And Netflix was willing to pay $1m to someone who could beat their own algorithm by 10%.
I haven't looked into Nate Silver's numbers, and certainly there would still be a reason for supporting him even if Romney had won tonight, but I think what most people are missing is that it's relatively straightforward to get pretty close to accurate, but incredibly difficult if not impossible to be completely accurate.
The predictions, as they get better, are going to asymptotically approach the actual results.
I haven't looked into Nate Silver's numbers, and certainly there would still be a reason for supporting him even if Romney had won tonight, but I think what most people are missing is that it's relatively straightforward to get pretty close to accurate, but incredibly difficult if not impossible to be completely accurate.
The predictions, as they get better, are going to asymptotically approach the actual results.