Donald Trump's Chances of Winning a Landslide, According to Nate Silver

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Donald Trump's chances of winning seven key swing states and securing a landslide victory are at 21.4 percent, nearly double Kamala Harris' 12.6 percent, according to leading pollster Nate Silver.

Silver's election forecast model outlines all possible paths to victory for either candidate, looking at every combination of the seven key tipping-point states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump winning all seven swing states would result in him getting 312 Electoral College votes, well above the 270 he needs to secure the presidency.

Of all of the possible scenarios, Silver's model predicts a Trump clean-sweep of these swing states to be most likely. Harris winning all of these states is the second likeliest outcome.

Silver, a leading polling analyst and founder of polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, has his own model to predict election outcomes on his Substack, the Silver Bulletin. This model is built upon the FiveThirtyEight election forecast methodology.

Silver's model shows Harris has a slight lead over Trump in the average of national polls, with the vice president at 48.5 percent and the former president at 47.8 percent.

However, Silver's model predicts that while Harris is much likelier to win the popular vote, Trump has a greater chance of winning the Electoral College, 52.6 percent to her 47 percent.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 while also losing the popular vote, becoming the fifth president in U.S. history to do so.

Donald Trump
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives at a rally in Novi, Michigan, on October 26, 2024. His chances of winning a landslide are nearly twice those of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, says Nate Silver. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The likely election winner has fluctuated repeatedly since Harris became her party's presumptive nominee in July, according to Silver's model. Trump's chances of winning overtook Harris' on October 14.

Polling in this election cycle has been remarkably close, with key battleground states showing the candidates leading each other by razor-thin margins that often fall within the polls' margins of error.

This means that anything could happen on Election Day—with a landslide possible for either candidate or a tightly contested race.

There is no precise definition of what constitutes a "landslide," but political scientist Gerald Hill previously told The Associated Press that "it usually means exceeding expectations and being somewhat overwhelming."

Silver's model defines a landslide as a double-digit popular vote margin. By this definition, the model predicts Harris' chances to achieve this at 1.1 percent, and Trump's at 0.1 percent.

In an op-ed for The New York Times published on October 23, Silver wrote: "In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast."

He said that while the data showed a coin-flip race, his gut said Trump will be reelected.

"But I don't think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone's gut—including mine," he added.

Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email.

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