Nate Silver blew it when he missed Trump — now he really needs to get it right

The Chicago Tribune reports on Nate Silver :

And this University of Chicago graduate wasn't used to being wrong — not in sports, where he made his name using statistics to compare individual players' performances over time. (FiveThirtyEight is now owned by ESPN.) And not in politics, where he famously called two presidential elections nearly to perfection: He got 49 states right in 2008 and all 50 in 2012.


But when it came to Trump, Silver and Co. missed the boat with a resounding splash. As the Republican primary elections approached, Silver pooh-poohed Trump — by mid-February, he was still putting the businessman's chances for the nomination at less than 50 percent.

Many took comfort, trusting that Silver could not be wrong.

"For those of us who didn't want to believe we lived in a country where Donald Trump could be president, Silver's steady, level-headed certainty felt just as soothing as his unwavering confidence in Barack Obama's triumph over Mitt Romney four years ago," wrote Leon Neyfakh of Slate. After it became clear that Trump would win the nomination, Silver apologized in a long post. And he explained that "We made a big mistake."

In fairness to Nate Silver: who in the establishment picked Trump?