130780Who will go down as one of the biggest winners of Election '08? (Not including Barack Obama, of course.) That would be Nate Silver, the obscure baseball statistician who is now the nerderrific numbers-man behind the polling data website FiveThirtyEight.com. If you can't watch a cable news show or read a newspaper or magazine without hearing or reading Silver's name, it's not your imagination. Silver was mentioned in the news 120 times during 2007. In the last seven days alone? His name has appeared in 267 major magazines, newspapers and websites. Now he just has to hope his methodology pans out—he's predicting 344 electoral votes for Obama and 193 for McCain—and he can look forward to many more hedge fund consulting gigs and a steady stream of cushy offers from cable networks.