Well, maybe yes. One strategy for predicting the outcomes would be to paint a quarter red on one side and blue on the other, and assigning the outcome of that state to the outcome of the coin flip. That probably wouldn't be a very effective strategy, but it's possible to still nail all 50 states (actually, 51 in this case). Silver's method is much much more accurate than the coin toss method.
Silver takes all the polls, even the crappy ones, and includes them in his calculation. If you're a bayesian you'd find this comforting because all of the evidence is included in the belief. There might be some handwringing about how important each poll really is. If you're not a bayesian, then you have some other weird strategy that might or might not work.
So really, the predictions are nice, but what we're after is a system that produces good predictions. It's not clear that Mr. Silver's is the best. Perhaps there is some horrible flaw an evil agent could exploit that just didn't get tickled this election. It's tough to say.
> If you're a bayesian you'd find this comforting because all of the evidence is included in the belief.
Off-topic, but this is my beef with the "Bayesians" - it's not all of the evidence; it's completely absurd to believe that all evidence can ever be accounted for, when considering anything.
