In the wake of the election, one of the more interesting developments has been the sudden rise to stardom of The New York Times‘ young political future predictor, Nate Silver. His FiveThirtyEight blog at nytimes.com, which was accounting for 20% of the Times’ traffic by election day, forecasted the election with Nostradamus-like pointedness, going 50-for-50 in calling which state would vote for whom. Using his brain-spinningly complex algorithm, Silver predicted Obama would take 313 electoral votes and would win the popular vote by a 2.5% margin. Although Florida has yet to be sorted out, it’s looking like Obama will finish with 323 electoral votes and win the popular vote with a 2.2% margin. It’s an impressive feat, particularly considering how lonely he was in predicting Obama’s comfortable victory. Gallup and Rassumussen were both predicting Romney wins, and Dean Chambers of UnSkewedPolls.com was calling it for Romney by a landslide …
