Nate Silver Says Newest Harris-Trump Polling Left Him ‘A Little Surprised’

Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump in the latest forecast from Nate Silver‘s election model, known as The Silver Bulletin, showing Harris with 49.2 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 46.3 percent.

Following the latest update to his newsletter, published on September 23, Silver posted on his X account that while recent polls in key swing states were favorable for Trump, he was “a little surprised” the model didn’t shift more in his favor, despite a poor series of polls for Harris.

“A little surprised that the model didn’t move more toward Trump, but a poor series of NYT/Siena polls for Harris in Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina was offset by a strong poll for her in Wisconsin,” Silver wrote.

Despite Trump’s gains in several battleground states, Harris maintains a narrow lead, according to Silver’s projections. In Pennsylvania, Harris is ahead with 48.9 percent compared to Trump’s 47.4 percent, marking a 1.5-point advantage for the vice president.

Similarly, in Michigan, Harris holds 49.3 percent of the vote to Trump’s 46.9 percent, a gap of 2.4 points. Wisconsin, another critical swing state, sees Harris with 49.7 percent compared to Trump’s 47.5 percent, according to the model​.

Within contested states, Harris is also leading in Nevada, Minnesota, and New Mexico, while Trump leads in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, and Texas.

Silver wrote in the newsletter that “honestly, we don’t know” who is going to win the election, a sentiment shared by other pollsters recently.

“For half a century, we have gone into Election Day with a clear idea of who was going to win—even in 2000,” the newsletter stated. “That’s unlikely to be the case this year. We are probably going to hit November 5 with no sense of who the next president is likely to be. This situation is without modern precedent and it will create dangers for the post-election period.”

Silver, known for his work with the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight before founding The Silver Bulletin, called the race between Harris and Trump a “toss-up” in August. This came weeks after he had written in the same newsletter that Trump was certain to win against the then-presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden.

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 at 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 the 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.