Thursday, November 1, 2012

There's a rule of thumb...

...in politics that whoever is ahead on the Thursday before election day usually prevails. Today, both Intrade and FiveThirtyEight have the president winning reelection.

According to Nate Silver (my emphasis):

Mr. Obama is not a sure thing, by any means. It is a close race. His chances of holding onto his Electoral College lead and converting it into another term are equivalent to the chances of an N.F.L. team winning when it leads by a field goal with three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and sometimes they will.

But it turns out that an N.F.L. team that leads by a field goal with three minutes left to go winds up winning the game 79 percent of the time. Those were Mr. Obama’s chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Wednesday: 79 percent.

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