Nate Silver: Obama Has 86% Chance of Winning

I like so many others will be very happy to have the election over tomorrow.  Needless to say, I'll be far happier if Barack Obama wins over the pathologically lying, sociopath Mitt Romney.  While all of us who fear the Republican Agenda - and that ought to be everyone other than, white, heterosexual far right religious extremists and white supremacists - desperately must get out and vote tomorrow, Nate Silver throws us for some reason for optimism:  his analysis of the various polls gives Obama an 86% chance of winning tomorrow.  The rest of us need to make that happen by voting rain or shine tomorrow.  Here are highlights from Nate's latest piece in the New York Times:

It appears that President Obama is likely to go into Election Day with a very modest lead in the average of national polls.

As of this writing, on Sunday evening, Mr. Obama led by an average of 1.3 percentage points across 12 national polls that had been published over the course of the prior 24 hours. The range was quite tight, running from a tied race in the polls issued by Rasmussen Reports, CNN and Politico, to a three-point lead in three other surveys.

[T]here is enough data to conclude that Mr. Obama probably has a slight edge from national surveys, which until recently had pointed toward a tie — or perhaps a modest advantage for Mr. Romney in the immediate aftermath of the Denver debate.

A number of these polls had very large sample sizes, meaning that the results are less likely than usual to have resulted from statistical variance.

But the modest gains that Mr. Obama has made in the high-profile national surveys should not be that much of a surprise. We’ve observed the race shifting toward him over the past two to three weeks in polls of swing states, where overwhelming majorities of polls have had Mr. Obama ahead over the past few days.

Where has Mr. Obama shown a bit of weakness in his numbers? His polls in noncompetitive states have been mediocre lately. In polls published by the online firm YouGov on Sunday, for example, there were declines in Mr. Obama’s numbers in California and Texas. Since these states have large populations, they could lower Mr. Obama’s popular vote even though they will play no role in his Electoral College tally.

[T]he fact that the national polls now suggest a slight lead for Mr. Obama removes one of the better reasons to think that our forecast might have been underrating Mr. Romney’s chances.

Based on the simulations that we ran on early Sunday evening, for example, Mr. Obama would have an 85 percent chance of winning the Electoral College if the popular vote were exactly tied nationally. This is where Mr. Obama’s Electoral College advantages, particularly in Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin, would be of their maximum benefit. Given a tied national popular vote, we would expect Mr. Obama to underperform his polls slightly in these states — but since he leads by a minimum of about three points in the polling average in each one, he could underperform those numbers and still win them.

I for one hope that Nate's statistical magic is correct.