The Future of Political Journalism

Nate Silver's predictions on FiveThirtyEight are starting to draw a lot of attention - and a lot of criticism. Almost all this criticism seems to be people interpreting statistical estimates as the blathering of a typical pundit, leading them  to very irrational claims, or concocting elaborate speculations why Silver cannot be right. They could not be more wrong, and in a few days I am not going to be shy about saying "I TOLD YOU SO".

(more after the break) 

More Survey Analysis

I'm repeating my previous post, since it seems relevant to review the data again before the election. I accessed all these sites at about 9:00 PM CST. I

Real Clear Politics
Obama 201
Romney 191
Toss Ups 146
Obama by +1 ECV

Intrade Presidential Election 2012
Obama ~67% win
Romney~33% win

FiveThirthyEight 
Obama 303.2 +/-56 ECV
Romney 234.8 -/+56 ECV
~81% Obama wins

HuffPost Pollster

Obama  277 ECV
Romney  206 ECV
Toss Ups 55 ECV
Obama has enough certain electoral votes to win.

Talking Points Memo 

Obama 285 ECV
Romney 191 ECV
Toss Ups 62 ECV (but 44 of those lean strongly towards Romney)

Election Analytics 
Obama 296.7
Romney 241.3
~99.4% Obama wins

As before, I have arranged these in roughly increasing order of favor for Obama winning the 2012 election. The last three sites (HuffPost, TPM, EA) are making strong claims that Obama has the electoral votes to win already. 538 is not far behind that claim.
RCP seems to be sitting on the fence, not making strong claim about the toss-up States, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Other notes:
HuffPost Pollster has been added to the results. (but you saw that already.)

FiveThirtyEight: Last time I made the claim that Nate Silver's analysis is as close to neutral as can be found. Today though, I saw this: Nate Silver bets Joe Scarborough $1000 that Obama wins. It is not clear if this was intended as a partisan statement, or simply a good bet. It's not wrong to claim Obama is a good bet.

Should I update again tomorrow?