Trump Vs. Harris: Veteran Pollster Says This Candidate Is Building 'Real Lead,' Riding High On Momentum Despite Economic Headwinds

As Vice President Kamala Harris swells in several nationwide polls, veteran pollster Nate Silver’s model for the first time gave her the lead over Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The Matchups: In a span of a week, Harris’ fortunes improved from a 37% chance of winning the Electoral College to 45.7%, said the founder of polling analytics firm FiveThirtyEight.

Silver had quit the firm last year amid part of layoffs at Disney-owned ABC News.

Trump trails behind Harris by 1.9 points with a 43.8% chance of winning. Robert Kennedy Jr. now has a 5.2% chance of winning.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Silver said Harris now has a “real lead” in national polls, about two points, and has also been ahead in key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. “The economic+incumbency prior is still about 25% of the model and does hurt her, but the momentum in the polls outweighs it for now,” he said.

See Also: Anthony Scaramucci Says Trump Could Drop His Presidential Bid Against Kamala Harris If This Happens: ‘I Know How This Man Thinks’

Economy Hurts Harris? Silver also made sense of the divergence between his model and the prediction market results. He noted that Polymarket showed Trump leading Harris by a 54%-44% margin. This may have been due to Friday’s disappointing jobs report and the sharp retreat in the S&P 500 Index on Monday, he said.

“Prediction market traders have heavy adjacency to financial markets, so perhaps it's not surprising that they're sensitive to this stuff,” Silver said.

In a separate post on Sunday, Silver said, “One heuristic way to look at this is that if Harris winds up somewhere in between Clinton 2016 and Biden 2020, it makes for an extremely close outcome in the Electoral College.” “And that’s the model’s best guess as to the outcome,” he added.

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