A (very) slightly more practical way to look at: what happens over a hundred elections where Nate Silver reports a 80% lead for one candidate three weeks out? I

A (very) slightly more practical way to look at: what happens over a hundred elections where Nate Silver reports a 80% lead for one candidate three weeks out? If that candidate wins about 80 times then the model is good. What you want is infinite (or many) actual historical elections and then just look at the ones where the model gives 80%. A good weekend project if you have a universe simulator lying around. Edit: this is what "under a stationary distribution" means. It means holding everything that goes into the model, such as the polls, constant, while allowing everything else to vary, then you run the experiment many times. The easy way to do that is just let Nate Silver keep doing his thing for a few centuries.