Prognostication #2:The New Hampshire Primary - UPDATE Tuesday morning for Nate Silver's final picks

 It's a Monday before a primary, so it's time for Matty Boy to polish off the crystal ball and make his prediction for the percentages for each of the candidates running for the Republican nomination in the New Hampshire primary. Michele Bachmann dropped out, so it becomes slightly easier, but it is still wild and wooly and no walk in the park.

In previous elections, I would check out the most recent polls and find the median, but that's tricky to do when six people are still in the race. I also have new fun toy, the tracking poll.  The main reason most prognostications in Iowa sucked so bad was that no poll showed Santorum way over 20%, but many did show his stock was rising.  The Suffolk tracking polls shows Huntsman's stock is rising steadily, while Romney has been losing nearly four percentage points a day. So what I did is average out the trends over the past three days and take that trend poll as one of my data sets and the most recent poll that wasn't a trend poll as the other data sets.  I scrubbed out the None of the Above - at least to an extent - and these are my numbers. I also look at the raw data and noted that Buddy Roemer is out-polling Rick Perry in the Granite State and too that into account.  Nate Silver's latest picks are in parentheses. Unless he mentions Roemer in a later tweet, I'm going to be a sport and put his None of the Above numbers on Roemer.

First: Mitt Romney 35.6% (38.5%)

Second: Ron Paul 21.3% (18.6%)

Third: Jon Huntsman 16.7% (17.0%)

Fourth: Newt Gingrich 12.8% (11.5%)

Fifth: Rick Santorum 11.2% (12.3%)
Sixth: Buddy Roemer 1.3% (0.9%)

Seventh: Rick Perry 1.1% (1.2%)

Nate numbers are final on Tuesday morning.  Currently, he's bullish on Mitt, Santorum, Huntsman and Perry. I expect over-achieving by Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and now Buddy Roemer. I readily admit I can't be sure about the Gingrich-Santorum struggle for fourth and fifth.  All my indicators favor Newt, but I'm just a blogger in my living room and Nate Silver works for the New York Times.

Still, if he gives me a call and wants to put money on this, I will take his bet.  Eagerly.

Wednesday morning I will give the results. I beat Silver by the narrowest margin in Iowa when rounding to the nearest tenth of a percent, 83.8% to 83.7%. I expect we will be closer to 90% if not over this time.