Polling Guru Nate Silver Lists ’24 Reasons that Trump Could Win’
A prominent polling analyst says one of his “pet peeves” is “with the idea that this is Kamala Harris’s election to lose.” FiveThirtyEight Founder Nate Silver wrote a post “ 24 reasons that Trump could win ,” where he…
A prominent polling analyst says one of his “pet peeves” is “with the idea that this is Kamala Harris’s election to lose.”
FiveThirtyEight Founder Nate Silver wrote a post “24 reasons that Trump could win,” where he listed factors that favor former President Donald Trump, in no particular order.
Silver began his first point by noting that Vice President Kamala Harris is favored to win the popular vote, however, “the Electoral College bias favors Republicans by about 2 percentage points.”
He touched on inflation in his second point, noting it hit its peak in June 2022 and prices remain higher than when President Joe Biden took office. Silver also noted the economy in his third point.
Read his points in full below:
“Harris is the favorite to win the popular vote, but the Electoral College bias favors Republicans by about 2 percentage points. In an era of intense partisanship and close elections, this is inherently difficult for Democrats to overcome.
Inflation hit a peak of 9.1 percentage points in June 2022. It has abated now, but prices remain much higher than when Joe Biden took office, and voters are historically highly sensitive to inflation. Democrats can also plausibly be blamed for it given intensive increases in government spending during COVID recovery efforts.
Though the reasons for this are much debated, voter perceptions about the economy lag substantially behind objective data, and growth in take-home income has been sluggish for many years for the working class amid rising corporate profits
Silver touched on the two assassination attempts against Trump in his 23 point, writing, “polling shows he’s considerably more popular and sympathetic than in 2016 or 2020.”
Lastly, Silver said, “Harris has been running on vibes and has failed to articulate a clear vision for the country. It might have been a good strategy if the ‘fundamentals’ favored her, but they don’t.”
Silver wrote on his Substack that “the data continues to be pretty negative for Kamala Harris,” per Fox News.
“There are now three recent high-quality national polls that show Donald Trump leading — a difficult circumstance for Harris, given Democrats’ Electoral College disadvantage— and her edge in our national polling average is down to 1.7 points. National polls don’t influence the model that much, and the race remains basically a toss-up, but it’s not hard to think of reasons that Trump could win,” he wrote.
FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average has Harris at 48.8%, compared to 47.2% for Trump, as of Oct. 21.
“This election remains extremely close, but Donald Trump has been gaining ground,” Silver writes.