All of the below, from his web newsletter “The Silver Bulletin,” in which Silver reveals what his current system of handicapping elections currently foretells regarding the 2024 election. Nate is supposed to be part of the Left’s pro-Democrat, pro-progressive, pro-Biden propaganda machine, so his usual allies are furious with him for “following the science. He writes in part, explaining the results above,
One issue is that I’m not only a statistician/analyst/pundit/journalist/degenerate gambler or whatever-the-fuck you want to call me — but also an American citizen who cares about political outcomes for a combination of selfish and altruistic reasons. Now that I’m on my own — not tied to some corporate behemoth like The New York Times or Disney — I feel freer to be transparent about my preferences. Although I have plenty of disagreements with progressives these days, my political values haven’t changed that much. I don’t want Trump to win the election, and I’d never consider voting for him.
It’s not my job to tell you how to vote, and I hope that we have some Trump (and RFK Jr., etc.) voters among the Silver Bulletin readership. Republicans buy sneakers — and sign up for Substack newsletters. But I think it’s important to be up front, because I’ve been rather lucky in one sense in my election forecasting career. I began making election forecasts in 2008, and in literally every presidential year since then, I haven’t really had to deal with a conflict between what I personally wanted to see happen and what my forecast said. This year, I do have that conflict. The candidate who I honest-to-God think has a better chance (Trump) isn’t the candidate I’d rather have win (Biden).
Wouldn’t it be suspicious if, in the first presidential cycle where the Democrat has consistently trailed in polls since 2004, I suddenly started telling you that you should trust vibes rather than polls? Or if I chucked out my heretofore well-performing model for a new one that had Biden favored — or at least had the election as a toss-up?
Yes, of course. It would be a sign that I’d become a hack. I’ve spent years telling people that, although polls are often wrong — indeed, inevitably wrong to some degree — it’s hard to predict the direction of polling error. Biden could easily overachieve his current polls — but it’s roughly as likely that he’ll underachieve them instead. It’s sort of a myth that Democrats outperformed their polls in 2022, but they certainly performed better than the conventional wisdom held. But Trump substantially outperformed his polls in 2016 and 2020. Going by the polls, perhaps along with some reasonable priors about things like the economy, is a lot better than going by the number of yard signs in your neighborhood or by what your friends think — or especially by what you hope will happen.
It’s called integrity. Good for him.
No hack he.
Ethics Alarms 
The guy wants to be thought of as a scientist, and I seem to recall he pretty consistently had Trump trailing in 2016 until the night of, when things suddenly started to change really rapidly, and did admit there might have been something wrong with his model. I think 2016 was the one and only anomaly so far as far as predictability. I’m still pretty disgusted with the way 20/20 played out, but I wasn’t that surprised.
Trump pretty consistently trailed in the polls throughout and he had pretty much everything working against him, while Biden was able to simply hide and be a blank slate. It should not come as a surprise if things don’t go Biden’s way this time out.
Unlike four years ago he can’t simply hide in his basement and avoid campaigning. Now if there is a crisis, it’s on him, and his attempts to blame Trump aren’t really resonating with the American people, who generally don’t like it when the person in office tries to say all the problems are the last guys fault.
When you are elected to solve the problems, people don’t like it if you consistently point to the last guy. The question becomes what are you doing about it. Also, last time out Biden had no record as president. He does now, and it’s not a good one at all. Despite what hacks like Paul Krugman say, everyone who buys gas or goes to the grocery store knows that things are not better. Obama himself once said not to underestimate Joe’s ability to mess things up and he’s been proven unfortunately correct. There’s no nice way to put this, but Biden has the reverse Midas touch. I’ve known lawyers like this, and I’ve known other folks like this, simply everything they touch turns to shit. Biden has not had anything he has worked on turn into a great success, and he has had many failures.
At this point any big crisis would work against the incumbent, and not for him. Trump had not only the covid crisis, and not only the manufactured George Floyd crisis, but he had pretty much the entire democratic party in power and the entire scientific establishment working against him. Now the policies of those two groups are coming home to roost in the form of ridiculously increased crime and anger at lost liberty and being played for fools.
Biden really doesn’t have a whole lot working for him at this point, and his reliance on the Dobbs decision is, I believe, misplaced. It is a really tough sell when the only things you are selling are hatred of the other guy and the right to kill unborn children.
I also think Biden’s reliance on the lawfare against Trump is misplaced. Clearly huge numbers of people see this as what it is, banana Republic political prosecution and an attempt to lock up the opposition. I think the fact that there were so many counts in the Manhattan indictment, the fact that the number three guy at Justice personally prosecuted the case, and the fact that the jury took what breaks down to about 20 minutes per count to convict makes it really obvious. It’s abuse of the system, and no one likes the idea that anyone can be put on trial in the place where he is most likely to be convicted regardless of the evidence because the idea is not to get justice, but to lock him up by whatever means necessary.
Anyone who looks at these factors with even the slightest open mind should be able to see why things are very likely not to go Biden’s way. Nate Silver just happens to have enough of an open mind to go that way.
The Biden television commercials are pure and unadulterated fantasy and extremely troubling.
You’ve left out the vote harvesting and manufacturing element, Steve. I fear the Dems will pull another early morning victory out of the ballot box.