Nate Silver has just begun a new series of posts on 538 addressing the conflict between his model numbers and intuition - the first part, The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part I: Why You Can’t Trust Your Gut, and second part, The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part 2: What the Numbers Say, are up.

A money quote for Less Wrong users who remember The Bottom Line:

Politicians — the ones worth their salt, anyway — are exceptionally skilled at making believers out of people, and they’ll try to make a believer out of you. Some of the time, they’ll make a strong enough argument to persuade even the most seasoned observers. But a much smaller fraction of the time will they actually turn out to be right. That’s what the data says, and it says so pretty clearly.

Edit: If people prefer, I can cross-post to the Discussion section.

Edit 2: The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part 3: This Time, It’s Different?

Edit 3: The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part IV: Are the Polls Getting Worse?