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.