Nate Silver Weighs In on Intrade Price

Nate Silver has decided to weigh in on the race in New Jersey and the split in the polls where some of the polls show Christie in the lead and others show Corzine in the lead.

By Nate Silver

There's a rather strange split in the polls in New Jersey's gubernatorial race: those conducted by live interviewers have Jon Corzine leading by an average of 4.2 points, but those conducted via IVR (automated scripts or "robopolls") have Chris Christie leading by an average of 3.0 points...

An automated poll tends to be associated with lower response rates, since an automated script can't do as much a human to coax someone into an interview, and therefore sometimes tends to reach a more enthusiastic set of respondents (in effect, it may serve some of the same functions as a very tight likely voter screen)...

For that matter, I'm not yet ready to make a forecast for New Jersey; I certainly don't see it as self-evident that Jon Corzine ought to be as much as a 2:1 favorite, which is where Intrade has him now.