My FiveThirtyEight Habit

     For a political junkie, I pay very little attention to the presidential election polls.
     I don't check them because I don't set much store by them.
   And  if I did set much store by them I wouldn't have time to check them anyway because  I'm too busy checking FiveThirtyEight.  
     All  you fellow  FiveThirtyEight obsessives know hat I'm talking about, right?
   For those who don't know what I'm talking about, FiveThirtyEight is a website created by statistician Nate Silver that uses statistical analysis to make predictions of the likelihood of outcomes in various human endeavors, including sports, science, economics, cultural trends and, during election years,  races for political offices.  The name FiveThirtyEight comes from the number of votes in the Electoral College.
      This being a presidential election year,  Nate Silver has since June been running his election forecast on FiveThirtyEight.  He has a 24/7 operation going that is constantly analyzing all the presidential and senate polls - or rather, those polls that Mr. Silver considers "high quality polls", reputable polls with a good degree of credibility -  and as the odds on the outcome of the election change he publishes the latest results.
      The odds on the presidential and senate elections usually change three, four, or five times a day.
      For example, here's where Nat Silver's prediction on the presidential race stood today,  October 10, at 11:02 am:

... and here's where his odds on the U.S. Senate race stood at that same time:

    One can also check the most current odds state by state:

...and one can see the hue of each state turn from shades of red to blue and back again.

     Mr. Silver also includes all kind of graphs, charts, and analyses, plotting the ups and downs of each party's progress:

...my favorite graph being the one I call "The Snake",

...which looks like a red and blue  snakey thing whose colors move closer to or farther from  the center line depending on the odds.  According to this schematic, whichever color slithers across the line into the other color's space on November 8 will be the color of the candidate who wins the presidency.

     The thing is, I've become addicted to looking at FiveThirtyEight.  I pull the site up all day long,  constantly  needing of my FiveThirtyEight fix.  When my candidate loses points on the odds, when my snake color slithers dangerously close to the line or is pushed across by the other color, I go into an anxiety state;  when my candidate looks good odds-wise I feel relief.
       So I need to keep checking all day long just to keep my equilibrium.
     Even worse, I keep my own spreadsheets next to the computer that I update as Nate Silver's odds change hour by hour:

...for the general election,

...for Ohio

...and for the Senate.

     I can't stop myself, but please, no interventions.  Come November 9 I'll have to go cold turkey anyway.