Well the proof is in the pudding. His performance on the 2008 and 2010 election indicate to me he's not some partisan hack. He accurately predicted all of the

Well the proof is in the pudding. His performance on the 2008 and 2010 election indicate to me he's not some partisan hack. He accurately predicted all of the EVs Obama obtained in 2008 with the exception of Indiana (which was quite close - only a few hundred votes in the margin IIRC). He did exceptionally well in 2010, coming in 3rd for accuracy behind Survey USA and PPP (A democratic shop, incidentally) in house race prediction. Silver is politically liberal but he's a stats guy at heart. The republican equivalent would be Unskewed Polls http://unskewedpolls.com/ http://unskewedpolls.com/ which re-weights partisan affiliation of polls to match Rasmussen (The result: Romney is WAY ahead). It's author isn't a big stats guy and goes more off gut. This comparison isn't entirely fair though. Republican polsters and aggregators are probably private, working inside campaigns and not for a public news organization. You can be politically liberal or conservative and not have it directly spill into your work.