Like millions of Americans, I followed the presidential elections in my favorite blogs, but one source deserves special recognition.

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com published a running summary and projection of the myriad of national and state polls that was astonishing for its breadth and depth, but his projections based on the polls and their trends turned out to be uncannily correct.

Silver first emerged when he called both the direction and degree of the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries — a narrow win for Clinton in Indiana and a whupping in North Carolina.

When everyone else, including the mainstream media, were touting the latest numbers from whoever in whatever state, Nate Silver’s site was one of the few places you could get a clear, concise consensus forecast that didn’t vary wildly from one day to the next.

Silver’s not exactly an amateur. He’s a professional baseball forecaster. But he delivered intelligent and prescient forecasts of surpassing quality for free on his blog.

Now that’s mainstream media we can believe in, my friends.

You betcha.