We're Goin' With Nate!

If you have been following these elections you are no doubt as confused as we are about the latest polling data.

The latest Gallup Tracking Poll has Romney leading Obama by 8 points nationally among likely voters.  But the latest NBCNEWS/WALL STREET JOURNAL /MARIST Poll has Obama up by 6-8 points among likely voters in the key swing states of Iowa and Wisconsin.

What’s up with that?

We did some digging and here is what we found.

The volatility in the polls stems in part from the fact that early voting has already started in 38 states.  Those that have already voted when polled are not really likely voters…they are definite voters.  And there seems to be some variance in the way they are counted in the polls.

The president leads among early voters in both states.  In Iowa early voters said they voted for Obama over Romney 67%-32%.  In Wisconsin early voters chose Obama 64%-35%.  The experts think these numbers are accurate because Obama’s superior ground forces are really pushing voters to go to the polls early.  Nobody, not even the Romney people believe that Romney is up by 8 points over the president.

So what have we learned?

We have learned that this is a very close race and that the polls will shift between the candidates from now until Election Day.  Those who study the polls for a living tell us the key is to look at the polls as a whole and search for trends as opposed to focusing on one or two specific polls.  They also tell us that there is the very real possibility that Obama could win the Electoral College race but lose the popular vote.

RealClearPolitics is a nationally recognized polling organization that averages all the polls and looks for trends.  They say that if the vote were held today Obama would win with 281 electoral votes.

But our bet is on Nate silver.  Nate Silver is a statistician, sabermetrician, psychologist (We don’t what those words mean…but they sure do sound impressive.) and writer.  Silver first gained notoriety by developing a system for forecasting the career development of Major League baseball players which proved wildly accurate.  He gained national recognition in 2008 when he correctly predicted the outcome of the presidential election in 49 of 50 states.  (He got Indiana wrong…Obama won by 1 %.)  He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.

Silver says that Obama has a 66% chance of re-election…and that he will win 287 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 250.

Forget the polls!  We’re goin’ with Nate!!!