Nate Silver Predicts Factor That May ‘Determine’ if Harris or Trump Wins

Voter turnout will likely be the deciding factor in the razor-thin presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to polling expert Nate Silver.
“It’s a cliché,” Silver wrote on Silver Bulletin, his Substack publication, “but turnout—particularly whether Donald Trump can turn out his marginal voters…may determine who wins.”
Enthusiasm among voters will likely sway the results, particularly in key battleground states where demographics and past voting trends could drive turnout variability, he said.
Silver projects a total national turnout of approximately 155 million voters, with a confidence interval ranging from 148 million to 162 million, according to his model. He said that’s significantly higher than in 2016, when 137 million went out to vote for president, but slightly lower than 2020’s record turnout of 158.7 million.
“I think I feel OK about projecting a very slight decrease,” Silver said. “The 2020 election was outlier-ish from a turnout standpoint, perhaps in part because people had so many ways to vote (and so little else going on) during COVID.”
One major aspect of the race that Silver discusses is the shifting enthusiasm along party lines. Democrats would actually benefit if overall turnout is lower because this scenario would limit the impact of Trump’s more variable voter base.
“Democrats are now heavily reliant on a coalition of college-educated voters, a group that consistently turns out to vote, even in lower-stakes elections. In contrast, Trump’s base includes more marginal voters, such as young, working-class men who may not vote unless particularly motivated, adding an unpredictable element to the election,” Silver explains.
Silver, known for his work with the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight before launching Silver Bulletin on Substack, labeled the race between the vice president and former president a “toss-up” as recently as August. But Trump has since gained an edge in recent weeks in Silver’s models.
Silver’s popular forecast remains “extremely stable.” On Thursday, Trump’s winning odds were 53.4 percent, with Harris’ at 46.2 percent. The model simulates the race using state-by-state polling data, accounting for the inherent uncertainty and variability within the polls.
This forecast aligns with other models, such as the one from Real Clear Politics, which shows the Republican nominee leading by an average of 0.2 percentage points across swing states and projecting him to win in every battleground state. Should this scenario come to pass, it would amount to a near landslide for Trump, giving him 312 votes in the Electoral College to Harris’ 227.