Nate Silver’s Election Model Shows Donald Trump Surging

Former President Donald Trump’s chances of victory in November are the highest they’ve been in over a month, according to Nate Silver’s latest election forecast.
Despite Vice President Kamala Harris’ consistent string of polling victories since entering the 2024 race, Silver’s forecast shows Trump having a higher chance of securing the 270 electoral votes needed to win his reelection bid, putting Trump’s chances of victory at 58.2 percent as of Wednesday. Harris, in comparison, has a 41.6 percent chance of winning in November, according to the latest Silver Bulletin.
Silver, an American statistician and founder of election analysis site FiveThirtyEight, said that his election forecast “is still in toss-up range,” but noted that many polls released earlier this week “are coming in below our current polling averages” for Harris. As of Wednesday, the Silver Bulletin polling average found Harris beating Trump by 3.4 percentage points across national polling. But as Silver wrote, “stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning.”
“And in America’s polarized political climate, most elections are close and a candidate is rarely out of the running,” he added.
Silver’s model showed Harris having a better chance of winning the election between August 4 and August 27, although Trump’s chances have been on the rise for a week. Last Wednesday, Harris and Trump’s forecasts were relatively tied at 50.5 percent to 49.2 percent, respectively.
This week’s forecast gives Trump his greatest chance of winning reelection since Silver’s model was launched on July 30, when he was given a 61.3 percent chance. At that time, Harris had a 38.1 percent chance of victory.
Harris was given a higher probability of winning the popular vote in November, according to this week’s forecast (58.9 percent chance compared to Trump’s 41.1 percent chance). Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes in 2016 but beat then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 74 electoral votes. The last Republican to win the popular vote in a presidential election was former President George W. Bush, who beat his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, by over 3 million votes.
Silver’s forecast shows Trump securing several key battleground states to reach the 270 electoral votes necessary to win in November, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina. Michigan was left in a toss-up, with Trump given a 50.3 percent chance of winning compared to Harris’ 49.7 percent chance. Wisconsin leaned slightly toward Harris, although the margins were tight (52.9 percent to 47.1 percent).
Newsweek reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns via email for comment.
Polling experts have warned that Harris’ momentum may be a bit deceiving. Trump’s chances were underestimated during polling in both 2016 and 2020, issues that one expert attributed to pollsters’ issues with reaching the former president’s voting base.
“One of the main issues is that Trump’s base is harder to reach through traditional polling methods,” Pew Research Center senior fellow Scott Keeter previously told Newsweek. “Trump supporters tend to have lower levels of trust in institutions, including those conducting polls, which can skew results.”
Trump’s former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said last month that he would caution Harris from being too confident in current polling numbers, noting that the former president tends to “under poll.”
“Now, she could have a breakout moment with more interviews. She could have a breakout moment in the September 10 debate,” Scaramucci added during an appearance on Fox News. “But if I’m her, if I’m on her campaign, I’m recommending she pushes very, very hard in [battleground states], because she could put him on the run.”