Nate Silver's election forecast gives Obama the edge

Believe this, don't believe this - it's entirely up to you. But for what it's worth, the NYT's numbers guy has the president with a 61.8 percent chance of winning in November while Mitt Romney has a 38.2 percent chance. By electoral votes, Silver has Obama with 291.3 and Romney with 246.7. But in his accompanying post, Silver is more circumspect about the president's chances:

Although the model -- which is distinct from the electoral map put together by The Times's political desk -- relies fairly heavily on polling, it also considers an index of national economic conditions. Right now, the polls and the economy are broadly in agreement with one another -- both point toward an extremely tight race -- although the economic risks to Mr. Obama are somewhat to the downside. Still, while the economic indicators suggest that the economy is growing sluggishly -- at a below-average pace of about 2 percent growth per year -- it is not yet in recession and incumbent presidents often receive the benefit of the doubt from voters. A favorable precedent for Mr. Obama is George W. Bush, who narrowly won re-election in 2004 under similar circumstances.

The unscientific but sometimes reliable Intrade online market gives the president only a 53 percent chance of being reelected, which is down significantly from the 60 percent range he enjoyed some weeks back.

Yet more more indicator is the NYT weekly job tracker (not to be confused with what Silver does), which shows average monthly employment growth unchanged at 157,000 between now and the election. The projected unemployment rate in October is 7.9 percent, according to the projections, which are based on data from Moody's Analytics. That's well under the 180,000+ monthly job gains that would give the president a strong edge. Of course, all these numbers are based on a snapshot in time - that snapshot being a terrible stretch for Obama.