Analysis: Election Remains Close, But Biden Still Favored Despite Debate Abomination

An analysis of the 2024 presidential election by FiveThirtyEight found that while the election was close, President Joe Biden was still favored to win, despite his poor debate performance.

FiveThirtyEight found that Biden was favored to win the November presidential election “50 times out of 100,” whereas former President Donald Trump was favored to win the presidential election “49 times out of 100.”

The predicted outcomes were a result of FiveThirtyEight’s “simulations of the 2024 presidential election.”

Out of 1,000 simulations, FiveThirtyEight found that Biden won 505 times, while Trump won 491 times. There were four times when the simulations were reported to have no winner in the presidential election between Biden and Trump.

“It’s 120 days until Election Day, and our model thinks the presidential election could go either way,” FiveThirtyEight wrote in a July 8 update. “Right now, President Joe Biden is favored to win in 505 out of 1,000 of our model’s simulations of how the election could go, while former President Donald Trump wins in 491 of our simulations. There is still a small chance of the pure chaos scenario: In 4 simulations, no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives.”

This comes after Biden’s performance at the June 27 presidential debate against Trump, where he appeared to freeze, spoke with a hoarse voice, and had trouble getting through his prepared closing statement.

Since then, Biden has faced increasing calls from several donors and Democrats to withdraw from the presidential election and “step aside” to allow another candidate to run.

Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix. has been among the Democrat donors calling for Biden to “step aside.” Most recently, George Clooney penned an op-ed in the New York Times revealing that he does not believe Biden can win the presidential election, weeks after he hosted a fundraiser for Biden.

A recent Emerson/DemNextGen poll found that Trump is currently leading Biden in six swing states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia.