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Nate Silver: I’m Here To Remind You That Trump Can Still Win

"A 10 percent chance isn’t zero. And there’s a chance of a recount, too."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/im-…

MAPPING UNCERTAINTY

"Before we proceed further, a short philosophical note. I hate it when people use phrases ... such as “Nate Silver is giving Biden a 90 percent chance” or “FiveThirtyEight still gives Trump a 10 percent chance.” We aren’t giving anybody anything. Instead, as former FiveThirtyEight politics host Jody Avrigan puts it, what we’re doing is “mapping uncertainty.” In other words, if Biden leads by about 9 points in national polls, 8 points in Wisconsin, 5 points in Pennsylvania, 2 points in Florida, etc., how does that translate into a probability of victory? That’s what our model is trying to figure out."

ELECTION BULLET POINTS

"So let’s state a few basic facts: The reasons that President Trump’s chances in our forecast are about 10 percent and not zero:

As in 2016, Trump could potentially benefit from the Electoral College. Projected margins in the tipping-point states are considerably tighter than the margins in the national popular vote.

More specifically, Joe Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania — the most likely tipping-point state, according to our forecast — is solid but not spectacular: about 5 points in our polling average.

Without Pennsylvania, Biden does have some paths to victory, but there’s no one alternative state he can feel especially secure about.

While a lot of theories about why Trump can win (e.g., those about “shy” Trump voters) are probably wrong, systematic polling errors do occur, and it’s hard to predict them ahead of time or to anticipate the reasons in advance.

There is some chance that Trump could “win” illegitimately. To a large extent, these scenarios are beyond the scope of our forecast.

There’s also some chance of a recount (about 4 percent) or an Electoral College tie (around 0.5 percent), according to our forecast."

The entire article is long and analyzes the election at state level

Here are some headlines from the rest of the article:

Biden needs a popular vote cushion
Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania is narrow
Pennsylvania will tell us a lot

Finally, here is Silver's closing paragraph:

"Here’s what it seems safe to say, though. In an election that is very close, a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court is likely to side with Trump. Our model shows a 4 percent chance of an election that winds up with one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points, close enough to trigger a recount. If you want to round up Trump’s odds slightly by assuming he wins the lion’s share of those 4 percent of cases, plus most of the 0.5 percent of the time that the election ends up in an Electoral College tie, I wouldn’t strenuously object to that. Mostly, though, I’d just be worried about the meltdown that could occur if a recount or a tie comes up. The odds are against it, but the stakes are awfully high."