And then the entire crux of the story would be that the Jets' only chance at winning the Superbowl were hinged on some incredibly unlikely occurrence, like, I don't know, Favre not throwing a single interception for the rest of the season.

In other words: not gonna happen.

(Packer fan here. haha!)

Nate Silver:

Let's start with the Pennsylvania result. Mason-Dixon is a pretty strong pollster. So, however, are many others from among the literally dozen or so agencies that have conducted polling within Pennsylvania over the past 72 hours. And none of those other pollsters shows the race that tight.

Mason-Dixon has also had a Republican "lean" this cycle of perhaps 2-3 points. They are quite frequently the most favorable number for John McCain in any given state. That doesn't mean that they are "biased", and it doesn't mean that they are wrong – there are many different (and legitimate!) ways to think about this election. But it does mean that their polls need to be interpreted in that context. Let's say the average poll in Pennsylvania has Obama ahead by 9.5 points. Mason-Dixon will probably start out seeing a 9.5-point state at a 7-point state. If they then end up toward the McCain side of their margin of error -- and they don't use huge sample sizes – that’s how you get to Obama +4.

Now, look. I don't think we need to be in the habit of ripping a poll apart every time that we don't like the result. There is nothing inherently "wrong" with this poll. It's simply that we need to look at in concert with the rest of the evidence. In this case, we have an abundance of evidence, and it suggests on balance that Pennsylvania is neither particularly close, nor is it particularly "tightening" (Mason-Dixon's prior poll of the state, in Mid-September, had Obama up by 2).

It might also help to come at this from the other direction. Here is one poll out of many, out of one "must-win" state out of many, that shows that John McCain is sorta kinda close? This is the best news he can muster? On Monday, I laid out specific criteria for what I'd want to see in order to conclude that the race has tightened materially:

John McCain polling within 2 points in 2 or more non-partisan polls ... in at least 2 out of the 3 following states: Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania.

We have yet to see any such results in any of these three states.

I love this so.

It's like the entire country woke up and said for real this time: No you are not going to do this to us again.

It's too early to start crying - but goddamn! This is the most encouraging thing that has happened yet -