Nate Silver nailed it last night, and it's paying off.
The New York Times' political statistician recently released a book, and in the last 24 hours sales have skyrocketed by 850% on Amazon.com, CNNMoney reports. "It is now the second best selling book on the site, behind only popular children's book, 'The Third Wheel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 7.'"
Prior to the election, Silver's methodology was called into question by pundits skeptical of his reliance on polling data, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and David Brooks of the New York Times. (Silver's model is based on what Ezra Klein described as "little more than a sophisticated form of poll aggregation." If Silver had been wrong, the polling would have been wrong.) Yet Silver's model correctly forecast the winner in all 50 states. Florida, which he gave Obama a 50.3% chance of winning, is still up in the air -- but the 50.3% forecast more or less accounts for that.
Silver has been a huge asset to the Times since his model correctly forecast the outcome in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 election. In the days and hours prior to the election, roughly one out of every five visitors to NYTimes.com visited his blog, FiveThirtyEight.
Late last month, Silver acknowledged that his reputation was on the line in this election. "I'm sure that I have a lot riding on the outcome," he said. "I'm also sure I'll get too much credit if the prediction is right and too much blame if it is wrong."
Whether Silver's reputation should be determined by the accuracy of his forecasts -- it is an open and feverish debate -- the fact of the matter is that 2012 earned Silver more web traffic, money, and fame than he has ever had before. He won re-election with one hell of a mandate.
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