[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wvkXx.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wvkXx.png)

On November 3rd, 2020, Arnon Mishkin, a statistician and director of the Fox News decision team, called Arizona for Biden with ~25% of votes still uncounted. When called upon to defend his decision, he [explained on air to the Fox News desk](https://twitter.com/skbaer/status/1323867043523776512) that Trump would not be able to recover Biden's 7-point lead. He says,

> 
> It has been in the category that we call 'knowable but not callable' for about an hour. Um, we finally called it right now, ... [...]
> 
> 
> 

and a little later adds,

> 
> This is a call that's sitting in our statistical models at sort of, at a t-stat of 4 or more in all the different ways [...] That means we're 4 standard deviations from being wrong [...]
> 
> 
> 

I forgot about it since, but coming back to check out Arizona's results, I was pretty surprised to see what a comeback Trump did make (courtesy of New York Times' election tracker):

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qp2hT.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qp2hT.png)

So I'm not sure if...

1. I'm misinterpreting the statement or statistics, *i.e.* it's *not surprising at all*, even mostly *expected* that this is how it would go, or
2. some unprecedented factor came into view regarding the last ~25% of uncounted votes (at the time of the call), or
3. this truly was a freak occurrence: the 0.01% tail of universes actually happened during one of the most controversial elections of modern day, and Trump regained nearly *all* of Biden's 7-point lead, which again Mishkin was not only so confident as to call it for Arizona with ~25% of votes still uncounted, but before any other network and on *Fox* at that.

I'm not at all disputing the election results by the way. It's because I am following experts that I want to know what I'm not getting.

---

This is an edited question, so post-emptively responding to the "doesn't matter, it's within range" line of argument: Yes, I do understand that Mishkin wasn't saying it was *impossible*. But if I were on the test flight of a wholly new aircraft and it nearly crashed, but the pilot tells me it was "within range" of their models, I'd still ask, *"Hey um, guys? Is there something you wanna tell me?"* Because at that point you have to wonder, what's more likely? On the virgin voyage of this totally new thing, you just had a stroke of bad luck—about 4 standard deviations off-center? Or that something unexpected happened? (I'm appealing to a Bayesian mode of thought here.) (Also, in an interview the next day, Mishkin tells a story of how they came up with a brand new model using phone calls and Internet surveys, particular targeting early voters, to try to get a better estimation regarding mail-in ballots.)