Silver Says Maine Marriage Ban Will Fail

Nate Silver, the statistician who during the November 2008 election accurately predicted the winner in 49 of the 50 states, says that according to his analysis, efforts to overturn marriage equality in Maine will fail.

Silver says he revisited the same model he used earlier this year to predict a gay marriage ban becoming law in each of the 50 states and found that approximately 56.5% of Mainers oppose the ban.

He says the standard error of the forecast (not the margin of error, which is larger) is 5.2 points. By those numbers, he writes, the ban only has an 11% chance of passing. Though Silver goes on to acknowledge a number of interesting variables in the case of Maine, including that the standalone initiative will be decided in an off election year, which likely increases conservative and older voter turnout, for which he adds four points to the yes vote, giving Question 1 a 32% chance of passing.

Read the rest of Silver's analysis by clicking here.