The FiveThirtyEight models provide much of their value in this way. It’s very easy to look at an election, see that one candidate is ahead in all or most of the polls, and determine that he’s the favorite to win. (With some exceptions, this assumption will be correct.) What becomes much trickier is determining exactly how much of a favorite he is. Our brains, wired to detect patterns, are always looking for a signal, when instead we should appreciate how noisy the data is.
