Should the predictions of liberal's favorite election analyst Nate Silver scare Republicans?

The answer is no. Here is why. Nate Silver had a very good model in 2008. He can not be ignored in 2012, but Republicans and Romney supporters should not be overly concerned with Silver's predictions at this point.  Here is a screen capture of his current prediction as of 08/04/12.

This certainly look like a likely Obama victory. As did this capture from WayBackMachine on 08/07/08.

Nate Silver may have gotten the eventual winner correct, but his prediction in August of 2008 was off by almost 4% on the popular vote and a whopping 67 electoral votes. Here are the final 2008 results from CNN.

The truth is Nate Silver's models can only be as good as the polling numbers he has to work with and the mainstream polling is now all heavily skewed to a huge Democratic turnout. A PEW poll found +19 for Democrats. A recent CBS/NYT poll found a huge sample of expected Democratic voters in key swing states.

The CBS/NYT model has Democrats a +9 in Florida when in 2008 they were only a +3 and an even split in the 2010 midterms.  Ohio’s sample has exactly the split in 2008 (D+8), which is nine points better than Democrats did in the midterms.  Pennsylvania’s numbers (D+6) come closest to a rational predictive model, somewhere between 2008′s D+7 and 2010′s D+3, but still looking mighty optimistic for Democratic turnout.

If you think the Democratic turnout is going to be significantly larger than 2008, then, Romney is in trouble. If you believe, as I do, Republicans will match Democrats voter-for-voter or better in 2012, Romney has a good chance. As we get closer to the election, the pollsters will get more accurate because the final numbers are the ones they will be judged on. Nobody will remember these July and August polls. This allows Obama's mainstream media lapdog pollsters to arrange a little home cooking to help their favorite candidate look like a winner.

Goldman Sachs Predicts 8.75% Unemployment at End of 2012

Following the White House tradition of dropping bad news bombs on Friday afternoon in order to reduce the media coverage, Goldman Sachs published an very gloomy economic forecast late yesterday. The forecast cut estimates for real GDP growth significantly and predicted President Obama would have to deal with unemployment being 8.75% during the 2012 presidential election cycle. This forecast must scare the pants off Obama's campaign advisers.The latest Gallop poll numbers already have a generic republican beating Obama by 8 points.

Via NewsBusters:

Per Reuters blogger James Pethokoukis, Goldman Sachs, demonstrating Democratic-friendly timing similar to that seen at the New York Times a month or so ago, published an extraordinarily gloomy economic forecast last night.

Here are some of the details he quotes:

"Following another week of weak economic data, we have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%. Our forecasts for Q4 and 2012 are under review, but even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8¾% at the end of 2012."
"The main reason for the downgrade is that the high-frequency information on overall economic activity has continued to fall substantially short of our expectations ..."
"... the slowdown of recent months goes well beyond what can be explained with ... temporary effects. … final demand growth has slowed to a pace that is typically only seen in recessions ..."

Pethokoukis also quotes Goldman saying that, though they're not predicting it, a return to recession is "clearly a possibility given the recent numbers."

Cook Political Report Upgrades Voter Hurricane Headed Democrats Way to Category 5

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report is now predicting a huge wave of voter discontent will wash 48 to 60 (or more) democrats out of their House seats.

The Cook Political Report’s pre-election House outlook is a Democratic net loss of 48 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible. A turnover of just 39 seats would tip majority status into Republican hands. The midterm maelstrom pulling House Democrats under shows no signs of abating, if anything it has intensified.

Whereas fewer than a third of Democratic Senate seats are up for election, House Democrats are suffering the full violence of this national undertow. Over a quarter of the entire 255-member House Democratic caucus have trailed GOP opponents in at least one public or private survey, and nearly half have tested under 50 percent of the vote in at least one poll.

Liberal Heartache: Nate Silver Predicts 50% Chance Republicans Will Gain 50 House seats

Republicans need 40 seats to tack back control of the House. It must really kill the liberals at the New York Times to admit Republicans will likely gain 50.

Our model now estimates that the Republicans have a 72 percent chance of taking over the House, up from 67 percent last week. Moreover, they have nearly even odds of a achieving a net gain of 50 seats; their average gain in a typical simulation run was between 47 and 48 seats. However, the playing field remains very broad and considerably larger are possible, as are considerably smaller ones.

Election Analyst Nate Silver: Republicans have a 2 in 3 chance of claiming a majority of House seats in November

Democrats favorite election analyst, Nate Silver, is predicting Republicans have a 2 in 3 chance of claiming a majority of House seats this November.

Republicans have a two-in-three chance of claiming a majority of House seats in November, the FiveThirtyEight forecasting model estimates. And their gains could potentially rival or exceed those made in 1994, when they took a net of 54 seats from the Democrats.

Nate Silver also give the GOP a 1 in 5 shot ant taking control of the Senate. It's time to put Nancy Pelosi on suicide watch.

Carnahan is Doomed in Missouri: Congratulations Senator Blunt.

Blunt is smoking Carnahan. From FiveThirtyEight at NYT.