Nate Silver Gives Election Prediction as Favorite to Win Changes
Polling expert Nate Silver has issued a fresh election forecast just hours before polls open, with a new favorite to win, while the race is still neck and neck.
According to Silver's forecast, Vice President Kamala Harris now has a 50 percent chance of winning the Electoral College to former President Donald Trump 's 49.6 percent. Harris is projected to win 271 votes while Trump is expected to win 267, per the forecast.
The model shows a 0.3 percent chance of a tie in the Electoral College occurring, in which case the election would move to the U.S. House of Representatives, where the newly elected members of Congress would have to be sworn in and then vote on who becomes president. In this scenario, Trump would likely win, according to Silver.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email.
It comes after Silver's Monday forecast showed that Trump was the favorite to win the election, with a 50.4 percent chance of winning the Electoral College to Harris's 49.2 percent. The day before, Trump had a 52.6 percent chance of winning to Harris's 47 percent.
At the end of September, Harris was the favorite to win the election, according to Silver's forecast, but at the beginning of October, the vice president saw her chances plunge as Trump made gains in crucial battleground states. Since then, the race has been virtually tied.
"When I say the odds in this year's presidential race are about as close as you can possibly get to 50/50, I'm not exaggerating," Silver wrote in his most recent newsletter.
Trump is now projected to win in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, while Harris is predicted to take Michigan and Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania is virtually tied.
Other polling aggregators also show that the race is tight, but give Harris a slight edge. For example, FiveThirtyEight's forecast shows that Harris currently has a 50 percent chance of winning to Trump's 49 percent, with Harris on 270 Electoral College votes to Trump's 268. The Economist's forecast shows the same prediction.
Meanwhile, polling trackers from The New York Times ' and the BBC show Harris and Trump within 1 point of each other but give Harris the edge.
It comes after Marist College released their highly-anticipated final polls across the Midwestern states on Friday, which found Harris ahead of Trump by 3 points in Michigan, 2 points in Pennsylvania, and 2 points in Wisconsin, which would likely see her win the election.
But not all polls were so positive for Harris. An Atlas Intel poll conducted between November 3 and 4 found Trump leading in every swing state, with the former president ahead by as much as 5 points in Arizona. Meanwhile, an Echelon Insights survey released last week found Trump up 5 points in Pennsylvania, which is crucial to win to claim victory. However, all seven swing states are still within the margin of error and remain anybody's to win.
But FiveThirtyEight warned that although the polls are close, this does not necessarily mean the overall result will be close.
"A close race in the polls does not necessarily mean the outcome will be close," the pollsters wrote on their website.
