Nate Silver’s Swing State Forecast Shows New Movement

The last week of election polling has seen minor shifts in nearly all seven swing states, according to the latest forecast from pollster Nate Silver.
Thursday’s update of his Silver Bulletin Substack blog found that Vice President Kamala Harris continues to lead former President Donald Trump by a small margin across national polls, although the Republican presidential nominee may be seeing positive signs in a handful of states that could tip the election results in his favor come November.
Overall, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, leads by 3.4 percentage points, 49.4 percent to 46 percent, on average, per Silver’s tracking, and is ahead in four battleground states being closely watched: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
Silver noted in Thursday’s Silver Bulletin that the election is in “a steady phase,” and that recent surveys have not found significant changes in the candidates’ prospects for victory. Per the pollster’s forecast, Harris has a 56.7 percent chance of winning the necessary 270 electoral votes in November, while Trump trails with 43.1 percent.
Below is a breakdown of how each swing state has shifted over the past week, according to Silver’s model.
Trump continues to hold a slight lead in the Grand Canyon State, and polling over the past week has also gone in his favor.
Per Silver’s tracking, Arizona shifted by 0.1 percentage points in Trump’s direction since September 26. The former president has improved by 0.6 percentage points overall in the past month.
FiveThirtyEight’s tracker finds Trump ahead in Arizona by 1.2 percentage points on average across statewide polling as of Thursday. By Silver’s tracking, Trump is up by 1.1 percentage points (48.6 percent to 47.5 percent).
In the Keystone State, which Silver finds has the highest chance of tipping the election out of any swing state, Harris holds onto a small lead of 1.3 percentage points (48.8 percent to 47.5 percent) on average. But over the past week, Silver’s tracking finds that Pennsylvania polls have shifted by a slim margin, 0.2 percentage points, toward Trump.
FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages find Harris leading Pennsylvania by just 0.8 points as of Thursday. As Newsweek previously reported, that average is a slight dip for Harris, who on September 3 was leading in Pennsylvania by 1 percentage point.
The race in the Peach State has not budged over the past week, per Silver’s tracking, with Trump still leading by 1 percentage point (48.8 percent to 47.8 percent) as of Thursday.
The former president has seen positive shifts in Georgia over the past month, however, with Silver finding the state shifting by 2 points in Trump’s favor since the start of September.
Similarly, tracking from FiveThirtyEight shows that Georgia has flipped over the past month. While Harris led by 0.3 points on average September 3, as of Thursday, Trump is up by 1.2 points on average.
The Great Lakes State is among Harris’ best-performing swing states, per Silver’s forecast, with the vice president ahead by 2 percentage points on average as of Thursday’s update. Over the last week, however, Trump has improved by 0.3 percentage points across polling.
Per FiveThirtyEight’s tracking, the state of play in Michigan has been relatively steady over the past month. While Harris is up by 1.6 percentage points as of Thursday, on September 3, she led the race by 1.8 points.
Silver’s tracking also finds Harris holding a steady lead in the Silver State, where the vice president is up by 1.8 points on average. The past week of polling has also shown a bump in Harris’ direction by 0.8 points, and Silver finds that Harris has improved by 1 point overall in Nevada since the start of September.
FiveThirtyEight’s tracking finds that Harris is up by 1.1 percentage points on average as of Thursday in Nevada. In comparison, on September 3, she was up by 0.5 percentage points.
The tightest race among the seven swing states is the Tar Heel State, where Trump is ahead by just 0.4 percentage points on average, according to Thursday’s Silver Bulletin.
Harris has also seen some positive signs over the past week, with polls shifting by 0.1 percentage points in her favor since September 26, per Silver’s tracking.
North Carolina has the chance of becoming a tipping-point state in November. Trump won there in 2016 and 2020, although the gap in the race has been neck-and-neck since Harris launched her campaign.
Per FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, Trump is up by just 0.5 percentage points in North Carolina as of Thursday. The past month has seen virtually no changes, with Trump leading by 0.6 points in the state on September 3.
Silver’s tracking finds that Harris also holds one of her best leads in the Badger State, where the vice president is up by 2 percentage points on average.
Over the past week, however, polling has slightly shifted toward Trump, by 0.2 points, per the Silver Bulletin. Since the start of September, Trump has improved by 1.2 percentage points in Wisconsin.
FiveThirtyEight’s tracker finds that Harris was up by 2.8 percentage points on September 3 across statewide polling. As of Thursday, her lead has been cut to 1.7 points.