Can Pilot Nation predict the next President?

It's four days before election day. Can Pilot Nation predict the next President? Candidates are listed as they appear on my official ballot.

KEEP POSTS CIVIL AND CLEAN! NO PERSONAL ATTACKS OR I WILL LOCK THE THREAD!!!

-SciFi

I'll be shocked if Obama doesn't win.

One of my favorite website this election season has been FiveThirtyEight.com, which was created by Nate Silver, the stats genius who works for Baseball Prospectus and developed their PECOTA system, which has proven to be the most accurate projector of player stats and team records of any other statistical model out there. He was the only person out there to predict the Rays to make the playoffs.

Anyway, he has done amazing work using aggregate polling data and really drilling down into demographics... he was amazingly accurate predicting the primaries, hitting the true numbers at a much better clip than any polling service.

So... I trust him. And right now, he says it's 96% likely that Obama wins. So I'm going to go ahead and throw my hat in for Obama to win.

If you've got some time, check out the site:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

It's a bit wonky with stats and stuff, but it's so so interesting.

And check out their analysis of Oregon:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/road-to-270-oregon.html

Very insightful... especially interesting is the stat that Oregon voters who vote Democrat are the most liberal in the country, and Oregon voters who vote Republican are the most conservative. Such a neat stat! And it really shows the divide between the urban/rural, east/west split of the state.

I also like this site for electoral college polls. It also shows Obama in a virtual landslide, from the electoral college standpoint.

Things could get interesting late on Tuesday night with the Alaska and Oregon Senate races potentially being quite significant in terms of getting 60 seats for the Democrats.

(Whew, I got that all out without any jabs or nasty comments about a certain set of candidates...)

Something tells me that this election will be a lot closer than people (and the pundits) think it will. There will be some big suprises. There always are.

-SciFi

I am closing this poll. It appears Pilotnation DID in fact predict the next President.

-SciFi

Stonehouse wrote:

Very insightful... especially interesting is the stat that Oregon voters who vote Democrat are the most liberal in the country, and Oregon voters who vote Republican are the most conservative. Such a neat stat! And it really shows the divide between the urban/rural, east/west split of the state.

I was looking at the breakdown of the Senate race and it reminded me of what you said:
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/11/senate.html
Most counties are pretty decisively either Merkley or Smith. And it's pretty clear where each candidate's support lies.