Some late-night thoughts from Nate Silver...

[regnaD kciN]

Nate updated 538.com late last night, with a lengthy accompanying explanation.

-- Obama's win percentage was moved lower, to 74.8. Nate noted that his was solely due to the Pew (an organization he rates highly) poll; otherwise, based on yesterday's polling, the odds would have remained the same.

-- Nate is not particularly won-over by complaints about the partisan balance of the Pew results, although he personally doesn't think there will be such a Republican tilt in turnout on Election Day.

-- However, he does cast doubts on the poll's current validity because (as many of us here suspected) the polling was front-loaded so that most of the interviews were done Thursday-Saturday (when the debate bounce was at its highest) and less than 15% of them on Sunday (when it seems to have abated). (NOTE: I'm curious to see how he will handle today's PPP/dKos/SIEU poll, which we already know will show a Romney lead, but which appears to have had most if not all of its interviews carried out on Thursday and Friday.)

-- The fundamentals of the race are not currently consistent with Pew's results, and point more toward a continuing slight edge for Obama.

-- If you tend to get whiplash from each new poll that comes out, it's probably best for you, for the time being, to restrict your campaign-following to his site and places like Intrade, where people take a more-dispassionate, long-term view of the race. (NOTE: Personally, I'd suggest that would be a good course for the more-nervous of us here on DU, at least until all the snapshot polls are past the point where they'd have been taken during last week's craziness.)

Nate's commentary can be found here.

[vi5]

1. Nate is the only one I trust.

He looks at numbers and trends and history. That's it. He doesn't spin and he's not blinded by his own preference. We need morelike him analyzing and talking about this stuff.

If he says to stay calm, I'm staying calm.

[Dalai_1]

2. Kick & R n/t

[BelieveMe3]

3. what's so interesting

about this election is how we can NOT believe Romney could be close to our guy and repubs can't believe Pres. Obama could be keeping it close. We see Romney as inept and dishonest and can't believe the American public is buying any of it. They think Obama has failed(he hasn't) and with a sluggish economy he should be losing big. I personally am surprised that once Obama finally pulled ahead after the conventions that the one debate where I did not think Romney came off as anything but smug and arrogant, and the press has pointed out how he was just lying in every answer, pulled the race close again. But it appears we are back to pre-convention numbers, with Obama ahead, but close.

[Cosmocat]

7. Sugar high

that was the negative frame from the gop for the dem convention. But, that bounce stuck.

I think there big difference is that the gop convention was putrid and dem convention was organic, genuine and pretty darn good. On its merit it kicked the gop conventions butt.

This debate thing, I tend to agree, Romney did almost as much damage as good. He got the gop all hot and bothered by being a bully and lying his arse off, they have complete disdain for reality in general and this president in specific. AND, the media was just DYING to have something to do their good news for Rs bad news for Ds routine and this gave them the opportunity to do it on steroids.

But, the disconnect is that for the average person, it was not all that great. He pushed away about as many people as he got that night. Once the media can't over inflate it, once the reality of him being the buffoon he is and the president being a pretty special guy starts to shine through again, he will loose a good bit of the luster of the debate.

As usual, the GOP projecting. it was a sugar high.

[66 dmhlt]

4. To avoid the Highs & Lows I let Nate filter the polls

For at least the past six months I have avoided clicking on any and all presidential polls ... and rely solely on 538 to decipher it for me.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

5. Nate and Intrade for me...

Better for the blood pressure.

[rgbecker]

6. I hope Nate can find some time to look into the Gravis Marketing outfit.

The recent DU and Kos posts about its creditability have raised serious questions about the place and its principles and before any of their "Polls" are added to his mix he ought to check it out.

[magical thyme]

8. thank you for the sanity. k&r

Interestingly, I wrote about the front-end loading of the Pew poll and was dissed on it yesterday.

Glad to see that Nate Silver considered that to be the major factor in the poll, for entirely personal reasons.

[Jennicut]

9. Precisely how I view the Pew poll.

Please don't post that they are a RW poll, they are not. Their breakdown of the #'s are a little funny but natural after the debate....who answered the phone more to be polled? More Repubs and Romney had a bounce there.