Famed pollster and statistician Nate Silver has released his first 2024 presidential election forecast, and boy, Democrats aren’t going to be happy about it. Silver is no stranger to election modeling, as you probably know, and his first 2024 election forecast, which was published on Wednesday, gives Donald Trump a nearly 66% chance of winning the election.
Based on his simulations, he currently gives Trump a 65.7% of winning the Electoral College and a 49% chance of winning the popular vote.
Wow. Nate Silver predicts Trump winning by a landslide. pic.twitter.com/ipuYgs0Rwi
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 26, 2024
Cue the wails from the radical left. The tears and angry fists are definitely out in full force on social media.
Silver, of course, was prepared for the angry screams from the left for not telling them what they wanted to hear. “Although I have plenty of disagreements with progressives these days, my political values haven’t changed that much,” he says. “I don’t want Trump to win the election, and I’d never consider voting for him.”
But, he points out it’s not his job to tell his liberal readers what they want to hear but to be intellectually honest about what the data tells him.
“I began making election forecasts in 2008, and in literally every presidential year since then, I haven’t really had to deal with a conflict between what I personally wanted to see happen and what my forecast said. This year, I do have that conflict. The candidate who I honest-to-God think has a better chance (Trump) isn’t the candidate I’d rather have win (Biden).”
Related: Wait… Is Joe Biden Ahead Now?
Obviously, Silver has a dog in this race, and it’s not Trump. However, the data tells him that Trump is the candidate who’s favored to win. You don’t have to be a statistician to see that.
“Wouldn’t it be suspicious if, in the first presidential cycle where the Democrat has consistently trailed in polls since 2004, I suddenly started telling you that you should trust vibes rather than polls? Or if I chucked out my heretofore well-performing model for a new one that had Biden favored — or at least had the election as a toss-up?”
Silver continued:
Yes, of course. It would be a sign that I’d become 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. Biden could easily overachieve his current polls — but it’s roughly as likely that he’ll underachieve them instead. It’s sort of a myth that Democrats outperformed their polls in 2022, but they certainly performed better than the conventional wisdom held. But 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.
In the end, while Silver notes that “Biden clearly could win in November,” there are more reasons to believe Trump has the advantage.
Still, the items on the “reasons to think Trump might win” list have proven to be more robust. There’s Biden’s age, which voters have extremely persistent concerns about. There’s the very high inflation of mid-2021 through mid-2023 — which has considerably abated, but still is reflected in much higher prices than when Biden took office. There’s the fact that the global mood is pessimistic and that incumbents have been getting crushed everywhere around the world. Plus, some of the factors I thought would be an advantage for Biden haven’t proven to be. There’s less of a fundraising gap than I expected, for instance, and I’m not sure that Biden has run the smarter tactical campaign.
Of course, there’s still time for things to happen that can change the dynamics of this race. But for now, Silver says the election may be close but it isn’t a toss-up.
