In 2008, Nate Silver gained worldwide fame when, thanks to his statistical model, he almost accurately predicted Barack Obama’s victory in that year’s presidential elections. He also correctly predicted the outcomes in 2012 (Obama’s victory) and 2020 (Joe Biden’s victory), and although he missed the mark in 2016, his model gave Donald Trump the highest chances of winning.
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Silver is a statistician, economist from the University of Chicago, election analyst, and also a baseball analyst. In 2008, he founded the site FiveThirtyEight, which was affiliated with the New York Times and then was acquired by Disney in 2013 for the ABC News and ESPN sites. Silver stepped down as editor-in-chief last year and now has his own blog.
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Are Donald Trump's chances of winning increasing?
In a new update of its predictive newsletter on September 4th, Silver increased the options for a victory of Donald Trump in the November elections: Republicans have a 58.2% chance of winning in the Electoral College in November against Kamala Harris's 41.6%. These are the highest options for the controversial magnate since July 30th.
According to the model, which is based on available national and state surveys and conducts 40,000 simulations, Trump would get 274 votes in the Electoral College and Harris 263.
"The chances of Trump winning are the highest since July 30... And the possibility of a split in the popular vote and the Electoral College has increased to almost 18 percent," wrote Silver, pointing out that Kamala Harris could win the majority of the popular vote but not enough Electoral College votes.
Something similar happened in the 2016 elections: the Democrat Hillary Clinton obtained 65.8 million votes, against 62.9 million for Trump, but in the Electoral College, the Republican candidate won 304-227.
In his deepest analysis, Silver sees it as a mistake that Harris chose Tim Walz from Minnesota as her running mate and not Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a key state to reach the White House.
What is the Electoral College of the United States?
The US government defines the Electoral College as "a process," not a place.
When it comes to choosing the president and vice president of the country, "the final result does not directly depend on the citizen's vote." The winners are determined by the vote of the "electors."
According to the US government website, "the incorporation of electors in the election process was established in the Constitution to find a middle ground between the popular vote of the citizen and the vote of Congress."
Thus, each state is assigned a number of electors according to the number of representatives (established by the population of each state) and senators (established by federal equality, two per state).
The candidate with the most votes in each state (except Maine and Nebraska) wins all the electors.
The total number of electors is 538 and the state with the most electors is California with 54, while Montana, Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Alaska, plus the District of Columbia, have 3 each.