Former President Donald Trump has his best chance at victory since the end of July, election analyst Nate Silver predicted.
Democrats have seen a surge in optimism since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris in late July, ushering in a series of polls showing their new candidate in the lead. However, this enthusiasm appears to be fading, and Silver sees signs of Trump pulling off a comeback victory in November. His prediction model, updated on Wednesday, has Trump with a 58.2% chance of winning.
“The forecast is still in toss-up range, but Trump’s chances of winning are his highest since July 30,” Silver wrote on his Substack, the Silver Bulletin.
“There’s room to debate the convention bounce stuff, but Harris has been getting a lot of mediocre state polls lately,” he added.
His model has given Trump a significant boost in a single week, with his odds going from 52.4% to 58.2%. Harris’s odds decreased from 47.3% to 41.6%.
Trump’s chances are approaching his high of 61.3% on July 30, when the model was launched. Harris had a 38.1% chance.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.
Silver elaborated on the reasoning for Harris falling behind on the probability model in another Substack piece. He gave three main points as to why Harris’s chances at victory were declining: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only dropping out of the race but actively endorsing Trump, poor polls for Harris in Pennsylvania, and a disappointing post-Democratic National Convention bump.
Elsewhere, he noted troubling polls for Harris in Michigan and Republicans overtaking Democrats in enthusiasm.
On X, Silver criticized Harris for rehiring many figures from the Biden campaign.
“I think I’d buy the bull case for Harris a bit more if she hadn’t rehired so many of the Biden people,” he said.
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“There was a surge of enthusiasm for Harris post-Biden dropout, but that might have happened no matter what. Thought convention speech was good, but bypassing Shapiro beginning to look bad and they haven’t really found a 2nd gear after Hot Brat Summer,” Silver added in a follow-up post.
In contrast, FiveThirtyEight‘s election prediction model has Harris with a 55% probability of victory, compared to Trump’s 44%.
