Progress Illinois

For those who've spent the past month toying endlessly with the youth and minority turnout model created by statistician and FiveThirtyEight.com author Nate Silver, boy have we got a treat for you: a new version of the model with updated baseline figures!

You can download it here. To play around with different turnout scenarios just change the percentages in the yellow box at the top and recalculate (hit F9 on a PC, or Command + = on a Mac).

Be sure to check out the profile of Silver in the latest issue of Newsweek (and, of course, my interview with him from last week).

Also, our own Adam Doster has an In These Times cover story on the potential of Barack Obama's "Vote for Change" 50-state voter registration drive. Adam prominently highlights our piece on the "Poblano Model." Here's an excerpt:

Vote for Change is the latest iteration of the Obama campaign’s comprehensive electoral ground game, one that will build off the methodical and underreported registration efforts staged by Obama supporters during the primary season. Just in the late contests alone, campaign volunteers enlisted 200,000 new Democrats in Pennsylvania, 165,000 in North Carolina and more than 150,000 in Indiana.

“Recent voter registration drives conducted by our campaign have registered significant numbers of voters across this country,” says Obama spokeswoman Shannon Gilson. “We feel like this really scratches the surface of what’s possible."