Nate Silver, the statistician and founder of the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, has revealed what he believes has been the single worst decision of the 2024 election race, with election day now less than a week away.
On the latest episode of Risky Business, the podcast Silver hosts with Maria Konnikova, he said that having Biden run in the 2024 election was the worst decision during the campaign.
Speaking on the podcast, Konnikova said: "If Kamala Harris loses the election next week I think we've crowned the single worst decision, this will be squarely on President Biden's shoulders for not deciding to step away from the race and say that he was not going to be running for a second term. Do you agree with that?"
"Absolutely," Silver responded. "That's the core fact of this campaign."
"Biden running was the worst decision, replacing him was the best decision by either party in the campaign," Silver said.
Newsweek has reached out to a representative for Biden via email for comment.
Initially, this year's presidential race was between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. But the race underwent a seismic shift when Biden withdrew from the race in July, following poor debate performance against Trump and concerns about his age.
Vice President Kamala Harris then became the Democratic nominee, a move which quickly altered the dynamics of the race to the White House.
Silver also spoke about decisions made by the Trump campaign. He said that "Trump's worst decision? I guess JD Vance."
He added: "He [Trump] wasn't very prepped for that debate from Harris, maybe he shouldn't have accepted the early debate from Biden because that gave Biden a chance to skate free."
Newsweek has reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.
Konnikova said: "With the Harris campaign we have one clear worse decision and one clear best decision. With the Trump campaign we have a lot of bad decisions but unclear which is the worst decision. They didn't do anything as egregious as the Democratic camp when it came to the Biden decision."
"It's not a campaign where you would go and give anyone high marks," Silver said.
Now less than a week out from election day, and Harris and Trump are locked in a dead heat race to win the White House, with Harris narrowly maintaining her lead over the former President.
According to FiveThirtyEight, the vice president is ahead by 1.4 points nationally in the polls. She has 48.1 percent support, while Trump has 46.7 percent.
On the other hand, RealClearPolling has put Trump marginally ahead of Harris, with 48.4 percent to her 48 percent.
Newsweek has reached out to the Harris campaign via email for comment.
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