Nate Silver Calls It For Deeds; McAuliffe Is New Howard Dean

Nate Silver and the nerdlingtons at FiveThirtyEight are liveblogging the Virginia election results (which are hidden and secret) and have called it, meaning it is officially over, by law: "7:45 EDT [Nate]: OK, the 538 decision desk is calling this one for R. Creigh Deeds. Almost half the vote is in, and although we're a little bit light on turnout from areas like Richmond, neither Moran nor McAuliffe is doing anywhere near as well as they'd need to to make up for Deeds' large advantage. It's really a battle for second place at this point." MORE, Silver, MUSH MUSH!

This is Nate's friend, "Ed: "

7: 50 EDT [Ed]: With the votes now pouring in, Creigh Deeds is winning in nine of Virginia's eleven congressional districts (Moran narrowly leads in the 8th on the strength of his Alexandria performance, but the lead probably won't hold, and McAuliffe leads narrowly in the 3d, with Richmond still out). This is quite a statewide victory for Deeds.

Meh. Ed, Schmed. NATE!!!

8: 00 EDT [Nate]: This really is looking like a collapse of Howard Dean in Iowa proportions for McAuliffe; he had the lead just two weeks ago and now he's about to lose by 20+ points.

Time to go back to bundling and getting drunk on the teevee.

 Virginia Gubernatorial Primary Live Blog [FiveThirtyEight]