Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight predicts that President Obama has an 86% chance of winning re-election November 6.
Silver, who crunches a variety of polls to come up with his predictions on The New York Times FiveThirtyEight election blog, joined NOW with Alex Wagner to discuss his latest findings.
The two biggest “problems” facing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney now are Ohio and Wisconsin, Silver said.
“Without those two states Romney would need to sweep almost everything else—Nevada, Iowa, Virginia, Florida—it’s possible, but he’s going to need a shift in the overall climate,” Silver said. “It would be too much work for him to just win all these coin flips in a row if he drops Ohio and Wisconsin.”
The trouble in Ohio creates a particular difficultly for Romney as he charts a path to 270 electoral votes given it’s a state that Republicans can more often rely upon, Silver noted. Several polls show the GOP nominee falling behind the president in this state.
Silver currently predicts 320 electoral votes for Obama and 218 for Romney. His prediction on Obama’s capture of the popular vote is closer and less of a “mandate” for an Obama presidency, the pollster noted: 51.5% to 47.4%.