National Polling Starting to Look Bad for Harris: Nate Silver

With less than two weeks until election day, Vice President Kamala Harris faces troubling signs in the latest polls as her national polling average shrinks and momentum shifts toward former President Donald Trump in what statistician and pollster Nate Silver says is “not a good sign” for Harris.

In Silver’s latest Silver Bulletin update Thursday, he maintains that the election is a toss-up, but notes that Harris, who had been consistently leading in national polls is dropping her average down to 1.3 points. The national model puts Harris at 48.5 percent to Trump’s 47.2 percent.

The model shows a 1.2-point increase in Republican support since the previous week and a 1.7-point increase for Trump since last month. Millions of voters have already cast their ballots in dozens of states across the country as early in-person voting is open in various states as well as mail-in ballots.

Over the past weeks, Trump has narrowed Harris’ lead on the national popular vote and has edged ahead in several key battleground states, where the election is likely to be determined.

The model finds Trump ahead in North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and just barely in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes—more than any other swing state—is likely to determine the outcome of the election. According to Silver, if Trump wins the state he has a 90.3 percent chance of winning the election, whereas if Harris wins Pennsylvania she has a 88.4 percent of winning the presidency.

It is a key state for both campaigns, as Harris’ clearest path to victory next month would be to win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, barring any shock results elsewhere. Trump’s most efficient path to 270 Electoral College votes would be to win the swing states of North Carolina and Georgia while flipping Pennsylvania.

Harris leads in other battleground states, with the model showing her ahead in Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan. All polling averages show very narrow leads for both major party candidates.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Silver shared the most updated aggregate averages, writing that “it’s been a pretty bad run of national polls for Harris.”

Newsweek has reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns for comment via email on Thursday.

However, the Bulletin’s forecast of the popular vote, paints a better picture for Harris, putting her ahead by 1.9 percentage points.

The forecast of popular vote is “not based on national polls but rather from summing up our state-by-state forecasts, and it’s a bit more stable than our national polling average,” Silver wrote in an X post.

Other national aggregate polls show Harris narrowly leading Trump, with four recent national polls released this month indicating the gap has tightened further. The New York Times’ aggregate shows Harris up 49 percent to Trump’s 48 percent, while The Hill shows a slightly tighter lead for Harris of 0.9 percent, 48.7 percent to Trump’s 47.8 percent. RealClear Polling finds Harris with only a 0.2 percentage point lead, 48.7 percent to Trump’s 48.5 percent.

Nationwide and aggregate polls gauge voter sentiment, but individual states and their Electoral College votes ultimately decide the presidential election. To win the presidency, a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes, which doesn’t always align with the national popular vote.

Although Silver’s national popular vote model shows Harris leading, his win probability forecast favors Trump to win the Electoral College, with a 53.7 percent chance compared to Harris’ 46.0 percent.

His latest analysis gives Trump a 24.4 percent chance of winning all seven swing states in November, making it the most likely scenario to occur. Meanwhile, Harris has a 15.6 percent chance of winning all the battleground states, the forecast shows.

Silver’s simulation also shows that Harris would win the election if she took every swing state other than Arizona and Georgia, where Trump is currently ahead. However, according to Silver’s model, there is only a 1.7 percent probability of this happening, while there is a 3.4 percent chance that Harris will win Georgia and not Arizona, and a 2.9 percent probability that the Democrats will win Arizona, but not Georgia.

There is a 4.6 percent likelihood that the Republicans will win every swing state other than Nevada, where Harris is currently leading by a very small margin, according to the model. In this scenario, the vice president would win 232 electoral college votes and Trump would win the presidency.