Let’s not go too far here. Silver may have his own model, own way of doing things, but when it comes down to it, all Silver did was create a weighted average of poll results. Silver was right, not because he’s a genius, but because the polls were right.
Exactly. Nate Silver (and even more, Sam Wong) are just the messengers, the polls they were aggregating wrote the message.
My big take away from the Silver/Wong results over time: the race remained pretty much in the same please since last summer, with most actual eventual voters having made up their minds well in advance of Nov. 6th. and most of the dips and rises for either candidate reflected differences in survey response rates due to partisan enthusiasm.
The outcome, in light of the polling, makes a *lot* more sense if that was the case.