Statistician Nate Silver‘s latest election forecast shows Vice President Kamala Harris overtaking former President Donald Trump in the race for the White House for the first time since late August.
In a Friday post on X, formerly Twitter, Silver said “the streams have crossed for the third time in the campaign,” referring to the new intersection of Trump and Harris’ forecast lines, with Harris pulling ahead in the latest tabulation from his proprietary model.
In the model, Harris’ blue line crossed over Trump’s for the first time since August 28. Notably since then, the Democratic and GOP candidates sat down for their first presidential debate on September 10, which has increased Harris’ average poll lead.
Nate Silver (L) and Vice President Kamala Harris (R)
Taylor Hill/Kevin Dietsch//Getty Images
Earlier this week, Silver posted advice to Harris on social media, suggesting she give her opponent a deadline on whether to accept her overture for a second debate.
“With her move up in the polls, Harris should stop giving Trump a free option for another debate,” Silver said.
His latest forecast model shows the third time that the “streams have crossed” in this campaign. “That sort of thing will happen a lot when you’re near 50/50. It’s a toss-up,” Silver wrote on X along with a graph of the model.
Early schedule with today’s update.
Another day with more good than bad for Harris in state polls.
In fact, the streams have crossed for the 3rd time in the campaign, though that sort of thing will happen a lot when you’re near 50/50. It’s a toss-up.https://t.co/vsGVG189Sa pic.twitter.com/ovDQoKQBpO
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 20, 2024
Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email on Friday.
In another related X post he said, “When you’re near 50/50, a 1-point shift in the polls = about 8% of win probability shift in November. So easy to end up on either side of the line on any given day.” Polls and prediction models show extremely narrow margins between the candidates in the lead-up to the election, which is now 45 days away.
In modeling the presidential race, Silver runs simulations using state-by-state polling data, accounting for the inherent uncertainty and variability in the polls. The result is a probabilistic forecast, such as predicting that a candidate has a 70 percent chance of winning if they come out ahead in 70 percent of those simulations.
On the other hand, Silver’s polling aggregator — different from his forecast — has shown Harris leading Trump since its launch in the end of July. Silver’s popular vote forecast has also shown Harris ahead of Trump by 1 to 2.5 percentage points for most of their campaigning.
However, national aggregators essentially offer a general “pulse check” on popular vote, and do not weigh or consider Electoral College votes, which determine the election. The Oval Office is won by whichever candidate gets 270 Electoral College votes, not whether they win the popular vote.
Silver has faced withering criticism from Democrats who say his model is biased toward Trump, though the statistician has stood firm behind his formula and methods. Silver, a former baseball statistician turned political pundit and polling guru, first shot to fame in 2008 when he was among the first to predict Barack Obama would handily beat John McCain — a call he first made in March of that year on his site FiveThirtyEight.
On Election Night 2008, Silver called the race for Obama a full hour and 15 minutes before the television networks followed suit.
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