Election Day is less than three weeks away and the predictions are looking closer than either side would like to admit.
The latest from statistician and pollster Nate Silver sees this race as dead even.
On his official website, Silver posted that Vice President Kamala Harris, “has a 50 percent chance of winning the electoral college. We’re in pure tossup terratory [sic], and Harris’ slight lead last week has disappeared.”
The real news here is that Silver released his prediction on Wednesday afternoon before the Harris interview with Fox News anchor Brett Baier had aired on the network.
While Newsweek reports this is the first time Silver’s model has given Harris and former President Donald Trump an equal chance of winning, her Fox News interview may show a now even race swing more towards Trump in the weeks before Nov. 5.
Just consider how abysmal her performance was.
Both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, decided to make more media appearances in the face of mounting criticism that the campaign was keeping her out of the public eye.
Although Harris appeared under friendly circumstances on shows like “The View” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Wednesday’s interview with Baier was arguably the first time she put herself in an adversarial setting.
Baier did not come off as hostile or aggressive towards Harris, but he did push her on the issues.
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Despite getting the most predictable questions about her campaign — notably ones about illegal immigration — Harris still stumbled and couldn’t produce anything coherent that viewers could discern as a policy position.
The Harris campaign hoped more public exposure would allow her to take a more confident lead over Trump, but for anyone who puts weight in Silver’s model, he’s got bad news.
Additionally, presidential betting odds swung dramatically in Trump’s favor as RealClearPolling’s betting odds data put him at a 58.1 percent chance of winning to Harris’ 40.9.
Historian Alan Lichtman, known for his “13 Keys to the White House” predicts a Harris victory.
Lichtman is known for his accuracy in predicting every election correctly since 1984, with the exception of 2000.
More unorthodox methods exist for determining who the next president will be. Lochel’s Bakery in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, does a presidential “cookie tally” that began in 2012 where customers can purchase cookies with either candidate’s name on them as the bakery keeps count of who sells more.
Last week, the Philadelphia Enquirer reported 19,000 cookies had been sold with more than 18,000 being for Trump.
With Silver putting this election as a toss-up, the money going for Trump, Lichtman giving the nod to Harris and the cookies putting Trump in landslide territory, the thinking person trying to predict this election has some factors to weigh.
While the Harris campaign might not be thrilled with Silver’s model and the fallout from Wednesday’s interview, no candidate should be sitting comfortably.
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