Even if Rasmussen is still treating Ohio as a toss-up, FiveThirtyEight is not nearly inclined to be so generous to the Democrat. The Examiner reports:
According to statistical crunching done by one of the nation’s new and newly renowned political forecasting groups, FiveThirtyEight, which published its first report on U.S. Senate races in cooperation with The New York Times, Rob Portman, GOP candidate in Ohio to succeed retiring senator George Voinovich, will have an Election Day advantage over his Democratic opponent Lee Fisher of six points.
In the first of what will be regular posts with its new partner The New York Times, Nate Silver, chief number cruncher and polling analyst supreme, whose skill in analyzing baseball data naturally morphed into the political arena where his predictions have been a virtual bull’s-eye, took aim at the 2010 U.S. Senate races, where Democrats, who have 60 seats now, will find themselves with fewer after Election Day in November.
According to Silver, based on the chance that each candidate will win based on 100,000 simulations with random variation in the local and national political environment, Portman’s chance of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate is 81.1 percent compared to Fisher’s at only 18.9 percent.
That’s right. 80 percent chance Portman gets elected. Some toss-up.