Nate Says ...

... that Obama is in great shape. That's the short version.

Here's the longer version: If you look down to the right, you'll see that 538.com's metrics are now off the hook for Obama. For those of you who are new to Nate Silver's modeling, what those numbers mean is that his model now gives Obama a 94.1% probability of winning in the Electoral College. His post this evening explains why it jumped about 3% in the last 24 hours but the overall picture is along the lines of what I posted earlier today. Obama is very likely to win all the Kerry states plus Iowa and New Mexico which would mean he would need just one more state from among the list of Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, or Missouri. OR ... he could just win Nevada AND the 2nd congressional district in Nebraska. That's a harder way to pull this off but still possible. Regardless, right now, Obama is a good bet to win Colorado and Virginia and he's currently leading in Florida, Ohio, and maybe North Carolina.

You put all that into a big bowl, mix it around for a while (it's technical), and you've got Obama at nearly 20 to 1 to win this thing ... according to Nate Silver's model.

He'd better be right or I'm not visiting his site anymore. You can help make sure he's right by donating to Obama's campaign here.

P.S. - For those of you (like me) who buy into Nate Silver's model but just don't quite "feel" like Obama is such a strong favorite, he offers a more intuitive argument (based on John Harwood's piece in the NYTimes - which itself is a ripoff of Brian Schaffner's piece on pollster.com from a week ago) here.