Gingrich the Favorite in Florida

With Florida less than a week away, Nate Silver is busily crunching the numbers, and while the polls are a tad contradictory, they do show a clear favorite: Newt Gingrich. Indeed, Silver's system gives Gingrich a whopping 75% chance of victory, although that "seems like too confident a prediction, frankly," he writes for the New York Times. Gingrich has only a modest poll lead, after all, and Romney does have some advantages.

Romney, for example, has focused on Florida longer, has poured some $14 million into ads there (counting super PAC ads), and may have built a bit of an early voting lead. But Gingrich has advantages, too: He's from neighboring Georgia, and does well with Florida's elderly residents. "The non-polling factors do not clearly favor one or the other candidate, in my view," Silver concludes, making "Gingrich the favorite for now—but not a clear favorite." (More Nate Silver stories.)