Scarborough to Nate Silver: I'm Sorry, Sorta

Joe Scarborough is ready to give what he calls a "(semi) apology" to pollster Nate Silver. The two tussled over whether Silver's ultimately accurate early election predictions were appropriate in a race that Scarborough felt was "in flux" at the time. But after talking with Silver on his show yesterday, Scarborough, who himself said early in the game that Obama would win, issued a sort of mea culpa by way of Politico. While "predicting an outcome to the nearest thousandth of a decimal point several weeks out seemed like a fools' errand (and still does)," he's willing to admit Silver was right.

That's largely because Silver was smart enough to build his model around the "right" state polls (Gallup and Rasmussen, for instance, got it wrong). Scarborough says he "won't apologize to Mr. Silver for predicting an outcome that I had also been predicting for a year. But I do need to tell Nate I'm sorry for leaning in too hard and lumping him in with pollsters whose methodology is as rigorous as the Simpsons' strip mall physician, Dr. Nick." He closes by declaring that he was "too tough" on Silver ... and that "there's a 84.398264% chance I will be less dismissive of his good work in the future." Click for his full piece. (More Nate Silver stories.)