In response to:
Kevin, you did a pretty decent job of explaining. You even came to the correct conclusion:
"The answer to Nate Silver isn't to go back to traditional political punditry... but it's to develop ever more statistical models in the hopes of finding a better way... to forecast."
But you HAD TO throw this in:
"Circling back to Silver, if Romney pulls out a victory... it'll be a data point for Silver to add into his model to try to 'get it right' next time."
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! It will do NOTHING to change statistical modeling, it will simply show that a 22% probability (actually 27% at the time of my post) is INFINITELY greater than 0% probability.
IT'S A MODEL!
There has been just about one constant up for discussion in an electoral season filled with tumultuous polling: Nate Silver.
Nate Silver is the statistician and poll-watching guru who rose to prominence in 2008 by developing a poll aggregation model that correctly predicted 49 of 50 states in that year's presidential contest. He has since been hired by the New York Times and gained more prominence with his up-to-the-minute analysis on new polls and the state of the presidential race.
Conservatives have attacked Silver relentlessly for his model that predicts that President Obama with a 70%+ chance to win...
"IT'S A MODEL!"
Maybe he needs to use more glue and soak his decals a little longer next time.
Maybe you can take an elementary statistics course there.
One statistic you need to brain up on while you're there....people that are held back more than 15 years are statistically more probable to still be living in mom and dad's basement, eating TV dinners and microwave pizza bites. They will be wearing flip-flops and a Darth Vader T-shirt. They will also name their deity in their on-going WarCraft expedition....Obama.