Nate Silver, statistician and founder of polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, has announced his election plans for the November election.
At a press conference on Friday, former President Donald Trump praised Silver after giving the Republican candidate a 56 percent chance of winning the election, calling Silver a “very respected person.”
In the episode on Risky businesspodcast hosted by Maria Konnikova, Silver said he will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m going to vote for Harris,” Silver said, after saying he tried to be nonpartisan to the audience.
He also discussed the candidates’ chances of winning after the debate on Tuesday: “Before the debate, it was like Trump 54, Harris 46. This is not a vote share. This is the probability of winning. And after, 50-50,” Silver said.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
The Silver Bulletin model shows Harris at 48.7 percent in the polls, with Trump at 46.7 percent.
“He’s, right now, at 49 percent of the vote in the polls,” Silver said on the podcast. “To win, he needs to reach 51 percent-51 because he has a disadvantage in all possibilities in the Electoral College.”
Despite previously showing Trump surging in the polls, Silver’s model is now neck and neck with Harris. Newsweek has contacted Silver via email for comment.
In a post on X, before Twitter, Silver also identified four “mistakes” that Trump made during the campaign:
- Vance
- Meandering speech convention, blowing the moment of goodwill
- Not prepared for Harris swap
- Clearly not prepped well for tonight’s debate and / or unable to sustain A-game
We’ll see where the model goes in 2 weeks, but 4 big mistakes for the Trump campaign so far:
1. Month
2. Meandering speech convention, blowing the moment of goodwill
3. Not prepared for Harris swap
4. Clearly not well prepared for tonight’s debate and/or unable to keep up his A-game https://t.co/NriJXbmqoQ— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 11, 2024
Silver previously said he voted for Barack Obama. In 2008, he mentioned it in the FAQ section of his website, where he stated that he generally voted for the Democratic candidate, and that he specifically mentioned supporting Obama during that election year.
Pollsters have addressed concerns about whether their political views influence their predictions, stressing that their predictions are based on statistical methods.
In the 2023 episode of the podcast FreakonomicsSilver discusses approaches to data science and confidence in dealing with uncertainty and probabilistic thinking. He explained how he had the power to refine his best predictions based on imperfect information, a skill he honed as a professional poker player. Silver emphasizes the value of quickly understanding a data set and getting to the “gist” of it while acknowledging uncertainty.
He also talked about the methodology for making predictions, explaining that it involves balancing rigorous analysis with the efficiency needs of real-time data journalism. Silver acknowledged the difficulty of forecasting, adding that sometimes forecasts can be wrong. However, he defended the approach by highlighting the importance of transparency and continuous method refinement.
After announcing his plans to vote for Harris, Silver spoke Risky business: “If I’m being super-duper honest, I mean, most of the audience for this type of high-profile news content is Democratic-leaning voters. The newsletter audience is very college-educated. When Harris is doing well in the polls, we might convert better (for paid subscriptions ).”
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