Silver Bulletin 2024 presidential election forecast

All the numbers for Trump vs. Harris.

🕒 Last update: 3 p.m., Friday, October 11. On sketchy plane Wi-Fi so I'll just be expedient about the themes of the week. 1) Best week of swing state polling for Trump since the debate; 2) Nonetheless also probably some tendency for the media to exaggerate what are relatively minor shifts; 3) Also a weird week insofar as Trump has gained ground in what were some of his worst states before but the same is also true for Harris… map is as scrambled (and close) as ever.

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.