Nate Silver predicts Murphy win in the 20th

Nate Silver is a self-identified Barack Obama supporter, but he’s also a pretty sharp reader of polling data, demographic trends, and numerical election data.

His website, FiveThirtyEight.com was often ahead of the curve during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Silver has an analysis up of the Tedisco-Murphy contest that predicts a fairly comfortable Democratic win.

Although Republican candidate Jim Tedisco is leaving no stone unturned in the special election in New York’s 20th Congressional District — including objecting to the ballot of Kirsten Gillibrand, the woman whom he hopes to replace in the Congress — the results tallied so far suggest that he is bound for defeat.

Silver basically reads the numbers in the absentee ballots returned so far and concludes that Democrat Scott Murphy’s absentee ballots are outperforming his election night performance by about 3.2%.

His analysis factors in a disqualification rate of roughly 13% — meaning the campaigns can legally challenge that many ballots and (if Silver’s right) Tedisco would lose.

Finally, he concludes that the Republican’s anticipated victory in Saratoga County will only net Tedisco around 33 additional ballots. Not enough to close the gap.

Obviously, there are a lot of variables here — and there may be arguments the other direction as strong as Silver’s. If any one sees other interesting analyses out there, please comment below.

Other thoughts? Have at it.