Silver Bulletin 2024 presidential election forecast

All the numbers for Trump vs. Harris.

🕒 Last update: 10:45 a.m., Saturday, November 2. At this point, there’s enough new polling that it’s hard to know exactly what’s influencing the model, but Harris is gaining in our forecast, and it’s converging toward a truly 50/50 forecast. A strong set of YouGov polls, plus a Washington Post poll showing her ahead by 1 point in Pennsylvania, are surely part of the reason why. Her win probability remains ever-so-slightly below Trump’s but is the highest it has been in two weeks.

Let’s cut to the chase: So, who’s gonna win the election?

Well, honestly, we don’t know — but we can give you our best probabilistic guess. This is the landing page for the 2024 Silver Bulletin presidential election forecast. It will always contain the most recent data from the model.¹

The model is the direct descendant of the f/k/a FiveThirtyEight election forecast² and the methodology is largely the same, other than removing COVID-19 provisions introduced for 2020. Other changes from 2020 are documented here. And an archive of the Biden-Trump forecast can be found here.

The polls: who’s ahead right now?

The Silver Bulletin polling averages are a little fancy. They adjust for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects. They weight more reliable polls more heavily. And they use national polls to make inferences about state polls and vice versa. It requires a few extra CPU cycles — but the reward is a more stable average that doesn’t get psyched out by outliers.

The forecast: so you’re telling me there’s a chance?

Needless to say, stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning. And in America’s polarized political climate, most elections are close and a candidate is rarely out of the running. So here is how our model translates polls and the other inputs it uses into probabilities in the Electoral College and the popular vote in every state — plus some nightmare scenarios like a repeat of the 2000 Florida recount. (It’s more likely than you might think, alas.) We’re not afraid of playing the percentages here — even to the decimal place.