We sucked, but so did everyone else!

At Five Thirty Eight the best Nate Silver can do is brag that his model, which on early Tuesday evening gave Trump only a 29% chance of winning the electoral college, was still better than other prognosticators' models.

Eyes wide shut

Will Nate Silver figure out a way to protect his lucrative investment known as Five Thirty Eight? His reputation was supposed to be the best of all statistical prognosticators. So, when I went there yesterday morning and saw that his model predicted that there was well over a 70% chance Hillary Clinton would win, I prepared myself for a Clinton victory.

By 11 o'clock MST last night, his model was showing Trump with an 84% chance of victory.

Nate, you better start taking into account the liberal biases of you and your staff.

The winding path to 270 electoral votes

From the Five Thirty Eight blog: look how important Colorado is in this election!

Click to enlarge.

The winding path to 270 electoral votes

A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to clinch the White House. Here's where the race stands, with the states ordered by the projected margin between the candidates — Clinton’s strongest states are farthest left, Trump’s farthest right — and sized by the number of electoral votes they will award.

Watch Five Thirty Eight for the best analyses of tonight's voting results

Which states are you watching most closely tonight? I can tell you which blog to watch: Five Thirty Eight. David Wasserman writes there,

Looking for Odds of a Contested GOP Convention? Watch Illinois and Missouri.

My biggest pet peeve this week has been when pundits pontificate that Ohio is the only GOP state to watch tonight. These pundits claim that a Trump win in Florida is a foregone conclusion and that Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina are “proportional” states and thus less important. In fact, Illinois and Missouri aren’t proportional — they’re effectively winner-take-all by congressional district. And they’re hugely important: in fact, they could tell us more about the odds of a contested convention than Ohio could.

If Kasich wins Ohio, it’s a close call as to whether that’s good or bad news for Trump’s odds of getting to 1,237 delegates. On one hand, it would deny Trump 66 delegates, which is 5 percent of what’s needed to clinch the nomination. But it could also deny Cruz a one-on-one matchup against Trump, heightening Trump’s chances of winning future winner-take-all states. In other words, Ohio’s outcome tonight might not shed a lot of light on the odds of chaos in Cleveland.

However, Illinois and Missouri will tell us a lot. If Trump sweeps both states by large margins and wins in all 26 of their congressional districts, he’ll win 121 delegates — more than he’ll win in Florida. However, if Cruz can win at least 10 of their congressional districts, it will be a positive indicator for his competitiveness against Trump in future primaries and significantly heighten the odds of a contested convention.

Five Thirty Eight's superb analysts update their analysis every few minutes all night long.