how dare you . carol is the best <| sep |> Potomac Drainage Basen Indigenous PersonsI ' m sorry , what ? <| sep |> I don ' t even know where to begin with this . That ' s not what we mean when we talk of probabilities . If you were just talking about probabilities there ' d be no issue , but you went on to say if the election were repeated . While it ' s fair to say Trump had an x % chance of winning you can ' t literally claim that If the election was repeated multiple times , trump would win much more than 10 % of the time . Even if you didn ' t mean it literally , it ' s still language that should be avoided . Coin flips are deterministic . If you do a coin flip , then go back in time and repeat it without changing anything you get the same result . The 50 % probability of a coin flip for a single result that won ' t be repeated is based on the idea that you ' re completely ignorant of the initial conditions . But if you start to measure the coin and thumb ' s initial position and as you gain partial knowledge of the force applied to the coin , it starts to diverge from 50 % to something more certain . If you could measure every particle in the system perfectly , you ' d know the exact outcome before it happens . Elections are like that too . If you simply repeat the same event in history it won ' t change . A probabilistic prediction is a function of our ignorance . If the polling data were perfect sample size of the entire population and perfect honesty from voters to pollsters , we ' d know with absolute certainty how the election would have turned out effectively a prevote . If we were doing a physics based modeling of a coin flip , but we screw up the measurements of the initial positions a bit and measure it inaccurately , we get a skewed probability . This doesn ' t mean the model the laws of physics are wrong . It just means garbageingarbageout skewed our results . Similarly , when electoral models get a prediction wrong , it ' s not necessarily the model ' s fault . It ' s arguably just the polling data being fed into it . Now personally I think you and I both agree Silver ' s model was the bestbut that ' s our opinion , not necessarily a fact . Other modelers can try to argue that it was just the input data , not their actual model ' s code . If you want to argue Nate Silver ' s model is better than other models , great ! But don ' t do it by saying If the election was repeated multiple times , trump would win much more than 10 % of the time . Instead say something more like his model acknowledged more uncertainty in the polling data than other models or something like that . Something that doesn ' t give the appearance of elections being random or history being mutable .