Nate Silver, the geeky statistician who is singlehandedly dismantling the myth of Mitt-mentum

From the UK's Telegraph:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100186641/nate-silver-the-geeky-statistician-who-is-singlehandedly-dismantling-the-myth-of-mitt-mentum/

Poblano is the pseudonym of Nate Silver, the sabermetrician and political psephologist who has done more to influence the 2012 presidential election than other political analysts and commentator. Silver is behind The New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, which conducts a complex statistical analysis of the state of the race, and boils it down to daily estimate of the two candidates chances in the form of a mathematical percentage. Where most political commentators output is the product of briefings, gossip and personal perception, Silver deals in cold, hard facts. And at the moment, Silver’s facts are being fired like bullets into the heart of the Romney campaign.

Over the past week Romney has had a clear strategy; give the impression of momentum. Demonstrate the post-debate surge is continuing. Get people talking about how the race is his to lose.

This strategy has taken various forms. In the wake of the final presidential debate – which Obama won by a country mile – an army of Romney strategists were dispatched to spread the word that the debate didn’t matter, it was all too late, and Romney’s “momentum” was carrying him to victory. “President Obama regained some lost ground,” said CNN contributor William Bennett, a former official in the George H W Bush administration, “but the damage had already been done. Mitt Romney now carries the momentum into the home stretch.”

SNIP

And then, slap bang in the middle of all this surging and sprinting, up pops that geeky killjoy Silver. “In polls, Romney’s momentum seems to have stopped,” he announced in a blog yesterday. Coolly and calmly, Silver set about dismantling the Romney bandwagon. According to his model's “Nowcast” – the chance of either candidate prevailing if the election was held on that particular day – the trend was slightly favourable to Obama . . . .

SNIP