Election data guru and statistician Nate Silver—the founder of FiveThirtyEight—is accusing major public pollsters of “herding” their survey results to keep President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris within a point or two of each other in the 2024 presidential race. According to Silver, it is statistically irregular for a single pollster to consistently show back-and-forth point leads between candidates, which suggests to him that the public polling firms are manipulating their results.
“I kind of trust pollsters less,” Silver says on the latest episode of his podcast. “They all, every time a pollster [says] ‘Oh, every state is just plus-one, every single state’s a tie,’ No! You’re f**king herding! You’re cheating!”
“Your numbers aren’t all going to come out at exactly one-point leads when you’re sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys,” Silver adds.
One pollster who especially drew Silver’s ire is Emerson College, which he suspects of herding most of their final run of polls. He vented, “You are lying! You’re putting your f**king finger on the scale!”
“Herding” is when a pollster uses their own and others’ prior polls to model or inform their current surveys—artificially creating a tighter contest than what the reality may be.
Currently, Silver’s own model has Trump at just over a 55 percent chance of winning the 2024 presidential election. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is at 44.2 percent odds of victory.
Additionally, Silver appears to believe there is an increasing chance of a split in the so-called ‘Blue Wall’ for Democrats—which includes Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. If Pennsylvania falls to Trump and the Republican nominee sweeps the Sun Belt states, it is almost certain he will win the election.
