This means almost nothing; even if the map is same, they can just say "we're in the 0.4%".
Exactly. This is just like how people tried to defend their Michigan prediction by saying "They said >99% Clinton, not 100 percent!"
But that's a dumb comparison.
For one, general election polls are much easier to follow and estimate. Like people on Atlas like to say, 45% of people will always vote for one side no matter what. Even if it was Jesus vs Hitler, the outcome would be 55-45 with a fairly recognizable map (I'm trying to make a point, not saying 45% of people are actually Nazi's). If you compair that to a primary where in any given year there are between 2 and 10 or more major candidates running, you get very different results.
Secondly, their forcast was a model. Weather you like Nate Silver's #analysis or not (Trump will never win the Republican primary), his forcast models are solely in the realm of numbers and statistics. Michigan was the largest upset between polling and the actual result in more than 50 years. In fact, the most accurate poll out of the state was done by an unknown polling entity (Michigan State) that did one poll over the entire cycle as a side project to something else, and did that over the course of more than a month with only 262 likely voters in that period of time (and even then they were more than six points off).
So he is not leaving a sliver of a chance that the other side will win because he is basing everything off his own beliefs and needs some way to get away from the incorrect prediction once it happens, he is leaving that sliver because, as someone who works in statistics, he knows that, no matter what, there is a chance that the unbelievable will occur.
