So much for the mainstream media hype around Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris: Scientific models released on Tuesday indicate that Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump has a very good chance of winning the election.
Statistician Nate Silver’s model, which combines polls and other data to predict which candidate will win the November presidential election, kicks off the new Trump-Harris campaign with a strong prediction of a Trump victory. Trump is projected to have a 61.3% chance of winning, while Harris has only a 38.1% chance of winning. That means Trump has more than a 3 in 5 chance of winning, and Harris has less than a 2 in 5 chance of winning. That’s terrible news for desperate Democrats who were hoping that a change in their top candidate could dramatically change the trajectory of the campaign.
Incidentally, as Silver points out, his predictions line up very well with prediction markets, where people literally bet real money on what the outcome will be.
Once again, our forecasts were surprisingly close to market expectations! (Harris 38% Silver Bulletin vs 39% Polymarket).
Be sure to subscribe for more details. It was a lot of work!
Another post on methodology is planned for today or tomorrow, but it’s essentially the same model.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2024
Silver paused his model when Democrat Joe Biden dropped out of the race a little over a week ago, buying him time to gather fresh data on the new Trump-Harris matchup. His previous model had Trump leading Biden by a wide margin, but Biden’s chances of winning were well below 30%. Harris has improved on the worst case scenario before Biden dropped out, but she has not materially changed the course of this race, and it is clear that Trump remains in the lead.
In fact, Silver’s analysis projects Harris to have a slight advantage over Trump in the popular vote, but Trump to have a much larger advantage over her in the Electoral College. Moreover, Silver’s analysis projects Harris to perform worse than Biden in the Electoral College compared to her popular vote performance, which could set off a very negative trajectory for Democrats going forward depending on how the election performs on certain fronts.
Silver said Harris “would give Democrats a fighting chance” and that she “has a slight lead over Donald Trump in the popular vote – Democrats have won the popular vote in every election except for one since 2000” – but “is trailing Trump slightly in the Electoral College, and there is a risk of a repeat of the popular vote-Electoral College split that cost Democrats their election losses in 2000 and 2016.”
“Harris is not unique in this regard: Biden also had large electoral and popular vote margins in 2020, narrowly winning several tipping point states despite winning the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points,” Silver wrote. “But this remains an issue for Democrats, and we show that Harris’s popular and electoral vote margins are slightly larger than projected for Biden.”
In the second half of the article, Silver breaks down each candidate’s chances of winning in each state, with Trump favored (sometimes by a large margin) in all battleground states. For example, in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona, Silver’s model gives Trump a 70% or higher chance of winning each state. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Silver’s model estimates Trump’s chance of winning each state at 57% or higher. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the closest battleground state, Silver’s model gives Trump nearly a 53% chance of winning. In Nevada, Trump is also seen as having a 65% or higher chance of winning.
For a more detailed analysis of silver, see Available on SubstackIt’s worth a read. But as more data and information comes in from the states and these numbers prove accurate, the picture will become clearer. Even after the transition from Biden to Harris, the Democrats are in serious trouble.
