Nate Silver has placed Donald Trump ahead of Kamala Harris in terms of his chances of winning the election, according to his latest election forecast on October 19.
Despite trailing Harris in the national polls, the share of the popular vote, and projected Electoral College vote victories, the Silver Bulletin has predicted Trump has a higher chance of winning, at 51% to Harris’ 49%.
In his Silver Bulletin post on Saturday about this incongruence, Silver wrote, “Needless to say, stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning. And in America’s polarized political climate, most elections are close, and a candidate is rarely out of the running.”
Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press
Newsweek reached out to Silver for comment via email outside of business hours on Sunday.
Newsweek also reached out to a spokesperson for Harris and the Trump campaign for comment via email outside of business hours on Sunday.
In the national polls, Silver placed Harris ahead at 49.1% to Trump’s 46.8%, and in terms of Electoral College votes, Harris at 274 while Trump is at 264.
Like Silver, aggregating site FiveThirtyEight regards this projection as minor and continues to refer to the election as a “toss-up,” posting, “You might be tempted to make a big deal about our forecast ‘flipping’ to Trump, but it’s important to remember that a 52-in-100 chance for Trump is not all that different from a 58-in-100 chance for Harris—both are little better than a coin flip for the leading candidate.”
FiveThirtyEight continued, “While Trump has undeniably gained some ground over the past couple weeks, a few good polls for Harris could easily put her back in the ‘lead’ tomorrow. Our overall characterization of the race—that it’s a toss-up—remains unchanged.”
Trump took the lead in Silver’s election forecast on October 17 for the first time since September 19, and his chances of winning have slightly increased in the days since that forecast.
However, as Trump led in favorability to win the election, in this previous election forecast Harris was ahead significantly in terms of the popular vote, by 75%.
Silver also noted Harris’ slight decline in the national polls from her peak earlier this month in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, and wrote, “The race remains a toss-up, but we’re at a point now where we can be pretty confident this is real movement and not statistical noise,” on October 18.
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