Trump tops Harris in Nate Silver’s model weeks out from election
BY LAUREN IRWIN 10/17/24 04:22 PM ET
Former President Trump has taken a narrow lead over Vice President
Harris in pollster Nate Silver’s prediction model just weeks out from
Election Day.
While the race remains essentially a toss-up, Trump now leads Harris by
just more than half a percentage point, 50.2 percent to 49.5 percent, in
the model updated Thursday afternoon.
“However nominal, it’s Trump’s first lead in our model since Sept. 19,”
Silver wrote on his Silver Bulletin site.
The political forecaster noted that Harris was leading Trump a day earlier
by about a point, 50.3 percent to 49.4 percent.
The former president picked up ground with “some good polls” entering
the database Thursday, Silver wrote, including a 2-point lead in a Fox
News poll and a lead in a Georgia survey.
Subscribe Now
The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the
Campaign and Election News newsletter
Subscribe
Harris took the lead in Silver’s polling aggregation model nearly a month
ago. Neither candidate gained nor lost much ground after participating in
the earlier Sept. 10 presidential debate, but Harris was performing well in
five swing states that gave her the edge.
Still, in September, Silver cautioned that things could flip before Election
Day. He shared the same message in his Thursday post.
“There’s a good chance that the lead will continue to shift back and forth,
akin to a 110-109 basketball game late in the fourth quarter,” he wrote.
Harris was riding high on momentum just a few short months ago. After
receiving President Biden’s endorsement when he exited the race and she
became Democrats’ nominee at the party’s convention, she was gaining
ground quickly over Trump nationally and in swing states.
But recent polls suggest that energy has leveled off, with Trump gaining
ground nationally and in the battleground states in the final weeks of the
election.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling index, Harris has a 2.7
percentage point lead over Trump, 49.8 percent support to 47.1 percent.
“I’ve never seen an election in which the forecast spent more time in the
vicinity of 50/50, and I probably never will,” Silver wrote last week, saying
the race will likely remain a toss-up until Election Day.
|
|