Why Can Electrons be Modelled as Classical Spins?

Question

Although electrons are spin $1/2$ particles described by the Pauli matrices, the Ising model treats electrons as classical spins. As a result, the Ising model does not describe anything physical, but its results are good enough to approximate many properties of materials. Why can such a model which treats a purely quantum mechanical effect as a classical one describe physical systems well? Is there a reason why we can approximately treat the electron spins as classical spins?

Answer 1

There is an interesting post here which I think answers this question: What is the difference between classical and quantum Ising model?

For the Ising model specifically, the post says that the dynamics are equivalent to that of the classical problem because all the operators commute with each other.