Nate Silver Bets Joe Scarborough $1,000 That Obama Will Win Nov. 6
As the Nov. 6 presidential election draws closer, political analysts, experts and pundits are all weighing in and predicting the outcome, but some have added a financial stipulation to their predictions.
New York Times political analyst Nate Silver, who writes for the political website FiveThirtyEight.com, has backed his statistical election model, which has President Obama winning re-election.
Silver bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who hosts "Morning Joe," $1,000 that Obama will in fact be the president for four more years.
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The wager came after Scarborough criticized Silver's computer model and political stats by saying that "anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes."
He was specifically addressing Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which had showed the GOP presidential hopeful had only a 1-in-4 chance of winning the election.
Scarborough explained that the race is basically a coin flip during his show on Thursday morning, and stated that anyone who disagreed with his assessment was simply acting based on partisan beliefs.
During one of the show's segments which focused on the unpredictability of this presidential election, a Silver supporter tweeted that "Nate Silver isn't stumped."
Later Thursday morning, Silver took to Twitter to formally challenge Scarborough to the $1,000 bet that his political analysis would end up being proved true.
"@JoeNBC: If you think it's a toss-up, let's bet. If Obama wins, you donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross," Silver wrote on Twitter. "If Romney wins, I do. Deal?"
Silver has been the subject of criticism lately after his computer models showed President Obama winning on Nov. 6.
His latest prediction showed Obama will win 300 electoral college votes and Mitt Romney will win 238. He stated that the president has a 78.4 percent chance of winning.
Scarborough has yet to formally answer the challenge, but did offer some context of his comments.
"There's a 98.4869% chance that I'm just having fun with Nate Silver," he wrote on Twitter. "It's harmless enough stuff that people like debating."
