This Is Why Nate Makes the Big Bucks

Nate Silver provides us with an entirely new paradigm for thinking about "swing states". His new "elastic state" model looks like it'll require a fair bit of fine tuning before it becomes a really useful tool, but as a metaphor it's really quite elegant.

And if you want to get meta on it, consider that with the inevitable exception of wacky ol' New Hampshire the most "elastic" states fall into the 'liberal/Democratic bastion' camp, while the least "elastic" states are all hard-core conservative... plus DC.