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Wow, I’m surprised to see so many naive people on Free republic of all places. Nate Silver did not predict the outcome, he used his position to influence it. It came out to be about the same, because that’s what they’ve been working towards this whole time, by discouraging Republicans, harassing them at the polls and rigging voting machines.

"he used his position to influence it."

he only had that position to begin with because of a previous track record of picking correctly. I'm not saying he is perfect. (he had a 74% chance Angle would unseat Ried) I'm saying he is honest with the numbers. He is a poker player that wants to know the odds, you go with the odds sometimes you lose. He is only as accurate as the polls that come into him, there is no magic, if he gets garbage in.. there is garbage out..

Wow, I’m surprised to see so many naive people on Free republic of all places. Nate Silver did not predict the outcome, he used his position to influence it. It came out to be about the same, because that’s what they’ve been working towards this whole time, by discouraging Republicans, harassing them at the polls and rigging voting machines.

Exactly. Silver is a total hack -- he made his mark in 2008 by using campaign polling numbers fed to him by Obama, and then creating some "model" mumbo-jumbo to make it look like and independent prediction. That got him on the NYT staff so he could then use his "model" to influence thought -- all public polls are propaganda, not a measure of reality.

He missed 2010 by a country mile. Getting it "right" in 2012 was more a case of creating the outcome than predicting it.