Election prognosticator Nate Silver is no fan of Donald Trump, but he predicts that the former president will win the November election against President Biden, and what’s more, it won’t be particularly close.
In his first 2024 presidential election model, the political-statistics guru gave the presumptive Republican nominee a 65.7% chance of winning the Electoral College vote versus 33.7% for the Democrat Biden.
“The model gives Trump a 66 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, and Biden a 34 percent chance,” Mr. Silver said Thursday on the Silver Bulletin, his Substack account.
His model also gave Mr. Biden a 51% chance of winning the popular vote versus a 49% chance for Mr. Trump.
“There’s also a small chance that no candidate gets an Electoral College majority — either because there’s a 269-269 tie or because RFK wins some electoral votes somewhere — though those cases will probably resolve to Trump because of the likely Republican advantage in congressional delegations in the U.S. House under the 12th Amendment,” he said.
His conclusion that “the presidential election isn’t a toss-up” runs counter to most election predictions, including that of FiveThirtyEight, the politics-and-statistics website founded by Mr. Silver in 2008 that is now run by ABC News as “538.”
“Trump and Biden have about an even chance to win,” said 538 in its Wednesday analysis, which found Mr. Biden won 51 out of 100 times in its simulations of the 2024 presidential race.
Mr. Silver cited polling-data averages showing that Mr. Trump leads in seven swing states.
He said the president still has time to turn the tide of the election, citing the Thursday evening presidential debate on CNN as an opportunity to improve his fortunes.
“Biden could also change his strategy, change his staff, or even pull the emergency lever and decide that stepping back and giving someone else the nomination — either Kamala Harris or someone chosen at the convention — could give Democrats better odds. (Disclaimer: that also might be a terrible idea),” Mr. Silver said.
“And he’s really not that far behind. But the race isn’t a toss-up,” he said. “That’s at best a white lie — a convenient fiction that allows everyone to shirk accountability for their forecasts and their decisions.”
Nate Silver has published his first 2024 election model prediciton…
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 26, 2024
It gives Trump a 66% chance of winning.
In my opinion, Nate is the best mainstream election forecaster in the game. He’s also said many times that he personally does not want Trump to win. pic.twitter.com/OVzaT29cCb
A statistician, Mr. Silver burst onto the political scene after correctly predicting the outcome in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election.
He was upfront about his preference for Mr. Biden versus Mr. Trump, but emphasized that he refuses to sugar-coat Mr. Biden’s chances, saying that would make him a “hack.”
“I’ve spent years telling people that, although polls are often wrong — indeed, inevitably wrong to some degree — it’s hard to predict the direction of polling error,” Mr. Silver said. “Biden could easily overachieve his current polls — but it’s roughly as likely that he’ll underachieve them instead.”
He added that “Trump substantially outperformed his polls in 2016 and 2020.
“Going by the polls, perhaps along with some reasonable priors about things like the economy, is a lot better than going by the number of yard signs in your neighborhood or by what your friends think — or especially by what you hope will happen,” Mr. Silver said.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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