Doesn't that destroy the allegations of voting fraud in the US? (Not a US-citizen here)
If there was widespread fraud with the voting machines as alleged elsewhere, the voting outcome should have diverged widely from the predictions. The predictions are so close to the actual outcome, and because from what I understand the predictions are mostly based on polling, there couldn't have been much fraud, or am I wrong?
Flippant edit: Assuming of course that Nate Silver wasn't in on the fraud and didn't adjust his predictions accordingly.
Not on it's own, no. At most, is shows that fraud wasn't widespread enough (or equally widespread on both sides) to skew the election away from the will of the people.
Also, fraud is much more effective in smaller races - of which there are lot, many of them too small to have as good poll coverage as the presidential one - so if there is fraud, those races are probably where to look for it.
Bush won Ohio, which helped him win the election by the narrowest of margins. Ohio used Diebold electronic voting machines, and Diebold's CEO Walden W. O'Dell was a long-time Bush loyalist. Later it was confirmed that Diebold voting machines could be hacked remotely (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3045086).
So yes, being able to create an independent, accurate model will add another layer of verification and will hopefully help keep voting fraud in check.
If there was widespread fraud with the voting machines as alleged elsewhere, the voting outcome should have diverged widely from the predictions. The predictions are so close to the actual outcome, and because from what I understand the predictions are mostly based on polling, there couldn't have been much fraud, or am I wrong?
Flippant edit: Assuming of course that Nate Silver wasn't in on the fraud and didn't adjust his predictions accordingly.