Apologies if you thought I meant this. I was using them as a reference for what people modeling the election from polls were predicting!
I don't know what Nate Silver was predicting. Was he predicting a near-split election or the situation where "someone is decently likely to win decisively, but we don't know who"?
Fair enough. Nate Silver was predicting a toss up, but was upfront that the model uses many simulations. Since the GP mentioned Nate Silver, I mistakenly took your comment about 538 as disagreeing with that since Silver did used to run 538.
Silver's predictions were extremely close to 538's. He predicted a toss up (50-50% chance of Harris or Trump winning the presidency), but many of his simulations were not particularly close.
the most likely result predicted by 538 was 312 for trump [0]
the issue with the model was the 2nd most likely result was 319 for harris.
they thought the odds of a recount being decisive was around 10%.
That hardly seems evidence of "predicting a split election". which prediction are you thinking of?
[0] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/