above. Posting anyway.)﻿
+Antti-Ville Tuunainen , there's one game in which that's not true: poker. The house takes a small cut of every pot (and therefore always wins), but over time a good player will win money from bad players. As I understand it, Nate Silver has made a good bit of money from poker over the years.﻿
This has cemented it. Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" is next on my reading list.﻿
There goes his chance of winning the lottery!﻿ is an interesting data point.  Of the confidence ranges that he put on all 51 states, only West Virginia fell outside of the range Nate expected.  (Hawaii was on the line.)  I don't know what percentage confidence ranges Nate was aiming for.﻿
Hi friend Ben Tilly I want to friendship with you. if you want to friendship with me then please reply me. I wait your reply.﻿
I am intriged at how much you guys have such an interest in your presidents its great I must admit Aussies are not that excited about their pollies. Good luck guys hope you get what you wish for congratulations Obarma﻿
Nm Pl
Good one﻿
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