Nate Silver’s Final Prediction

Nate Silver, the man behind the New York Times FiveThirtyEight blog who accurately predicted 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, gives President Obama a 90.9 percent chance of winning Tuesday’s election. He also predicts that Obama will run away with the Electoral College votes, winning by a wide margin of 313 to 225.

Silver writes in his latest blog post:

Whether because of Hurricane Sandy, the relatively good economic news of late, or other factors, Mr. Obama appears to have gained ground in the closing days of the race.

The national polls now range from showing a 1-point lead for Mr. Romney to slightly more than a 4-point advantage for Mr. Obama. The FiveThirtyEight forecast of the national popular vote is within this range, projecting Mr. Obama’s most likely margin of victory to be two or three percentage points, approximating the margin that George W. Bush achieved in defeating John Kerry in 2004.

…Mr. Romney’s chances are less, however, of winning the Electoral College. The large majority of polls in battleground states over the past three days have shown leads for Mr. Obama. On Monday, for example, 19 battleground state polls found leads for Mr. Obama, as compared with just three for Mr. Romney.

Read more

We’ll find out soon enough whether his prediction is correct.

— Posted by Tracy Bloom.