US Election Diary: Barack Obama's reasons to be grateful

We caught an amusing tweet from David Corn, political editor at Mother Jones, noting receipt of an email from Barack Obama that begins, "David, I am grateful to you". (Millions of us received the same missive thanking us for our support.) "What did I do?" Mr Corn asks rhetorically. Quite a lot, of course.

Mr Corn happens to be the reporter who broke the story in September of Mr Romney's now infamous behind-closed-doors gaffe writing of 47 per cent of Americans as "victims".

The race is off

There was a brief flurry of rumours after the superstorm last week that voting day might have to be put off. The New York Marathon, meanwhile, looked to be hanging in. That was until last night, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the event would be cancelled because "we would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants". The decision came after many residents had expressed concern that badly needed resources would be diverted to run the marathon. Some might prefer that the athletes now expend their energies doing something useful, like evacuating patients from crippled hospitals.

Don't bet on it

The New York Times's closely followed stats expert Nate Silver, pictured, received a scolding from his own newspaper this week after challenging MSNBC's Joe Scarborough to a wager over who would win next week's election. The spur was Mr Scarborough portraying Mr Silver, who is not a regular staff member but has a desk in the newsroom, as a partisan ideologue. But the bet earned the wrath of the NYT's readers' editor, Margaret Sullivan. "The wager is a bad idea – giving ammunition to the critics who want to paint Mr Silver as a partisan who is trying to sway the outcome," she said.