On Twitter this morning, New York Times poll analyst Nate Silver challenged MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to a $1000 bet that Obama would win re-election.
Scarborough called the race a “toss-up,” on Morning Joe this morning and suggested on Twitter that anyone who thought otherwise was being partisan.
During a discussion of a Politico story reporting that journalists were “stumped” trying to predict the 2012 election, a Silver supporter tweeted at Scarborough, “Nate Silver isn’t stumped.”
“Neither is Rasmussen,” Scarborough responded. “The rest are.”
“@JoeNBC: If you think it’s a toss-up, let’s bet. If Obama wins, you donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross,” Silver wrote on Twitter. “If Romney wins, I do. Deal?”
Silver has come under a lot of fire lately for the positive results his models project for Obama’s re-election. His latest prediction shows that Obama will win 300 electoral college votes and Mitt Romney will win 238. President Obama’s chance of re-election, he predicted, are at 78.4%.
Scarborough has not responded to the bet on Twitter, but offered some window into his comments.
“There’s a 98.4869% chance that I’m just having fun with Nate Silver,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s harmless enough stuff that people like debating.”
