Expert Election Model Gives Trump 2 in 3 Chance of Winning White House

Nate Silver, the founder and former editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, released his election model on Wednesday, showing former President Donald Trump with a two in three chance to win the White House.

Silver, who exited FiveThirtyEight in 2023, released the model entitled, “The presidential election isn’t a toss-up” on his Substack at natesilver.net.

🚨 Nate Silver releases election forecast showing Trump favored to beat Biden 65.7% to 33.7%https://t.co/so7O47MNq9 pic.twitter.com/blTEy77A6Y

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 26, 2024

According to a screenshot of what appears to be a paywalled portion of the forecast that has gone viral on X,  Silver gives Trump a robust 65.7 percent chance to win the White House in November.

Conversely, the statistician only gives Biden a 33.7 percent possibility, while he gives independent Robert F. Kennedy zero chance to win the election.

The model predicts that Trump will win 287.2 electoral votes, eclipsing the 270 needed to win, while Biden is forecasted to win 250.4 electoral votes. The “Predicted popular vote share” estimates Biden and Trump will essentially split the popular vote, at 47.2 percent and 47.1 percent, respectively, while it forecasts 4.3 percent of all voters will break for Kennedy.

Silver’s model differs significantly from that of the company he founded and used to work for. ABC-owned FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a 51 percent chance of winning compared to Trump’s 49 percent as of Thursday afternoon.

“The candidate who I honest-to-God think has a better chance (Trump) isn’t the candidate I’d rather have win (Biden),” Silver wrote on his Substack, adding that the model found Trump is even more favored than he initially anticipated, according to Mediaite.

He also argued that the proximity between Trump and Biden in the popular vote portion of the model translates to a significant Trump advantage, Silver notes, per Mediaite:

If the Electoral College/popular vote gap looks anything like it did in 2016 or 2020, you’d expect Biden to be in deep trouble if the popular vote is roughly tied… So if we’re being honest, pundits who obsess over whether Biden is 1 point ahead in national polls are kind of missing the point.

Notably, only 45,000 votes in three states decided the last presidential election despite Biden’s average 8.4 percentage point lead over Trump in national polls on the eve of the 2020 election, as documented by FiveThirtyEight.

The FiveThirtyEight average currently has the 45th president and Biden neck and neck at 40.8 percent and 40.9 percent, respectively, while Kennedy averages 9.3 percent. Silver’s polling average shows Trump at 42.3 percent, Biden at 41.3 percent, and Kennedy at 8 percent.

Silver describes his model as “the direct descendant of the… FiveThirtyEight election forecast.” He notes the methodology is “largely the same,” though his model omits coronavirus provisions FiveThirtyEight “introduced for 2020.”