One of the reasons I link to Mr. Silver so often despite him being a self identified Democratic pollster is that he does marvelous things with raw data. There are a few - Sean Trende at RCP comes to mind - who has Mr. Silver's gift for insight and analysis of what those numbers mean. But Silver is unique in that he has been disquietingly accurate in most of his projections. Today, he looks at Santorum's chances for the nomination and has some surprising results.Contrary to coventional wisdom that says he doesn't have a prayer, Silver thinks he has a shot: Mr. Santorum is a fresher face, comparatively speaking. He clearly did not get much momentum from his strong showing in Iowa. But his Iowa surge had been largely confined to that state to begin with, and he was hurt by the fact that the next state to vote was New Hampshire, a bad fit for him culturally, as well as the fact that he was not announced as the actual winner until after the New Hampshire voting. On Tuesday, by contrast,...(Read Full Post)