There was clearly a polling error, so yes, my statement doesn't really stand for southern states like Florida where the count is complete.
What I'd be more interested in is an article with more meat than this one, something that analyzes a single model and talks about what, if anything, went wrong. 538 has already mentioned that they plan on doing a post-mortem.
The problem with presidential elections is that they happen infrequently with a large time gap between, and we only have a few decades of useful data to model from. For me, as a non-statistician, it's difficult for me to look at the numbers and know whether this one particular reality was adequately accounted for by the model. 538 gave chances of each candidate winning - they didn't state that they'll have exactly x margins of victory. Nate's stance before the election was that Biden could survive a significant polling error, and that's about where we seem to be now.
What I'd be more interested in is an article with more meat than this one, something that analyzes a single model and talks about what, if anything, went wrong. 538 has already mentioned that they plan on doing a post-mortem.
The problem with presidential elections is that they happen infrequently with a large time gap between, and we only have a few decades of useful data to model from. For me, as a non-statistician, it's difficult for me to look at the numbers and know whether this one particular reality was adequately accounted for by the model. 538 gave chances of each candidate winning - they didn't state that they'll have exactly x margins of victory. Nate's stance before the election was that Biden could survive a significant polling error, and that's about where we seem to be now.
I'm looking forward to the 538 post-mortem.