The 2012 election season will go down in history as one to remember for many reasons. One surprising reason is that, at least for the presidential election, the results were completely predictable. How you ask? You'll have to go to statistician Nate Silver for the answer. By using copious amounts of data, sophisticated math and statistical models, and then letting the objective numbers tell the story, Silver correctly predicted the presidential winner for 50 out of the 50 states. In 2008 he did the same for 49 out of 50 states, leaving a little room for improvement.
Silver, who was already well known for his statistics work in politics and sports has now become a household name and a bit of a celebrity, appearing a broad swath of TV and radio shows. You can follow Silver's ongoing work and commentary on his New York Times blog, FiveThirtyEight that offers lots of data crunching on politics, sports, science, and pop culture.