the hard work that silver did wasn't in being able to predict the election 2 days in advance, any middle schooler with a calculator could have done that this time around. the work that he did was in being able to forecast the results months in advance, adjusting for a broader variety of inputs, including historical research.
1. Even though any middle schooler with a calculator could have predicted the election 2 days ago, it seems that not many of them did - at least, if you judge based on the odds for a Democrat win you could get on InTrade and BetFair 2 days ago (65% and 75% respectively).
2. One neat thing about my model is that, in principle you can run it in "historical" mode and see what its predictions would have been at any given point in the past. So I can see what probability of a DEM win I would have assigned 2 months ago, and see if that's significantly different from the forecast from a more complex model.
But what people are saying is not "Nate Silver's predictions 1 month before are spot on". They are saying "his predictions ON THE DAY OF ELECTION were spot on".
Which is not that hard to do. Does not mean Nate Silver is a hack. Means people are not measuring his success appropriately.
Was he really forecasting the result weeks/months ago or just showing what the result would be if he vote happened on that day, according to polling data?
