🕒 Last update: 12 p.m., Saturday, September 14. A raw average of all national polls that contain post-debate interviews shows Kamala Harris up by 3.1 points. Our polling average, still hedging against that with pre-debate data, isn’t there quite yet, although her lead is up to 2.4 points. We may see some higher-quality traditional telephone polling out later this weekend.
But although Harris’s numbers have risen a bit, she’s hindered by some mediocre numbers in post-debate state polls, like this one in North Carolina. Harris did get an intriguingly close poll in Alaska (!), though — we may have more to say about that soon.
Let’s cut to the chase: So, who’s gonna win the election?
Well, honestly, we don’t know — but we can give you our best probabilistic guess. This is the landing page for the 2024 Silver Bulletin presidential election forecast. It will always contain the most recent data from the model.1
The model is the direct descendant of the f/k/a FiveThirtyEight election forecast2 and the methodology is largely the same, other than removing COVID-19 provisions introduced for 2020. Other changes from 2020 are documented here. And an archive of the Biden-Trump forecast can be found here.
The polls: who’s ahead right now?
The Silver Bulletin polling averages are a little fancy. They adjust for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects. They weight more reliable polls more heavily. And they use national polls to make inferences about state polls and vice versa. It requires a few extra CPU cycles — but the reward is a more stable average that doesn’t get psyched out by outliers.
The forecast: so you’re telling me there’s a chance?
Needless to say, stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning. And in America’s polarized political climate, most elections are close and a candidate is rarely out of the running. So here is how our model translates polls and the other inputs it uses into probabilities in the Electoral College and the popular vote in every state — plus some nightmare scenarios like a repeat of the 2000 Florida recount. (It’s more likely than you might think, alas.) We’re not afraid of playing the percentages here — even to the decimal place.