Leading pollster Nate Silver has offered up a new prediction for who he believes will win the White House next month. After carefully reviewing polling trends and other factors, Silver — founder of the FiveThirtyEight political analysis site — said in a New York Times op-ed published on Tuesday that he believes former President Donald Trump will defeat Vice President Kamala Harris.
After noting that the “unsatisfying” numbers forecast has Trump and Harris within a point of each other, Silver went on to relate a question he gets asked most often: “What’s your gut tell you?” He then wrote, “So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.” Silver then warned: “But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine.”
“Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris.” Silver then explained that his caution in making predictions is due to the razor-thin margins in the seven battleground states, where polling indicates the race is too close to call: “50-50 is the only responsible forecast.” He also noted that polls have been wrong in both directions before: “It could be equally wrong for Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris.”
Silver also addressed the concept of what he termed “shy Trump voters”—the theory that some Trump supporters are reluctant to reveal their preferences in polls. However, he noted that “there’s not much evidence for the shy-voter theory,” emphasizing that “nonresponse bias”—the difficulty of reaching Trump voters in surveys—likely poses a larger challenge.
The pollster’s analysis wasn’t entirely negative for Democrats. He reminded readers that polls often have a margin of error of three or four points, which could swing in either direction. A polling miss in Harris’s favor, he noted, could result in “the largest margin in both the popular vote and the Electoral College since Mr. [Barack] Obama in 2008.” The pollster then concluded: “Don’t be surprised if a relatively decisive win for one of the candidates is in the cards.”
