As the US presidential election enters its final stages, pollster, statistician and founder of polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silverlisted 24 reasons why Republican hopeful Donald Trump could win the race for the White House in his third bid.
In his recent blog, Silver stated that this election is essentially a toss-up, but Donald Trump is gaining ground.
“This election remains extremely close, but Donald Trump is gaining ground. One of my pet peeves is the idea that this is a Kamala Harris election that they’re losing,” Silver said.
“I could articulate some criticisms of her campaign, but if you look at the factors that have historically determined elections, you will see that she is facing difficult circumstances,” he added.
Here is the list of factors, according to Nate Silver, that favor Donald Trump in the race for the White House.
- According to Vice President Silver, Harris is the favorite to win the popular vote, but the Electoral College tilts in favor of the Republican Party by about 2 percentage points. Nate added that in an era of intense partisanship and close elections, this is inherently difficult for Democrats to overcome.
- Silver said inflation and high prices will also play a key role in the election, as historically very sensitive to inflation. Although inflation is now down, Democrats can also be blamed for this, given the steep increases in government spending during the Covid recovery effort.
- Silver also argued that voter perceptions of the economy lag far behind objective data, and take-home income growth has been sluggish for many years for the working class amid rising corporate profits.
- As for the global trend, Silver said that incumbent parties worldwide are doing very poorly and the historical advantage of incumbency has diminished to the point where it may now be a handicap of incumbency, rather than considering the continuing negative perceptions of the direction of the country.
- The sociologist also said that populism is often a very effective strategy and many Trump voters are indeed “unfortunately” in
Hillary Clinton meaning of the term. - According to Silver, illegal and unauthorized immigration has also increased during the Biden/Harris administration amid a growing global backlash against immigration. That, according to Silver, would also have an impact on votes.
- Harris’ far-left position and unpopular positions in 2019 will also affect her voting prospects, Silver said. He added that Harris also has no real strategy to explain the changing positions.
- According to the pollster, cultural vibes are shifting to the right, and the left continues to pay a price for excesses in 2020 on Covid, crime, “wokeness” and other issues.
- Voters are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance of Trump’s first three years in office and associate the problems of 2020 with Democrats, even though they weren’t in charge at the time, Silver said.
- Silver argues that Democratic dominance among African-American voters and other racial and ethnic minority groups is waning as the memory of the civil rights era fades. Educational polarization, which suggests worsening Democratic outcomes among working-class voters of all races, may also come to dominate other factors. That could bode well for Democrats if Harris makes corresponding gains among white voters, who wield more influence in the Electoral College, but there’s no guarantee, he added.
- According to Silver, many men, especially young men, feel lost amid declining college enrollment, contributing to a shift to the right and a widening gender gap.
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Joe Biden he wanted to be president until he was 86. Voters had extremely reasonable objections to this, and it neutered what should have been one of Harris’ best issues about Trump’s age and cognitive fitness, Silver siad. - According to the pollster, Harris also got a late start in her race, inheriting most of the staff from Biden’s mismanaged campaign. She’s proven herself to be a good candidate in many ways, but it’s always a big jump when an understudy is suddenly thrust into the spotlight.
- Silver added that Harris is aiming to become the first female president. In the only previous attempt, undecideds broke hard against Hillary Clinton, and she underperformed in the polls.
- Silver said trust in the media continues to fall to dire levels. It’s debatable how to place the blame for this between years of conservative efforts to discredit the media, the secular decline of trust in institutions, and various press excesses and hypocrisies. But it is difficult for even legitimate criticism of Trump to penetrate the mainstream public. Trump’s conviction on a series of felony charges, for example, has hardly changed things.
- The sociologist argues that Trump has the makings of a classic con artist, but the con is often effective, and Trump is adept at convincing voters that he is on their side, even if his election would not be in their best interest. Trump also presents Democrats with a three-puppet syndrome problem: a set of plausible attacks so broad that they tend to cancel each other out.
- According to Silver, the Democrats’ college-educated consulting class has a poor instinct for how to appeal to mainstream audiences, while Trump has done more to cultivate support among “strange” fringe voting groups.
- Silver said the Democrats’ argument that Trump is a critical threat to U.S. democracy was a hard sell because Jan. 6 was ultimately missed. It’s counterintuitive to voters that democracy is at stake, and Democrats may have staked too many chips on that line of attack, he added.
- Foreign policy may not matter much to voters, but the world has become more unstable under Biden. There has been a decline in democracy worldwide and an increase in interstate conflicts, crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, worsening relations between the US and China, an increase in immigration flows due to global instability and a withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has negatively affected Biden’s popularity, said Silver.
- Silver argues that the Israel-Hamas war has divided the Democratic base in a way that no similar issue has divided the GOP base.
- According to Silver, there are more left-leaning third-party candidates than right-leaning ones, and the former leading third-party candidate (RFK Jr.) endorsed Trump and undermined Harris’ post-convention momentum.
- The richest man in the world
Elon Musk has become a huge Trump and is doing everything in his power to swing the election to him, Silver said. Twitter/X remains an influential platform among journalists, but has shifted far to the right. Elon and Silicon Valley also created a permission structure for other wealthy elites to advocate explicitly for Trump and provided a new base of money and cultural influence, he added. - Trump was almost killed in an assassination attempt and then had a second one against him. The first attempt was closely linked to a boost in favorability ratings for Trump, and polls show him significantly more popular and likable than in 2016 or 2020, Silver said.
- According to Silver, Harris worked on vibrations and failed to articulate a clear vision for the country. It might have been a good strategy if the “fundamentals” favored it, but they don’t.
A series of polls have shown Harris with a narrow lead over Trump, with a recent Emerson College poll showing her ahead of her by just one point — 49 percent to 48 percent — among likely voters. This follows previous polls in which she had a two-point lead in September and early October and a four-point lead in August.
Meanwhile, a Fox News poll released Wednesday showed Trump regaining his lead over Harris by 50 percent to 48 percent among likely voters. That marked a change from Harris’ previous lead of 50% to 48% in September, after Trump led her 50% to 49% in August.
