Silver Bulletin 2024 Biden-Trump forecast archive
Our forecast when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee, frozen on the day he dropped out.
🕒 Last update: 2 p.m, Sunday, July 21: Joe Biden dropped out, and this reflects our final forecast as of when he exited the race. This page will not be updated.
Beginning on July 30, you can click here to see the new version of our forecast with Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Polling averages are free for all readers, while forecasts, probabilities, and additional detail on model inputs require a paid subscription. However, we’ve unlocked the entire Biden-Trump archive so you can get a sense for all the cool charts and graphs that are available to subscribers.
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 are documented here.3) If you’ve received this post by email or are viewing it on the Substack app, we strongly recommend that you instead use the web version for interactive charts. Charts in the app don’t update when we add new data, so switch over to your browser to see our most up-to-date forecast.
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, the presence or absence of RFK Jr., 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.
The data: maybe you’re a stickler for detail?
Do you want to see every poll used in calculating the averages and exactly how much influence it has? Or every economic variable used in our “fundamentals” forecast? Honestly, that’s a little weird. But if you’re a Silver Bulletin subscriber, you probably do — so we’ve got you covered.
Coming attractions: Spreadsheets with yet more detail than we’re displaying on this page will be available soon.
If you notice any bugs in the charts just shoot Eli a message and he’ll get them fixed as quickly as possible.
Nate had a good lawyer and retained the intellectual property rights.
The forecast assumes that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the Democratic and Republican candidates.
We are now unburdened by what has been.
The malarkey got to Joe in the end 😢