Perhaps out of statistical conservativism, Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight,com predicts Missouri will no longer be the Bellwether State after tonight. I disagree. Obama will take MIssouri by two points or better, and I'll tell you why in a moment. Here's the nut of Nate's take:

Our model projects that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana.

If you look at the recent polls in the Show Me State, all but two call it a tie between Obama and McCain. And those two polls, giving McCain an advantage of about 2 points, are not the most recent anyway. So let's begin with the idea of a tie.

I was canvassing today to get out the vote and I saw something remarkable in the neighborhoods I visited. It wasn't my first time knocking on those very same doors for the Obama campaign.

Nearly everyone in these mixed low- and middle-class neighborhoods said they would be voting for Obama or already had before I stopped by. That was a lot more support than I saw a month earlier.

Now this is St. Louis we're talking about, but it's south St. Louis, not the historically Democratic urban core or the largely African-American neighborhoods of the city's north side. And if Obama can win here, he has the strength to overcome any advantage McCain has in the conservative bastions of southern Missouri and the state's rural areas. Even there, Obama has shown surprising strength.

I heard 40,000 people turned out in Springfield, Mo., this weekend. By comparison, George W. Bush attracted only 8,000 there on his best visit of the 2004 campaign. And Palin? She drew only half the Obama rally's attendance just a week earlier. I think the normally fired-up Missouri GOP is reeling in shock and the rank-and-file demoralized.

Turnout is so high that the wait is as long as six hours across the state. And most people are foregoing touchscreen machines in favor of using paper ballots fed into a tabulator.

When I knock on a door and a first-time voter tells me she voted for Obama, I'm heartened. When I knock on the next door and a 67-year-old woman who's wobbly from a newly adjusted medication tells me she stood in line an hour anyway just to vote for Obama--and endured the ordeal long enough to submit her ballot and collapse into a wheelchair--I am amazed.

These are just a couple of the stories I heard today. I believe this election will seal Missouri's status as the Bellwether State. And help boost Obama's landslide to epic proportions.