Modeling political elections/sports games/anything?

Hi, I've been wondering how models are created for things like political elections, sports games, and other things. I haven't been able to find anything on search engines. I'm wondering how FiveThirtyEight does stuff like their election forecast or MLB predictions. That's probably advanced and I know it would take a lot of work to make something like that, but does anyone know an intro to making something like that? I'd prefer to work in Python, but am open minded to other languages. Thanks!