Former President Donald Trump was projected to win the 2024 presidential election in a blowout, according to famed polling expert Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight's latest projection.
Silver's model has Trump defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the electoral college vote by a 63.8% to 36% margin. The pollster also has Trump defeating Harris in all of the crucial battleground states to win 312 electoral college votes.
Last week, Silver reported that Trump was gaining momentum on Harris with a 58.2% at winning the Electoral College in November compared to Harris' 41.6% chance.
“Trump’s chances of winning are his highest since July 30,” Silver wrote on his Substack. “And the chance of an Electoral College-popular vote split working against Harris has risen to almost 18 percent.”
Silver also acknowledged that choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over crucial swing state Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, as well as retaining a strong percentage of Biden's staff, were potential missteps.
“Thought convention speech was good, but bypassing Shapiro beginning to look bad and they haven’t really found a 2nd gear after Hot Brat Summer,” Silver wrote on X.
“I think I’d buy the bull case for Harris a bit more if she hadn’t rehired so many of the Biden people," Silver added in a separate post.
Silver gained notoriety for successfully predicting 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, as well as former President Barack Obama's re-election win in 2012 and Biden's win in the 2020 election. The pollster was, however, criticized for giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning over Trump after the former president 304 electoral college votes to win the election.
"I think people shouldn’t have been so surprised," Silver told the Harvard Gazette in 2017. "Clinton was the favorite, but the polls showed, in our view, particularly at the end, a highly competitive race in the Electoral College. We had him with a 30 percent chance, and that’s a pretty likely occurrence. Why did people think it was much less than that? I think there are a few things."
Harris and Trump are scheduled to participate in a presidential debate moderated by ABC News Tuesday (September 10) night.