> But I do think it's conceivable that one candidate's predicted overwhelming chance of victory might have a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in a clo

> But I do think it's conceivable that one candidate's predicted overwhelming chance of victory might have a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in a close election. It also has the possibility for the opposite by lowering turnout for the "winning" candidate. Why vote? Nate Silver already called the election, etc. There are other ways in which polling data itself can influence an election. It appears that Nate Silver did an great job early on at predicting the effect of changing demographics in swing states like Florida--which ended up giving the election to Obama. Hindsight being 20/20, if the Romney team had paid more attention to that (and perhaps compromised on things like immigration reform), things could have gone very differently.