Pollster Nate Silver predicts Trump will win presidential election next month

Veteran pollster Nate Silver on Tuesday said his "gut feeling" is that former President Donald Trump will win the presidential election next month, but that the race is still up in the air. 

The prediction, which was published in a New York Times op-ed, comes as an aggregate of polls on RealClearPolling shows Trump winning the electoral college, while Vice President Kamala Harris leads in the popular vote. But Trump's lead in the swing states are within the margin of error in most polls.

Silver has been tracking presidential elections since former President Barack Obama's victory in 2008.

“In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast,” Silver wrote. “Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: ‘C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?' So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.”

The pollster defended the gut feeling by observing that polls have underestimated Trump in the past two presidential elections. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the clear favorite in 2016, but lost to Trump, and Trump fared better than expected against President Joe Biden in 2020.

Silver also noted that if Trump does win, one clear sign could be that Democrats no longer have the "clear edge" when it comes to party identification, because many more people now identify as Republicans.

The FiveThirtyEight founder also warned that polls could be wrong about Harris, since the pollsters are too focused on measuring support for Trump. One way these polls could be wrong is by weighing people based on who they believe they voted for in 2020.

“People often misremember or misstate whom they voted for and are more likely to say they voted for the winner,” Silver wrote. “That could plausibly bias the polls against Harris because people who say they voted for Biden but actually voted for Trump will get flagged as new Trump voters when they aren’t."

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.