Nate Silver, the statistician and founder of election analysis site FiveThirtyEight, has predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris will continue to rise in the polls after the Democratic National Convention.
In an episode of the podcast Risky Business, which Silver hosts alongside writer Maria Konnikova, titled “Kamala Edition: Taxes, Tariffs and the DNC” Silver said, “Our model is expecting that she will continue to rise in the polls after the DNC. That’s what we call a convention bump or a convention bounce.”
“The day after the convention, you’ve had four days of free television advertising in every network, you tend to see polls rise.”
Silver said that “We would expect her to get about maybe four or five point lead in national polls, and be ahead in the large majority of swing state polls.”
US President Joe Biden holds US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris hand after delivering the keynote address on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 19, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris will formally accept the party’s nomination for president at the DNC which runs from August 19-22 in Chicago.
ROBYN BECK/Getty Images
According to Silver’s blog, Silver Bulletin, Harris is currently ahead of former President Donald Trump in five out of seven key battleground states.
Pennsylvania (46.6 to 44.7 percent), Wisconsin (47.3 to 44.1 percent), Michigan (46 to 43.1 percent) Arizona (45.2 to 44 percent), Nevada (45 to 44.3 percent).
Speaking on the podcast, Silver referred to polling from Sunday August 18, where he said “Harris was a 54-46 favorite.”
He said that Harris had lost a bit of momentum, specifically in Pennsylvania, but said that Harris is “maybe less dependent on Pennsylvania than Biden was.”
But he went on to say that there are “other new pathways.” Silver said, “She’s actually a slight favorite in our forecast in Arizona.”
Silver said this is “not a huge shock,” noting that the Democratic Party won Arizona in 2020, but also said that Biden had been “way behind” in that state.
Silver continued that Harris is “quite close” in Georgia, and “surprisingly” close in North Carolina.
He attributed this to the fact that “she’s doing better than Biden among young voters of color and those are plentiful in North Carolina and Georgia.”
Currently, Trump is leading Harris in Georgia (46.3 to 45.4 percent) and in North Carolina (46.3 to 45.5 percent).
Harris is up in a national average of polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, by 2.6 percentage points (46.2 to 43.7 percent). The vice president also has a slight edge over her Republican rival in at least two other national polling averages.
Silver noted that he expects the polling to “reset” by the time of the next presidential debate, which is scheduled to take place on September 10 on ABC.
This will be Harris’ first debate of the election, but the second of the campaign after the debate that took place between Biden and Trump on June 27, shortly before Biden dropped out of the 2024 election.
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Read More: Nate Silver Predicts Kamala Harris Will Keep Rising in Polls Post DNC