Silver and Gray

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog became essential reading during the 2008 presidential campaign and won him a couple snazzy book contracts. Now, the New York Times has decided to host the blog on its site and make Silver a regular contributor at the Sunday magazine. NYT

Blue Alaska

Nate Silver has called the Alaska Senate race: Democrat Mark Begich will beat felonious Republican Senator Ted Stevens.

UPDATE: AP calls it, too.

UPDATE II: No recount. Stevens concedes.

538 = 700,000

FiveThirtyEight.com may be one of the few truly innovative blogs out there. Rather than simply repackaging other people's work and commenting on it, creator Nate Silver took polling information and refined it in such a way that it became more valuable and accurate than what he started with.

Now Nate, who once had plenty of time to do our show, has signed a $700,000 deal to write two books for Penguin.

Penguin also inked a deal with another guest and favorite of mine, the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, for a book on the Obama presidency.

Poll wars

Whatever political polls really mean, they do affect public perception and public perception affects campaign coverage. To that end, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight calls out RealClearPolitics for bias, alleging that the site cherry picks poll results that favor John McCain to include in its rolling averages.

Whether fudging the numbers would actually help McCain, or hurt him, is hard to say. On the one hand, favorable polling might bolster enthusiasm for the candidate, influencing volunteerism and donations. On the other hand, it might instill a false sense of security that slows a necessary change in tactics.

Either way, the real clear issue here is ethics among pollsters. I'll post any responses I find to Silver's allegations when I find them.

Not the bump they were looking for

As the McCain campaign tries to turn revelations that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant into a "Juno" moment, new polls suggest Barack Obama got a bigger boost from the Democratic convention than McCain from his VP choice.

CBS News has the Obama-Biden up eight points over McCain-Palin, at 48-40. The poll also shows Obama-Biden making big gains with independent voters.

A USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted over the weekend has Obama-Biden up 50-43 in a head-to-head race with McCain-Palin. The poll also found Obama reaching even with McCain on the question of who is the stronger, more decisive leader. The poll suggests a tough road ahead for Palin as well.

CNN/Opinion Research Corp. has the race virtually tied as of Sunday night. Obama-Biden are at 49, McCain-Palin at 48. The poll also found 50 percent of respondents don't think Palin is qualified to take over as president.

Nate Silver has a roundup of the polls on his FiveThirtyEight.com blog. His advice: Ignore the numbers for now and take another look midway through next week.