Nate Silver, the political prognosticator who rose to fame during the 2008 presidential campaign, will speak at Iowa State University on Monday, April 20, at 8 p.m. His presentation, “How Obama Really Won the Election,” is free and open to the public.

On his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver predicted the presidential election popular vote within one percentage point — predicting 49 of 50 states’ results correctly. He also predicted all of the resolved Senate races correctly. His polling success brought him exposure in such news outlets as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC and PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” Last June, he began to cross-post his daily “Today’s Polls” updates on “The Plank” in The New Republic. Rasmussen Reports also began to use the FiveThirtyEight.com poll averages for its own tracking of the 2008 state-by-state races.

Silver has been popular among baseball fans for several years after developing the PECOTA system (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), which has been recognized by baseball analysts as being the most accurate system for forecasting how baseball players and teams will perform in the future.