Former President Donald Trump is the favorite to win November's presidential election for the first time since August 7, according to the latest model from polling analytics website FiveThirtyEight.
The most recent FiveThirtyEight update published on Friday gave the Republican a 51 percent chance of victory on November 5 against 49 percent for Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. FiveThirtyEight said it ran 1,000 simulations of its election model, producing 510 wins for Trump, 486 for Harris, and four with no winner.
Recent polling suggests the presidential election remains closely fought, with an analysis of recent polling published on Friday by FiveThirtyEight giving Harris a 2.1 percent lead in the popular vote. However, due to the Electoral College system, the vice president could win the popular vote but lose overall, as Hillary Clinton did against Trump in 2016.
An analysis of betting odds from major bookmakers, calculated on Friday by data aggregator RealClearPolitics, found Trump's average odds of victory were 58.5 percent, against 40.4 percent for Harris.
The latest analysis saw Trump pick up an average of 271 Electoral College seats, one more than the 270 required for victory, against 267 for Harris. This was the first time the Republican nominee was favored over the vice president since August 7, when the FiveThirtyEight model produced an average result of 270 Electoral College votes for Trump versus 268 for his Democratic rival.
Harris's best result was on September 18, when FiveThirtyEight predicted she would receive an average of 300 Electoral College seats, well ahead of Trump on 238. This came shortly after the sole televised presidential debate between Harris and Trump on September 10 which a CNN flash poll concluded the Democratic candidate had won.
Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden announced he was pulling out of the race, and offered her his endorsement, on July 21. This followed weeks of speculation about the age and cognitive abilities of the 81-year-old president after he struggled in a debate against Trump at the end of June.
Harris formally accepted the Democrats' 2024 presidential nomination on August 22 on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Newsweek contacted representatives of the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris presidential election campaigns for comment on Saturday via email outside of regular office hours.
An analysis of swing voters on social media published on Friday by monitoring company Impact Social found that both Harris and Trump had lost ground with this group since the end of September.
The data indicated Harris's approval with swing voters had gone from -8 on September 27 to -17 on October 18, with Trump moving from -10 to -23 with this group over the same period.
Dafydd Townley, an American politics expert at the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth, told Newsweek: "Trump and Harris have become polarizing figures and both are now trying to appeal to voters that are disgruntled with their party's representatives. The undecided voters in swing states will be crucial to this election with it likely to be a victory of fine margins in those battleground states."
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