Good job predicting the outcome of the election. But no way will you be able to do better than 538 in the long run.
I agree with this entirely (assuming you are talking generally, not about 538 specifically). There were people in the GJP Superforecasting project giving Clinton 98% chance of the win 2 months out, which in a 2-person race is just ridiculous (There were people giving Trump that as well, but a lot less of them).
How did you come to this 50/50 prediction though? I can't find the report now, but I believe that Trump data science team gave him a 35% chance of winning, and that was only in the last 10 days of the campaign (they gave him much less prior to that).
To go from the 28%/35% (538/Trump Team) range to 50% seems a pretty big jump.
I haven't done the maths, but to make it a 50/50 doesn't that mean polls in Michigan etc would have had to be around 10% incorrect (to give him sufficient margin to make it that sure)?
That seems a pretty big difference to what the error actually was.
Here is their final forecast: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/final-election-update-t...
They gave Trump a 28.6% chance and pointed out that the model had an unusual amount of uncertainty.
Given the lead Clinton ended up with in the popular vote and the small margin Trump won by in the critical states the prediction seems pretty reasonable to me.
What do you think his chances should have been?