It was a complicated calculation: Silver took each governor’s approval rating, and adjusted it to compensate for each state’s population size and partisan makeup, and came up with a -44 score for Paterson, just below Nevada's troubled Jim Gibbons.

It's another way to get at what we've been seeing and hearing.

In other ranking news, Silver also put Kirsten Gillibrand’s seat in the top 15 Senate seats that might change parties.