Former President Trump has taken a narrow lead over Vice President Harris in pollster Nate Silver’s prediction model just weeks out from Election Day.
While the race remains essentially a toss-up, Trump now leads Harris by just more than half a percentage point, 50.2 percent to 49.5 percent, in the model updated Thursday afternoon.
“However nominal, it’s Trump’s first lead in our model since Sept. 19,” Silver wrote on his Silver Bulletin site.
The political forecaster noted that Harris was leading Trump a day earlier by about a point, 50.3 percent to 49.4 percent.
The former president picked up ground with “some good polls” entering the database Thursday, Silver wrote, including a 2-point lead in a Fox News poll and a lead in a Georgia survey.
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Harris took the lead in Silver’s polling aggregation model nearly a month ago. Neither candidate gained nor lost much ground after participating in the earlier Sept. 10 presidential debate, but Harris was performing well in five swing states that gave her the edge.
Still, in September, Silver cautioned that things could flip before Election Day. He shared the same message in his Thursday post.
“There’s a good chance that the lead will continue to shift back and forth, akin to a 110-109 basketball game late in the fourth quarter,” he wrote.
Harris was riding high on momentum just a few short months ago. After receiving President Biden’s endorsement when he exited the race and she became Democrats’ nominee at the party’s convention, she was gaining ground quickly over Trump nationally and in swing states.
But recent polls suggest that energy has leveled off, with Trump gaining ground nationally and in the battleground states in the final weeks of the election.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling index, Harris has a 2.7 percentage point lead over Trump, 49.8 percent support to 47.1 percent.
“I’ve never seen an election in which the forecast spent more time in the vicinity of 50/50, and I probably never will,” Silver wrote last week, saying the race will likely remain a toss-up until Election Day.
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