The Polls could be off and Democrats could win it all...from 538. It could go the the other way too

[Genki Hikari]

56. Um... Pollsters are statisticians. The real ones, no less.

Statistics is nothing more than the analysis of large-scale numerical data to infer proportions to a representative whole--which is exactly what pollsters do, day in, day out. That's why pollsters use the exact same statistical analysis formulae and mathematical processes as "other" statisticians.

Pollsters conform to the true definition of statisticians, because they are the ones who do the hard work of collecting and analysing data from representative samples, while 538 does...exactly NOT that.

In fact, 538 isn't doing statistics at all. They conduct no data collection of their own, and they test no representative samples of their own. So how can they do the crucial aspect of inferring proportions to a representative whole if they don't do the minimum of putting together a representative sample and collect data from that to analyse? They can't.

To put it bluntly, what they're actually doing is a meta-analysis of the statistical analyses of real statisticians, and, worse still, based on some questionable models.