Polling guru Nate Silver says his gut tells him Donald Trump will retake the White House – but two other top pollsters are still backing Kamala Harris.
Three of the nation’s major political experts have now weighed in on the race, with less than two weeks until election day.
Silver, the founder of polling predictor FiveThirtyEight, wrote in the New York Times that his fears over a second Trump term are also ‘true for many anxious Democrats‘ amid a dip in Kamala Harris’ momentum.
But Allan Lichtman, known as the ‘Nostradamus’ of election forecasting, and veteran political strategist James Carville are predicting a Harris victory.
While Trump has enjoyed some momentum in recent polls, Carville listed three overarching reasons he believes the Democrats will emerge victorious.
The first is the GOP‘s record of losses since 2018, including Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race, and the two midterm cycles. Carville said Trump did not learn from past losses and has not established enough coalition to win this year.
He also noted the huge fundraising advantage Harris has over Trump, having raised more than $1billion since entering the race. Finally, he has an ’emotional feeling’ that Harris will edge ahead, claiming America is not as divided as many perceive.
Polling guru Nate Silver maintains that all his models and forecasts have the presidential election as a 50/50 dead heat, but offered his ‘gut’ prediction this week
Silver, meanwhile, has a wildly different take on the state of the upcoming election.
He said Trump has a tendency to underperform in polls, and with Silver’s own model showing the candidates just 1.6 percent apart, the pollster said his ‘intuition’ points to a Republican victory.
Harris’ candidacy has also become bogged down in recent weeks despite her strong start. She faced her first combative interviews and was criticized for struggling to say how her White House would be different from Joe Biden’s.
A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found that a staggering 70 percent of registered voters said the country was on the wrong track, which hints at further bad news for Harris.
Polling ‘Nostradamus’ Allan Lichtman, a historian who’s successfully predicted every presidential election since 1984, said he stands by his earlier prediction that Harris will win
While Trump has enjoyed some momentum in recent polls, veteran political strategist James Carville (pictured) listed three overarching reasons he believes the Democrats will emerge victorious
Silver’s own model (pictured) has the candidates essentially tied in the race, as he wrote this week that ’50-50 is the only responsible forecast’
In his piece, Silver stressed that the election is looking likely to be incredibly close, with the result hinged on just a few battleground states.
This would be far from a departure from elections in recent years, with, for example, Joe Biden winning the critical state of Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes in 2020.
Silver said that in this home stretch, ‘the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two,’ meaning that ’50-50 is the only responsible forecast.’
But Silver, a prodigious poker player and former professional, likened his ‘gut feeling’ that Trump will win to how intuition plays a big part in the game even when the odds appear to be even.
‘Most of the expert players I have spoken with over the years will say it gives you a little something extra,’ he wrote.
‘You’re never certain, but your intuition might tilt the odds to 60-40 in your favor by picking up patterns of when a competitor is bluffing.’
Silver pointed to factors such as Trump’s tendency to underperform in polls, the struggle pollsters have in reaching his voters, and the surge in people registering as Republicans as reasons he thinks the former president will win again.
Silver said his ‘gut’ tells him Donald Trump will win the election, at a time when Kamala Harris has seen a dip in momentum
Silver also noted the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy as she hopes to become the first female president and second black one, feeling this could hurt her chances through a notion known as the ‘Bradley Effect.’
The notion is named for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American who lost the 1982 California governor’s race to George Deukmeijian, a white man, despite leading the polls.
It proposes that voters often tell pollsters they intend to vote for the historic candidate or say they are undecided rather than admit they wouldn’t vote for a minority.
Silver posited that this has hurt numerous candidates over the years, from Bradley to Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she appeared set to become the first female president only for Trump to massively overperform his polling on election day.
Silver pointed to Trump’s tendency to underperform in polls and the surge in voters registering as Republican as reasons the former president may squeak out a win
But polling ‘Nostradamus’ Allan Lichtman, a historian who’s successfully predicted every presidential election since 1984, said he stands by his earlier prediction that Harris will win.
Lichtman uses a 13-point ‘Keys to the White House’ theory which relies on true-or-false questions to determine the outcome of the race.
The 77-year-old has made the same announcement every election cycle, but the reaction this year has been unprecedented.
He told NewsNation he and his family have received ‘scurrilous, vulgar, violent and threatening’ backlash to his prediction, noting he has ‘never experienced anything like the hate that is being reaped upon me this time.’
In spite of the backlash, Lichtman stands by his prediction.
One thing that has become increasingly apparent as election day draws closer is that this race will be extremely tight.
Silver acknowledged the unreliability of polling to predict an election.
He said pollsters are now forced to weigh and manipulate their data to get a result, such as accounting for whether respondents are registered voters or not, as he argued that ‘the new techniques that pollsters are applying could be overkill.’
This may result in a surprise on election night – ‘that the election won’t be a photo finish’, Silver warned.
‘With polling averages so close, even a small systematic polling error like the one the industry experienced in 2016 or 2020 could produce a comfortable Electoral College victory for Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump.
‘According to my model, there’s about a 60 percent chance that one candidate will sweep at least six of seven battleground states.’
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