The number of electoral college votes is not a good measure of how close an election is. Like getting 50.5% of the vote in Florida rather than 49.5% increases your number of electoral college votes by 58.
A better measure of closeness might be how many votes would have to change to change the winner. I think by that measure this election is incredibly tight.
Right, but the prediction isn't about the "closeness" of the election in some ideal sense, it's about the distribution of electoral votes. That's why the site is called fivethirtyeight.
The electoral college system means most elections are pretty close if you consider how many votes could theoretically flip the result. About 70,000 votes would flip Florida this time, for example, and about 35,000 votes would flip Pennsylvania.
Of course, nothing is likely to come close to 2000, where changing a mere 269 votes would have changed the outcome.
A better measure of closeness might be how many votes would have to change to change the winner. I think by that measure this election is incredibly tight.