Former President Trump has gained a narrow lead over Vice President Harris in pollster Nate Silver’s prediction model just weeks before Election Day.
Although the race remains essentially a toss-up, Trump now leads Harris by just over half a percentage point, with 50.2 percent to Harris’s 49.5 percent, according to the model updated Thursday afternoon.
“However nominal, it’s Trump’s first lead in our model since Sept. 19,” Silver wrote on his Silver Bulletin site.
The political forecaster noted that just a day earlier, Harris was leading Trump by about a point, with 50.3 percent to 49.4 percent.
Trump gained ground with “some good polls” entering the database on Thursday, Silver wrote, including a 2-point lead in a Fox News poll and a lead in a Georgia survey, The Hill noted.
Harris took the lead in Silver’s polling aggregation model nearly a month ago. Neither candidate gained or lost significant ground after the earlier presidential debate on September 10, but Harris was performing strongly in five swing states, giving her an advantage.However, in September, Silver cautioned that the dynamics could shift before Election Day. He conveyed the same message in his Thursday post.
“There’s a good chance that the lead will continue to shift back and forth, akin to a 110-109 basketball game late in the fourth quarter,” he wrote.
Harris was riding high on momentum just a few months ago. After receiving President Biden’s endorsement when he exited the race, she quickly gained traction over Trump nationally and in swing states as the Democrats’ nominee at the party’s convention.
However, recent polls indicate that that momentum has leveled off, with Trump gaining ground nationally and in battleground states as the election approaches.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling index, Harris currently holds a 2.7 percentage point lead over Trump, with 49.8 percent support compared to Trump’s 47.1 percent.
“I’ve never seen an election in which the forecast spent more time in the vicinity of 50/50, and I probably never will,” Silver wrote last week, saying the race will likely remain a toss-up until Election Day on Nov. 5.
Earlier this month, the Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative SuperPAC, released an ad highlighting how Harris is “always a radical,” despite her recent attempts to present herself as a moderate.
The digital ad targets over one million low-propensity voters across Pennsylvania. It also seeks to remind voters that though Harris has recently portrayed herself as a moderate, she has claimed that her “values” have not changed.
The ad closes with this line: “Kamala Harris: once a radical, always a radical.”
Jessica Anderson, president of the Sentinel Action Fund, stated that Harris and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) have not been open with voters regarding their radical positions.
“Kamala Harris and Bob Casey are being dishonest with Pennsylvania voters about their radical stances on everything from fracking to the border crisis, and this ad only shows a small snapshot of the various lies they have told voters,” she said.
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“Looking at their records, Kamala Harris and Bob Casey have spent their time in office pushing for the reckless federal spending packages that have led to the historic inflation rates and unaffordable home prices in the Commonwealth,” Anderson added. “They have fueled the nation’s border crisis and allowed Mexican drug cartels to bring deadly fentanyl into our communities, which has affected over 4,000 Pennsylvanians in the last year alone.”
She noted, “If re-elected, Kamala Harris and Bob Casey will continue these failed policies and work against the interests of Pennsylvanians by attacking the industries that help Pennsylvania families make a living.”
“Voters will not be fooled by these promises of shifting policies, and they will take to the ballot box to make their voices heard in one of the most important battleground states of the 2024 election,” Anderson concluded in her statement. “Pennsylvania will not only be important for ensuring President Trump is elected to the White House, but also that he has strong partners like Dave McCormick in a Republican-led Senate.”
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