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Pollster Nate Silver Gives Trump Massive Edge To Defeat Harris

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


If you watch the mainstream media you would be forgiven if you thought that Vice President Kamala Harris defeating former President Donald Trump was inevitable, but experts do not see it that way.

Nate Silver, who founded the polling website FiveThirtyEight and who now publishes his own election model on Substack has the former president with a massive advantage.

The model he published on Wednesday showed the former president with a 58.2 percent chance of recapturing the White House and had the vice president at 41.6 percent.

Last week the model had the odds at 52.4 vs. 47.3 in favor of the former president and the pollster said the reason for the vice president’s fall is that her national polling numbers have not been matched in the battleground states that tend to decide presidential elections.

“There’s room to debate the convention bounce stuff, but Harris has been getting a lot of mediocre state polls lately. The chance of Harris winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college has risen to 18%,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

“In addition to Pennsylvania, Michigan has become something of an issue for Harris. National polls and polls of other swing states mostly decent for Harris, but erosion in PA/MI hurts a lot in the model,” the pollster said.

“In PA, our polling averages had Harris +1.8 pre-DNC, but it’s now Harris +1.0. That’s before any convention bounce adjustment, which is implemented at a later stage of the model. In MI, the polling average has fallen from Harris +3.1 pre-DNC to Harris +1.9 now,” he said.

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And it actually got worse for the vice president on Thursday.

“More mediocre swing state polls for Harris, and her lead in national polls is down a tick, too, to 3.0 points. Note that these polling averages aren’t affected by convention bounce stuff,” the pollster said.

“I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling,” he said.

“The Electoral College / popular vote gap has gotten quite bad for Harris. Now a 20% chance she wins the popular vote but loses the EC,” he said.

And before anyone accuses him of being a “Trumper” he went on to explain in another post that he intends to vote for the vice president.

And he is not the only one sounding the alarm for her.

CNN’s political director, David Chalian, noted that white voters without college degrees are a particularly problematic group for Harris, whereas Trump has a significant advantage.

“If you look at the white voters without college degrees, this is a Trump-based constituency, obviously,” said Chalian. “You see his huge numbers with this group. You see that this is a trouble sign for Harris.” He further noted that the vice president is also struggling with another key demographic: white, college-educated voters in battleground states.

“She probably wants to make up some ground with white college-educated voters across these battlegrounds as well,” Chalian said.

A significant decline in support for Harris among white voters, regardless of their educational background, could jeopardize her chances, the expert noted.

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Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration got some more bad news this week.

The U.S. economy only added 142,000 jobs in August though the unemployment rate marginally decreased to 4.2% from 4.3%, according to Labor Department data released on Friday.

The labor market’s slowdown is a key element that will assist the Federal Reserve in deciding how big of an interest rate decrease to announce later this month. The August statistics fell short of the projected 161,000 employment growth.

The updated report also includes noteworthy updates for previous months: Just 89,000 new jobs were created in July, 25,000 fewer than first anticipated. The June increases were reduced to 118,000 from 61,000.

The economy in general, but personal finances in particular, has become the top issue heading into the November election, according to the vast majority of polling over the past year.

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