Silver, founder of the FiveThirtyEight polling analysis site, emphasized that his model has reduced the race between the Republican nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris to pretty much a 50-50 proposition.
“Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: ‘C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?’” he wrote in an essay for The New York Times on Wednesday. “So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.”
Silver added an important caveat.
“But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine,” he continued. “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 is a well-known statistician who gained prominence for correctly predicting the outcome in 49 out of 50 states for the 2008 election won by Barack Obama and in all 50 for Obama’s repeat victory in 2012. In 2016, his polling model gave the victorious Trump a 29% chance of winning ― but it was reportedly among the highest indicators of a possible Trump upset. In 2020, his data favored the eventual winner, Joe Biden.
In his Times piece, Silver strongly questions the “shy-voter theory” that many Trump voters don’t reveal their preference for fear of social stigma. He also offered this intriguing tidbit: “There’s about a 60 percent chance that one candidate will sweep at least six of seven battleground states.”