[Sakos]

Their predictions were far higher than anybody else. I'm not sure what you're expecting them to do. They can't just ignore data because it "feels" like it's more likely that Trump will win. Its not a number they arbitrarily decide on. Based on the numbers they had, they made the most accurate estimation they could.

[egberts1]

Have you actually gauged 538’s own probabilities against themselves?

I mean it’s not like them attaining “The Founders” status (excuse me, Isaac Asimov), not even closed.

[ChrisLomont]

>Have you actually gauged 538’s own probabilities against themselves?

Yes, and the publish datasets of all their work to let others analyze them too. They're the most accurate of all the major sites.

Here's their github site [1]. It contains tons of datasets, past performance, analysis tools, everything you want to actually check if your claims are true or false, and most importantly, how accurate 538 has been over time.

Now try to do that analysis on, say, Fox News :)

Good luck.

[1] https://github.com/fivethirtyeight

[gizmo686]

You can view a bit of their analysis here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/presi...

Their seems to be a systemetic bias for them to be underconfident. That is to say, when they a result is likly (>50%) to happen, they underestimate how likely. Conversly, when they think an event is less likely (<50%), they overestimate its chances. Still, more likely events tended to occur more often than less likely events.

Correcting for this systematic error would mean they should have given Clinton an even higher chance.