Nate Silver Says TRUMP'S THE FAVORITE Heading Into Debate

tonight is the presidential debate the first possibly of three or maybe the first of just one uh between Donald Trump uh and KLA Harris in advance of that debate Poland Guru Nate silver predicts Trump has 64% chance of winning the Electoral College in latest forecast that's right Nate silver has the silver bulletin now on substack he was able to monetize his predictions he doesn't have 538 anymore now he's going Indie and uh he pay walls I I didn't know that yeah yeah now now he's on a substack uh yes so if you go to 538 that's now uh something else uh polling Guru Nate silver and his election prediction model gave Donald Trump a 63.8% chance of winning the Electoral College in an update to his latest election forecast on Sunday after a New York Times Sienna College poll found the former president leading vice president kamla Harris by 1 percentage Point Harris has come out ahead in several National polls and swing state polls since taking over the top of the ticket however the results of the new New York Times Sienna College poll according to Silver show that the results of the poll confirm the election model's view that there was a shift in momentum in the race the New York Times Sienna College poll also found more voters said Harris is too liberal or Progressive on key policy issues than voters who said they consider Trump to be quote too conserv conservative according to his model Harris has just a 36% chance of winning the Electoral College and overall leads Trump by two and a half points in Silver's National polling average a new New York Times Sienna College poll this morning contained excellent news for Donald Trump this is a quote showing him one point ahead in a head-to-head matchup against KLA Harris and two points up with minor candidates included this is one of our highest rated pollsters so it has a fair amount of influence on the numbers reducing Harris's lead in our national polling average to 2 and A2 which would put her in dangerous territory in the Electoral College silver wrote in the update at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday silver initially wrote on Wednesday that Trump's chances of winning the Electoral College have increased from 52.4 to 58.2 since the end of August Harris's odds had decreased from 473 to 416 in that same time frame silver also noted that if Harris performed well in the debate the New York Times poll might not matter the good news for Harris is that there's debate on Tuesday and if she turns in a strong performance nobody is going to care so much about the times poll we'll have a longer narrative update on the state of the race coming later today he wrote silver also said on Wednesday that Michigan and Pennsylvania both key swing States might prove to be a problem for her in Pennsylvania polling averages had Harris plus 1.8 pred DNC but it's now Harris plus one that's before any convention B uh adjustment which is implemented at a later stage of the model in Michigan the polling average has fallen from Harris plus 3.1 to Harris plus 1.9 silver pointed to multiple key portions of the New York Times poll in an additional post on Sunday specifically the fact that 47% of Voters see Harris as too liberal quote but Harris also blew one big opportunity to tack to the center with her selection of Tim wals rather than Josh Shapiro that tiny minority of progressives objected to Shapiro was an argument in Shapiro's favor if anything there you go that's what they think of you guys Kyle and Crystal I think Waltz was a decent enough pick on his own merits but given an opportunity to offer a tangible signal of the direction her presidency was headed she reverted to 2019 mode he's referring to when she ran on that sort of Progressive quote unquote ticket of I'm for Medicare for all at the first that was the most notable example of that so you know Nate silver used to be a very credible guy uh believe it or not in 2012 he called the Romney versus Obama race exactly right 50 out of 50 states every single state he called right not only that he got the margins uncannily close to being right I mean he was pretty much spot that's what made his name in that election and that is what made his name then he started reading his own press and now he is you know fancies himself more as much a pundit as a data analyst and that's where you get that bit of you know editorializing not good at it yeah right the editorializing that you know uh Shapiro would have been a better pick than Walts he's very much a water carrier for the establishment Democrats now not that there's much difference between establishment de Democrats and progressives now but he still Toes that very very inside Cent line yeah exactly I mean it's a less meaningful difference now than it was in the past but by 2020 even by 2016 he was basically a Hillary Clinton Water carrier um and in in this example though in the 2012 race because he was so close because he got everything pretty much spot on I mean that was pretty much 100% accurate his take there state by state it was 100% accurate um he wrote a book called The Signal and the noise which is actually a very interesting book from a data analyst perspective this was before he started giving his takes on things right it's back when he was just a math guy and uh the premise of that book is that when you are looking to predict any kind of outcome that involves analyzing lots of data where there's a lots of information there's going to be a ton of information most of which he categorizes as noise that doesn't mean it's fake information it means it's not relevant to predicting the outcome and the challenge when you're going to make a prediction model is to find within that noise a signal a through line and what this new New York Times cenap pole seems to be telling him um is that the signal of the race the signal probably the most relevant um uh piece of data or or piece of data to track throughout the poll is the anti-incumbency sentiment the fact that voters overwhelmingly see this as a change election and only 25% of Voters see KLA as a change from Joe Biden right right right that could prove insurmountable because that macro dnamic could be enough to sway enough swing states to put Trump over the top and don't forget one of the things we've gone over in weeks past is that Trump has essentially expanded the map to the point where now I would say with kamla instead of Biden Virginia and Colorado those are pretty safe Democrat States now but there's not one state that Trump won in 2020 that he's really in any serious danger of losing maybe North Carolina but very unlikely um by contrast half of the Swing States if not all of the Swing States the Democrats won in 2020 they are in danger of losing in fact you could probably say every single one with the possible exception of New Hampshire but Michigan Wisconsin Pennsylvania Georgia Arizona Nevada those Six States Trump only needs two of them really uh depending on which ones two or three depending on which ones um so there's just more there's more opportunities for it to break for Trump than there is for kamla that's why he has it figured a little over 60% chance that's why you say Trump is the favorite is he the oddson overwhelming favorite I wouldn't say that because he still has to flip some states that are going to be tough for him to flip um you would think he has to win at least one of those blue wall States Michigan Pennsylvania Wisconsin which at the end of the day Republic also mentions Michigan would be tough for Kam it is well that's the thing like he only needs really one of those he doesn't need all three of them so maybe kamala's likely to win all three of them but if she's if she's two-thirds likely to win all three of them it means she's likely to lose one of them in which case she's likely to lose so so that's where I think he he gets at that now obviously he sees the debate tonight as a major opportunity to reset the narrative which it is I think you know generally speaking debates are pretty much pointless I think they're pointless except for in cases where one candidate melts down as what as is what happened in June or in cases where the race is as close as it is and don't mistake the 63% chance of victory for Trump As Trump has 63% of Voters in the polls no no no no it's a 63% chance that Trump will eek it out by a narrow margin states to win through the Electoral College so it's very close and when the race is this close debates do matter and so the stakes are pretty high for this evening no doubt right and uh you know kamala's people having seen how the first debate went and how having the mics muted benefited Trump because it forced discipline on him they realized that was a mistake and that was a big part of the contention over the last month about this because they wanted the mics on right really and you know Greg Foreman the black conservative says this and I think he's right they wanted that I I'm speaking now moment that was why they wanted the mics on they wanted Kamala to be able to pull a excuse me right I'm speaking and oh big viral moment and now they're not GNA get that fact don't forget she did that not just to the protesters this year but she did that to Mike Pence four years ago that was the big thing right she she wanted to do that with Trump now she's not going to get to do that the fact that the mics are off makes it much less likely that Trump melts down um however you know kamla if you feed her her lines if she knows what's coming if she's very prepared um she can te for momentarily cover over how essentially weird and creepy she is um so I'm I'm not predicting a meltdown on her part I I would imagine they've prepped her for if Donald Trump starts talking about Willie Brown or something completely unpredictable go to your talking points don't engage don't let him drag you into anything like that it's Trump he could go there um just just keep going and you could you could see that even in the one interview that she granted the the uh The Peasants um where they brought up the are you really black and she was like well he's going to do that she they definitely are telling her don't engage on those things with him yeah yeah for sure now you know a few weeks ago i' have told you Trump is more liable to get too aggressive out of panic that the momentum has reversed so much but the momentum has really kind of stabilized now um which is something that silver wrote about in his piece and so he's less likely to make those mistakes this could be a boring wonky policy debate for all the hype and if Trump executes that if he executes that well then a boring wonky policy debate favors him because the two top issues on voters minds are inflation and immigration and the Republicans are heavily favored on both of those issues right so if this is a boring debate and he stays on script and pounds those issues then it will favor him and the other thing that you know you have to figure gives him a slight Edge this evening is that unlike 2020 where he was just chomping at the bit to go at Joe Biden and he overdid it and up he didn't give Jo Biden a chance to embarrass himself cuz he jumped down his throat every minute he now has a proof of concept of what success looks like when he controls himself like he he saw that when he held back against Biden not only did Biden look bad but he looked better right and that was just a couple of months ago so now his team could point to remember Cartman two months ago when you controlled yourself for an hour and a half unlike every other day of your life yeah exactly that works do that do that and there's a chance he does stick to that so yeah like I said we're going to be live at 9:00 um and the stakes are are are pretty high given the closeness of the race um but I think it could potentially be as Russell said a pretty tame Affair and a tame Affair really favors who's has a lead on the issues and that there's no doubt Trump has a lead on the issues I this is this is why I I felt over the summer during all those weeks ago when she was named the nominee that her momentum was more apparent than real sure people are just relieved to get Joe Biden out it's a it's a new flavor everyone's excited for a minute she announces her VP they have the convention of course the media is completely in the tank for her so the positive coverage is Relentless that was bound to Peter Out and because Trump has such structural advantages on the issues yeah now things are shifting back towards reality she's not the shiny new object she was the most most unpopular vice president in modern history a a month ago so what all of a sudden she's gonna have this enormous base of support it it was it it never really made any sense that it was gonna that was going to hold please clap [Applause]