Quartz anthropomorphized it and allowed it to write a column about its comeback.

The Times’s election needle predicts the outcome of an election based on incoming results, prior election results and demographic data.

The needle debuted in the 2016 presidential primaries and reappeared during this year’s Georgia and Virginia elections, where it also helped call the results accurately. Our graphics department and the Upshot desk partnered to develop the tool as a cutting-edge means of “visualizing uncertainty,” said Jeremy Bowers, our senior editor for news applications.

Graphic displays like the needle, he added, are meant to give a more visceral understanding of the real-world error that has to be factored into making electoral predictions.

“I think about it the same way as I think about forecasting the weather,” Jeremy said. To predict a storm, he explained, meteorologists take available data and run simulations; as more data comes in, the forecast becomes more precise.

About 7:30 p.m. on the presidential election night in 2016, the needle put Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning at about 80 percent, a prediction that went unrealized. Afterward, the needle received sharp criticism.

Even so, said Amanda Cox, our Upshot editor, today’s needle is not substantively different in form or function from the 2016 one. “There are ongoing efforts to make the model as precise as possible, but essentially it’s the same needle,” Amanda said. “It’s all just about using what we know, and that hasn’t changed.”