FiveThirtyEight's forecast gave Trump only a 20 percent chance of winning given his polling numbers at the time of the second debate.

Find FiveThirtyEight's 2016 presidential forecast for Trump's chance of winning at the point the claim refers to: his polling around the second debate (2016-10-09), or the numbers the article refers to. TRUE: the forecast (polls-only or polls-plus, whichever the article uses) gave Trump about 20%, meaning about 17–23%. MOSTLY TRUE: one of the main FiveThirtyEight models was in that range while the other was a few points outside it, or the figure was 15–16% or 24–25%. MOSTLY FALSE: FiveThirtyEight's models gave Trump a chance clearly outside that range but still a minority chance (e.g. 10–14% or 26–35%). FALSE: the forecast at that time was far from 20% (below 10% or above 35%).

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Uncertainty and symmetry in the US elections | Stats Chat Stats Chat (blog by Thomas Lumley, University of Auckland) · 29 October 2016

   “Nate Silver’s predictions at 538 give Donald Trump a much higher chance of winning the election than anyone else’s: at the time of writing, 20% vs 8% from the Upshot, 5% from Daily Kos, or 1% from Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium.”

2. E2 A Coalition of All Democratic Forces, Part III: What If Trump Wins? Lawfare · 18 January 2023

   “If you believe the FiveThirtyEight electoral forecast, Donald Trump has only between a 14- and 16-percent chance of becoming president.”

3. E3 Grading The 2016 Election Forecasts BuzzFeed News · 29 November 2016

   “FiveThirtyEight — “polls-only” and “polls-plus” (29% and 28%, respectively)”

4. E4 Election Probabilities Made Clear | RealClearPolitics RealClearPolitics · 13 October 2016

   “Heading into the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump had a 45.2 percent chance of winning the White House, according to the FiveThirtyEight model. He now has a 16.5 percent chance.”

The closest dated figure is FiveThirtyEight's 16.5% on 2016-10-13 [E4]. It falls between the criteria's 17–23% and 15–16% bands and is from two days after the claim. No evidence item gives the forecast for 2016-10-09 to 2016-10-11: E1 is from late October and E2 gives no date for its figure.