Nate Silver: The Race Is Now a 'Toss-Up'

In his first election model since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, elections analyst Nate Silver predicted she would win the popular vote in November, but former President Trump would easily take the Electoral College and therefore the presidency. Two days later, he wasn't so sure. The FiveThirtyEight founder—a "polling and data guru" who successfully predicted 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, per Fox News—altered his prediction Thursday, noting the race is a "toss-up" as both Harris and Trump have at least a 40% chance of winning. According to Silver, Harris' chance is now 44.6% (up from 38%) compared to Trump's 54.9%, with a 0.5% chance of an Electoral College deadlock.

"It's not exactly 50/50, but close enough that a poker player would call it a 'flip,'" Silver writes in a blog post. "Democrats have ace-king suited, and Republicans have pocket jacks." Harris is performing well in swing states, with her chance of victory at 54% in Michigan, 50% in Wisconsin, and 47% in Pennsylvania. If she wins all three and "also holds lean-blue states like New Hampshire," she would take the Electoral College with 270 votes, Silver notes. "Democrats are lucky that they're getting a second chance in this election with Harris instead of Biden," who was considered "about a 2:1 underdog in the election" as of late June, the statistician continues. Still, the polling might simply reflect "a temporary surge of Democratic enthusiasm," he adds. "There are still a very long 96 days to go." (More Election 2024 stories.)