Nate Silver, a statistician known for accurately predicting several recent election outcomes through polling, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Politically Georgia that the 2024 presidential race is still “highly uncertain” with one week left until Election Day.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Silver said his gut is leaning toward former President Donald Trump. But he emphasized on Politically Georgia Tuesday not to trust anyone’s gut to predict a winner.
“Gut is useless when it comes to forecasting elections,” Silver said. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a polling expert to tell you that this election is very close. We may not know for a couple of days after Nov. 5.”
Silver is the former editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, a website known for statistical analysis of politics, sports and economics on ABC News. He was named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people after accurately predicting former President Barack Obama’s historic win in the 2008 election.
He has faced criticism for his methods in the past and recently got a shoutout from Trump, who called Silver a “very respected guy” that “has me up by a lot.”
Silver said he relies on his statistical model, which pulls together many individual scientific polls and weighs them based on sample size and methodology. His computer program then aggregates the polls to determine the likely frontrunner.
Trump has polled ahead in his best states — better than Vice President Kamala Harris has in her best states, Silver said to the AJC.
“I agree that he’s not an inherently all-that-strong candidate. He’s actually more popular now than he was eight years ago or four years ago,” Silver said. “I think these are more difficult circumstances than the Democrats might want to admit.”
The AJC released a new poll last week that shows Trump with a slight edge, just over the margin of error, above Harris in Georgia. While no one should rely fully on individual polls to provide a complete picture, local polls of individual states have their place, Silver said.
“Those are some of the highest quality polls out there,” Silver said. “Just the local knowledge of the demographic particularities of certain states. You know, Georgia is a state where turnout is very important.”
To hear the full conversation with Nate Silver, listen to the AJC’s Politically Georgia podcast.
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