Vice President Kamala Harris is favored to win four critical swing states against former President Donald Trump, according to Nate Silver’s presidential model.
With the presidential election a month-and-a-half away, Harris, the Democratic nominee, has over a 50 percent chance of winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, Silver currently predicts.
Swing state polls are more likely to give a better glimpse into what November’s election results will look like since national polls essentially show the popular vote, which does not guarantee a win. Since U.S. presidents are chosen based on the Electoral College system, Harris or Trump, the GOP’s nominee, will need the help of swing states, or states in which the electorate is more mixed in terms of which political party they voted for in the past, to get to at least 270 electoral votes, which is needed to win the presidency.
The Harris campaign has declined to comment on this article when contacted by Newsweek on Sunday morning. Newsweek also reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on September 20 in Atlanta. Harris is favored to win four critical swing states against former President Donald Trump, according to Nate Silver’s presidential model.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Michigan
The Democratic nominee has a 63 percent chance of winning Michigan, with a tipping-point probability of 14 percent, according to Silver’s numbers as of Saturday. Michigan has 15 electoral votes.
A tipping-point probability is the probability that winning a state will give the Electoral College winner their 270th electoral vote.
Silver is considered one of the leading polling analysts in the U.S. He was the founder of ABC News’ poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight but is no longer affiliated with either of them.
According to Silver’s calculated polling averages for the two nominees, Harris leads the former president in Michigan by 2.4 points (49.3 to 46.9 percent) as of Saturday. Harris is slightly more ahead of Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average in Michigan, which has Harris at 48.6 percent of the vote and Trump at 45.9 percent (a difference of 2.7 points), according to Saturday’s numbers.
Silver said that Michigan is “the one swing state you could probably say is leaning Harris rather than a pure toss-up” in a Substack post from Saturday.
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, Harris has a win probability of 57 percent and a tipping-point probability of 32 percent. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes.
The vice president has 48.9 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania compared to Trump’s 47.4 percent, which is a 1.5-point lead, according to Silver’s numbers. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight has Harris ahead of Trump by 1.4 points (48.2 to 46.8 percent).
Silver said it’s more likely that Pennsylvania “will be slightly Republican-leaning, as it was in the prior two elections” in his recent Substack post.
Wisconsin
Harris has a 56 percent chance of winning Wisconsin and the state’s tipping-point probability for her is 16 percent.