(The Center Square) – A top American pollster and election forecaster said that Vice President Kamala Harris has a much better chance of beating former President Donald Trump than President Joe Biden had before dropping out.
Nate Silver, who made his name at the New York Times and later poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, said Harris has a chance of beating Trump in November.
“Her chances of winning the Electoral College have risen to 43%, close enough that you could almost get away with calling the race a toss-up, something the Biden-Trump matchup never was,” Silver wrote Wednesday in the Silver Bulletin.
Still, Silver said Trump was the favorite to win the Electoral College.
Silver’s polling model showed Harris (44.4%) with a slight edge over Trump (44.2%) and independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (5.1%).
Another poll, released Tuesday, had Trump outperforming Harris in a head-to-head matchup, according to the Harvard/Harris poll. Results showed Trump ahead of Harris by four points, 52% to 48%.
Silver noted that relatively little polling has been done since Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
“There are a lot of political events that the model is trying to sort through, and there’s comparatively little Harris-Trump polling as compared to the abundance of Biden-Trump polls that the model had to work with,” he noted.