538’s job is laying odds and making predictions. They did better than pretty much all the the other big outfits. So the practical effect is they won the competition this election. Why are you talking like you’re fighting the “Hillary won the popular vote” meme?
People who go on about the popular vote, here, at 538, or elsewhere, are woefully ignorant, that’s why.
Even though the popular vote doesn’t decide this particular election, there is still a certain satisfaction to be derived from knowing that there are more of us than there are of them…and saying so.
It’s just about the last satisfaction your side has left. 
Personally, I’m not terribly convinced by it given that the Republicans won the House popular vote.
More than that, its how effective and focused the Republican Party is! A difference of roughly one percent in the votes (Republican 49.11% / Democratic 48.03%) is leveraged into 241 seats R, 194 D. Guess that’s just because Republicans are so much more *creative *than Dems! One percent more votes equals ten percent more power! That’s magic! David Blaine aint shit next to Jerry Mander!
And yet the Democrats won a net increase in House seats.
Math is hard. Especially when there are ~500 separate elections, each of which has little, if anything, to do with any of the others.
(ninja’d by revised post)
Keep telling yourself that, Secretary Clinton. :rolleyes:
While we appreciate your approval, you needn’t bother. We can just take it as a given, save you some typing.
Yes, talking about facts is ignorant, unless those facts are the electoral college. All other facts are ignorant facts. Probably because they didn’t go to college.
Of course, the reason Handel was at 42 cents in the first place was that other people betting with real-world money were predominantly going the other way.
I’m genuinely puzzled by how you don’t seem to understand that the popular vote is, inherently, irrelevant.
Therefore, predictions about it, accurate or not, are also irrelevant. 
You are most certainly confused. Talking about predictions when discussing a predictions website is pretty much the whole discussion. “But not the popular vote prediction”, you say, because Hillary lost so get over it morons!
Irrelevant to what? This discussion covers more topics than just the electoral college results.
True.
But that’s the other great benefit of real-world stakes: there is a win-loss record to observe.
True. It tells us that HRC was very popular (compared to Trump) in CA and NY. I therefore predict that the Democratic candidate will win both states in 2020. I’ll go so far as to say that will happen even if Trump isn’t the GOP candidate!
The discussion (or this side-discussion) was actually about the prediction skills of Nate Silver’s 538 website.
Yes, and the issue is this: is the ability to successfully predict an irrelevant result meaningful when it comes to discussing the success of that website in making predictions about the 2016 United States Presidential and Congressional elections?
Personally, I don’t see how that can be answered as yes or no. Watching people play tennis with the two is getting redundant around here.
Meanwhile, Karen Handel says at last night’s debate, “I do not support a livable wage.”
The ideal predictor would always predict some result with a 100% chance, and then be right 100% of the time. There are no ideal predictors, and so real-world predictors must make predictions with less absolute odds, such as 2 to 1. And if a predictor makes a number of 2 to 1 predictions, and all of them end up going to the more-likely outcome, then that predictor is a pretty bad predictor. Out of all of the 2 to 1 predictions that a predictor makes, they should be “right” on about two thirds of them, and “wrong” on about one third of them.