This makes me laugh. Back on September 1st I had some fun creating a chart (shown below) that counted Obama's paths to 270 Electoral Votes. My strategy was simple: using Nate Silver's numbers I assumed Obama would win any state for which he had at least a 90% chance, and that he would lose any state with under a 50% chance. I then counted all the paths that used the eight states in the middle. As the chart shows, at the time he had 193 ways to get to 270.
Meanwhile, the situation for Romney was grim: using the same scheme, he had
zero paths-- in fact, his only state between 50 and 90% was North Carolina.
Here's the funny part: at the time I had pretty much discounted the bulk of Obama's routes to victory, the ones along the the top row. After all, Florida was his least likely win, and the only one below a 60% chance. As it turns out, he used all 127 paths!
And here's the even funnier part: Romney not only ended up (duh) with zero paths to victory, he ended up winning only that single state for which Silver gave him between 50 and 90%.
So even way back on September 1st, Nate Silver had it spot on!
Of course, it's purely by chance that I happened to make the chart at this particular moment. But life can be funny like that.