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.
“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.”
That does make sense. To his credit, actually, I believe Silver made the same point a while ago. He commented that some of the rise in Romney’s polls after the first debate could have come from Romney voters who, because of Romney’s strong performance, were more willing to talk to pollsters.
I’m not sure that all of the poll fluctuations are attributable to differing response rates, but it is a plausible hypothesis, especially given our “endless campaign” political culture. After 2 years of nonstop campaigning, and 24-hour cable coverage of that campaigning, it’s certainly plausible that most people made up their minds months ago.