Nate Silver Touts Kamala Harris’ ‘Very Good Day’ of Polls

Kamala Harris continues to be on a polling hot streak since her debate against former President Donald Trump, according to the latest update from Nate Silver’s election forecast.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Silver’s polling averages show that the vice president is leading Trump by 3.1 percentage points nationwide (49.1 percent to 46 percent). While Silver has predicted for several weeks that Trump has a higher chance of victory, Harris has started to make gains in a handful of battleground states, boosting her probability of securing the necessary 270 electoral votes in November.
“Another very good day of polling for Kamala Harris,” Silver wrote in his latest update of the Silver Bulletin.
He specifically highlighted a survey from Quinnipiac University released earlier in the day that found Harris ahead in three swing states: Michigan (50 percent to 45 percent), Pennsylvania (51 percent to 45 percent) and Wisconsin (48 percent to 47 percent).
Silver noted that while Quinnipiac polls “have been Democratic-leaning in recent years,” it is still highly rated, and several other surveys in recent days have shown positive signs for Harris.
FiveThirtyEight’s presidential election forecast released on Wednesday, for example, projected that Harris is set to win all seven swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—that are being closely watched this fall. Six of the seven—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—were won by President Joe Biden in 2020 by narrow margins.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast also gave Harris a 66 percent chance of winning in November, compared to Trump’s 34 percent chance.
Silver’s election model still gives Trump a higher chance of victory—52 percent to 47.6 percent—although the gap has been closing since the debate on September 10. The former president was given a 61.3 percent chance on the day of the debate, while Harris held a 38.4 percent chance.
Harris was also given a higher chance of winning three “Blue Wall” states—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—in Silver’s election model update on Wednesday. The vice president is up 56.4 percent to 43.6 percent in Michigan and 53.7 percent to 46.3 percent in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, which Silver previously had swinging toward Trump, the candidates are now nearly tied, with Trump ahead by just 1 percentage point (50.5 percent to 49.5 percent).
Trump has a higher chance in Arizona (69.1 percent to 30.9 percent), Georgia (64.2 percent to 35.8 percent) and North Carolina (63.9 percent to 36.1 percent), Silver’s model predicts. The former president has a history of underpolling before an election, as well, although many pollsters have updated their methods since 2016 and 2020.
Trump’s campaign claimed in an internal memo following the debate that he received a boost in national polls after the event. Republican strategist Karl Rove, however, called the claim “suspicious,” given the plethora of publicly released polling that suggests otherwise.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.