Trump's Big Mistake? FiveThirtyEight Now Shows Biden As Favorite To Win Election Following J.D. Vance VP Pick, Despite Polling Data

Many experts and political pundits wrote off President Joe Biden's chances of winning reelection in 2024 following the president's poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump in June.

Since the debate, polls have swung in Trump's favor and electoral odds continued to show Trump's chances of winning following the attempted assassination of him in Pennsylvania. 

But, at least one predictive model indicates that the election isn't over yet. FiveThirtyEight, a site that tracks polling data and statistics, currently shows Biden winning the election 53 times out of 100 in its simulations. The site calculates these simulations by using polling data, historical trends as well as “fundamentals” such as the state of the economy and incumbency. 

About FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver, a statistician, writer and professional poker player, in 2008 started FiveThirtyEight, which refers to the number of electors in the electoral college. ESPN acquired FiveThirtyEight in 2013 before ESPN's parent company, Walt Disney Co DIS, transferred FiveThirtyEight's operations to ABC News in 2018. Silver left the site, and took his data analysis methodology with him in 2023 to start a new site, blog called “Silver Bulletin“ and has been critical of FiveThirtyEight's new predictive model.

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Silver, who gives Biden much less of a chance of winning the election than his former site, posted on X saying Trump's pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his vice president may help the Republicans win Ohio, but overall hurts Trump's chances of winning.

Silver posted a blog titled “J.D. Vance offers Democrats an opening” that argues Vance may make it more difficult for Trump to run a unifying platform. OnTheIssues.org, which analyzes politicians based on their statements, rates Vance as a “hard-core conservative” who is further right than Trump on certain social issues.

Silver's new site, the Silver Bulletin, shows Biden's chances of winning the election have dropped to around 27% post-debate compared to FiveThirtyEight's 53%. In 2016, Silver's model showed Trump having around a 30% chance of winning the election, much higher than most other sites. 

The Polling Data: Current polls show Trump leading in nearly every single swing state, but as many followers of political races know, polls can be inaccurate and misleading. In 2016, most polls showed Hillary Clinton having a commanding lead heading into the election that Trump won. 

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