Is there a comparison of Nate Silver's model compared to the pure polling averages (utilizing the polls that Nate Silver included, but unweighted), that would be helpful to compare to? An obvious problem with this critique of the model is that it is dependent on the polls being high quality; if the polls are garbage, it's garbage in, garbage out and hard to blame the model, but ideally the model still did better than the polls standing alone.
I guess you could compare it to RCP, although RCP has its own quirks.
I wouldn't want to compare to RCP, though, as it's not an apples-to-apples comparison; RCP makes choices about which polls to include, and so the polls there are not the same as the polls used to power the 538 model in all instances.
