Silver's national vote projection for 2008 had Obama winning by 6.1 percentage points, just under actual the 7.2 point margin. And in 2012, Silver had Obama winning by 2.5 points, under the actual margin of 3.9 points.
These results point to how accurately the polls were in the last two presidential general election cycles, and how stunning it was when fivethirtyeight -- and all of the other poll aggregators -- were so wrong this year.
JB: How far off was fivethirtyeight, David?
DM: Silver predicted Clinton to win the national popular vote by a 3.6 point margin, and it looks like she will win by 1.5 to 2.0 points (votes are still being counted in California). That prediction is not bad -- maybe two points off, maybe less.
But Silver also projected Clinton with a 71% chance of winning the electoral vote, based on state polls. Specifically, he predicted Clinton to win in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Michigan is still too close to call (Trump leading), but the vote count shows Clinton has lost in the other four states.
JB: What can we learn from the recounts, wherever they happen? And do you think the states will allow the process to be thorough?
DM: Ideally, the recounts -- at least in Wisconsin and Michigan, which Ballotpedia indicates have voting systems that leave a paper trail -- can demonstrate whether the machine counted vote is the same as the hand count.
In Pennsylvania, one third of the precincts have a system that leaves a paper trail, while two thirds of the precincts have Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems. According to Ballotpedia, those machines do not leave a paper trail. If this is correct, one would not expect a recount of the rest of the precincts with a paper trail to change much from the vote count. Presumably, if some people wanted to hack into voting machines, they would do so on the DRE systems, to avoid being detected.
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