Nate Silver: ‘We’re at a point where you’d probably rather have Harris’s hand to play’

Pollster Nate Silver said in his forecast update Friday that “you’d probably rather have [Vice President] Harris’s hand to play.”

Silver argued that the latest batch of national polls have gone in Harris’s favor and was reflected in his election forecast and model, which show the Democratic nominee leading former President Trump by 3 percentage points, 49.1 percent to 46.1 percent, nationally. 

“A lot of polling since our last update, and the model mostly liked it for Harris — especially the national polls, which show her lead expanding to an even 3 points,” Silver wrote in the post published. 

“Forecast still in toss-up range, but we’re at a point where you’d probably rather have Harris’s hand to play,” Silver continued.

While the polls have generally been good for Harris, Silver noted that there is a notable exception in Arizona. A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of the Grand Canyon State had the ex-president up by 6 points over the Democratic nominee.

At the same time, Silver downplayed the results from Arizona. Even though they are bad for Harris, he wrote that his model “somewhat shrugs Arizona polling off since it’s relatively unlikely to be the tipping-point state.” 

In a post on the social platform X, Silver wrote that “positive revisions to economic data booster our economic index quite a bit,” and “that helps Harris too.”

Last week, Harris retook the lead in Silver’s election forecast for the time since late August. 

The Democratic nominee had a narrow lead in six swing states, while she was tied with Trump in Georgia, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey, published this week. Harris also enjoys a 4.1 point advantage, 49.9 percent to 45.8 percent, over the former president in the latest The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s latest aggregate of polls.

“Needless to say, stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning,” Silver wrote. “And in America’s polarized political climate, most elections are close and a candidate is rarely out of the running.”