Last weekend I found myself asking: What am I supposed to make of Five Thirty Eight’s 10 out of 100 probability that Trump will win? A Trump victory is a possibility, right, just like the 30 out of 100 probability (or whatever it was) in 2016? The numbers suggest precision (a result of complicated behind the scenes modeling of data of uncertain reliability) and also that there’s a significant difference between the numbers (10 or 30 or something else). But what difference could this make for me? What’s the point?
Joshua Keating (“The Problem Isn’t That the Polls Were Wrong. It’s That They Were Useless”) addresses my befuddlement like so:
It’s not all that comforting to Democrats today to know that 9 out of 10 times this election happens in the greater multiverse, Biden will win it. As former FiveThirtyEight writer Mona Chalabi put it, assuming the voice of FiveThirtyEight’s much-derided Fivey Fox mascot, “No matter what happens, I will find a way to say ‘I told you so! That’s how probabilities work!’ ”
I see.