Even as several nationwide polls gave Vice President Kamala Harris a narrow lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump, a veteran pollster sprang a surprise by dropping his latest forecast, called Silver Bulletin forecast.
What Happened: The forecast issued on Sept. 1 showed Trump ahead of Harris, a chart shared on his substack post published on Tuesday showed.
Nate clarified that the numbers do not refer to the percentage of support for each but the probability of each winning the electoral college. Trump has a 55% probability of winning the all-important electoral college, while Harris’ probability of winning it is 45%, he said.
“Rather than a landslide, that implies an extremely uncertain and probably ultimately very close race — well in the range of what we'd consider a ‘toss-up,'” Silver said. The chance of Harris or Trump winning the popular vote by 10 points or more, which he called a landslide, is only about 5%.
Polling Averages Vs. Silver Forecast: Harris’ odds have declined slightly over the past two weeks as she went from a 55-45% favorite to a 45-55% underdog, Silver said but added that “it’s not a huge change.”
“Probability calculations can be highly sensitive just to either side of the 50/50 mark,” the pollster, who founded polling analytics website FiveThirtyEight but is no longer associated with it now, said.
Harris’ Pushback: The not-so-appreciable convention bump Harris received after the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention may have to do with some of the setbacks, Silver said. The vice president’s polling average lead went from 2.3 points before the convention to only 3.5 points after the convention, while Silver’s forecast model had factored in a 2-point bounce, he said.
“By the model's logic, she's gone from a lead of 2.3 points to a convention-bounce adjusted lead of 1.5 points. That's not a game-changing difference, but it's enough to show up in the bottom line,” he added.
Secondly, Silver said he expected the then-independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s suspension of his campaign and endorsement of Trump, to hurt Harris by 0.5 points or less. However, it is plausible that the impact may have been larger, he said.
Also, Harris’ poor polling in Pennsylvania is disproportionately important, given it is a key swing state, the pollster said. “As a result, the Electoral College forecast has swung more than the popular vote forecast,” he said.
Harris could be a favorite to win the popular vote “but perhaps a slight underdog to win the White House because of the GOP advantage in the Electoral College,” Silver said. He called the Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10 as a key disruptive event.
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