So it seems Nate Silver, the New York Times' polling guru isn't "a joke," after all.
In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 6 decision, Silver skyrocketed to mainstream-media fame as political junkies neurotically checked his FiveThirtyEight blog for the latest polling numbers.
Early on, he predicted a President Obama win; naysayers said the prediction would make him a "one-term celebrity."
Also read: Election Predictions: From Nate Silver to HuffPo, Who Got It Right?
He even drew criticism from the Times' public editor Margaret Sullivan for betting MSNBC's Joe Scarborough -- who called Silver "a joke" -- that Obama would win.
But as Obama claimed Ohio and won the election, pundits showered the professional poker player-turned-journalist with praise.
"You know who won the election tonight? Nate Silver," Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC.
Fox News' Bret Baier also acknowledged Silver's accuracy on air.
Stopping short of a full victory lap, Silver plugged his book in a tweet after the Times called the election for Obama.
"The Signal and the Noise," his first book released in September, chronicles Silver's methods for distilling mounds of data into a reliable forecast.
His plug -- or, at least, his popularity -- appears to have paid off. Sales of the book on Amazon shot up 850 percent in the last 24 hours.
Updated at 4:37 p.m. ET with Amazon book sales statistics