We now have our presidential candidates, and for the next few months you get to hear about the changing probability of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump winning the election. As of this writing, the Upshot estimates a 68% probability for Clinton and 32% for Donald Trump. FiveThirtyEight estimates 52% and 48% for Clinton and Trump, respectively. Forecasts are kind of all over the place this far out from November. Plus, the numbers aren’t especially accurate post-convention.
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So what does it mean when Clinton has a 68% chance of becoming president? What if there were a 90% chance that Trump wins?
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The probability estimates the percentage of times you get an outcome if you were to do something multiple times. In the case of Clinton’s 68% chance, run an election hundreds of times, and the statistical model that spit out the percentage thinks that Clinton wins about 68% of those theoretical elections. Conversely, it thinks Trump wins 32% of them.
So as we get closer to election day, even if there’s a high probability for one candidate over the other, what I’m saying is — there’s a chance.
