Polling guru Nate Silver says his gut tells him Donald Trump will retake the White House even though forecasters consistently show the race is tied.
Silver, the founder of the survey predictor fivethirtyeightwrote in the New York Times that his fears about a second Trump term are also “true for many anxious Democrats” amid a drop in Kamala Harris’ momentum.
One of its main reasons was Trump’s tendency to underperform in the polls, and with Silver himself model By showing that the candidates are only 1.6 percent apart, the pollster said his “intuition” points to a Republican victory.
Harris’ candidacy has also stalled in recent weeks after a strong start. She faced combative first interviews and was criticized for having difficulty saying how her White House would be different from Joe Biden’s.
A recent Reuters-Ipsos The poll found that a staggering 70 percent of registered voters said the country was on the wrong path, suggesting more bad news for Harris.
Polling guru Nate Silver maintains that all of his models and forecasts put the presidential election at a 50/50 tie, but this week he offered his “gut instinct” prediction.
Silver said his “gut instinct” tells him Donald Trump will win the election, at a time when Kamala Harris has seen a drop in momentum.
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 article, Silver emphasized that the election coming up in three weeks will likely be incredibly close, with the outcome dependent on just a few battleground states.
This would be a far cry from the elections of recent years, in which, for example, Joe Biden won 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 within one or two percentage points,” meaning “50-50 is the only responsible forecast.”
But Silver, a prodigious poker player and former professional, compared his “intuition” that Trump will win with the fact that intuition plays a big role in the game even when the odds appear to be even.
“Most expert players I’ve spoken to over the years will say it gives you something extra,” he wrote.
“You’re never sure, but your intuition can tip the odds 60-40 in your favor by spotting patterns of when a competitor is lying.”
Silver pointed to factors such as Trump’s tendency to underperform in polls, the difficulty pollsters have reaching his voters and the increase in people registering as Republicans as reasons he believes the former president will win again. .
Silver pointed to Trump’s tendency to underperform in polls and the increase in voters registering as Republicans as reasons the former president could achieve a victory.
Silver also highlighted the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy, as she hopes to become the first female president and the second black woman, feeling this could hurt her chances through a notion known as the ‘Bradley Effect.’
The notion is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American who lost the race for California governor in 1982 to George Deukmeijian, a white man, despite leading in the polls.
He proposes that voters often tell pollsters that they intend to vote for the historic candidate or say they are undecided rather than admitting that they would not vote for a minority.
Silver posited that this has hurt numerous candidates over the years, from Bradley to Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she seemed destined to become the first female president only for Trump to vastly outperform her poll numbers on Election Day. .
However, while the polling guru doubted his intuition in singling out Trump, he was more confident about the unreliability of polls in predicting an election.
He said pollsters are now forced to weigh and manipulate their data to get a result, such as taking into account whether respondents are registered voters or not, and argued that “the new techniques pollsters are applying could be overkill.”
This may lead to a surprise on election night: “may the election not be a photo finish,” Silver predicted.
‘With polling averages so close, even a small systematic polling error like 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 is about a 60 percent chance that a candidate will sweep at least six of the seven battleground states.”