Despite Democrats making a dramatic switch at the top of their presidential ticket, election analyst and statistician Nate Silver still sees former President Donald Trump as the likely favorite.
According to Silver’s latest election forecast model, Trump has a 61.3 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, while Vice President Kamala Harris‘ chances stand at 38.1 percent.
Silver, who gained fame after correctly predicting 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, published the findings in his newsletter Silver Bulletin on July 30.
Despite Trump’s lead, Harris is in a much stronger position than Joe Biden, who had only a 26.9 percent chance of victory per Silver’s forecast when he exited the race on July 21.
Silver’s analysis of national polls puts Harris a mere 0.4 points behind Trump, a narrower gap than Biden managed since the model tracking began in late June. Notably, Harris is securing 44.1 percent of the vote, significantly higher than Biden’s previous standing between 40 and 41 percent.
Silver’s model also gives Harris a 53.5% chance of winning the popular vote compared to Trump’s 46.5%. The last Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote was George W. Bush in 2004.
Silver’s model works similarly to the FiveThirtyEight election forecast, which he founded in 2008.
“The model starts by creating a ‘snapshot’ of the current state of the race based on state and national polls. Although state polls are ultimately more important in the model’s logic, they’ve been less plentiful than national polls since Biden dropped out,” Silver explained on his website.
Silver rolled out his new election model last month. FiveThirtyEight had been one of the few forecasts projecting Biden as the likely winner of the 2024 presidential election before it suspended its forecast following Biden’s abrupt exit from the race on July 21. Biden’s endorsement of Harris quickly made her the presumptive Democratic nominee, significantly altering the dynamics of the 2024 contest.
Harris’ favorability ratings surged in a flurry of polls, and her newly branded campaign raised roughly $200 million within a week of Biden’s exit. With less than 100 days to election night, pollsters are rushing to adjust to the new dynamics.
“Roughly speaking, the strategy of the Harris campaign should be to triangulate the strategy of Hillary 2016, the Harris 2020 primary campaign, and Biden 2024, and do the exact opposite,” Silver wrote on X.
After his 2008 prediction, Silver further solidified his reputation by predicting President Barack Obama‘s 2012 victory. In 2016, his model favored Hillary Clinton over Trump, but by 2020, his last forecast gave Biden an 89% chance of winning.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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