Kamala Harris surprisingly becomes favorite to win WH in top election forecast as Nate Silver's final prediction changes

Kamala Harris surprisingly becomes favorite to win WH in top election forecast as Nate Silver’s final prediction changes

Admin November 5, 2024

It’s indeed a big day for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, who may create history by becoming the first US female and Black President.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have had razor-thin margins of victory in the contest, which has long been neck and neck.(AFP)

As the stakes are high for the Democratic contender the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight surprisingly declared her the front-runner to win the White House on election day.

Both candidates have had razor-thin margins of victory in the contest, which has long been neck and neck.

For around two weeks, FiveThirtyEight listed former President Donald Trump as their favorite contender to claim the White House. On Monday, it discovered that out of 100 simulations, Trump won 53 times while Harris won 47 times.

However, when an update was released on election day, Harris emerged as the clear favorite by winning 50 times out of 100 over Trump’s 49.

Using the model, which takes into account economic, demographic, and polling data, FiveThirtyEight predicted Harris as winner on October 17, when she won 52 times out of 100, compared to Trump’s 48 times out of 100.

Notably, the polling agency stated that the odds of there not being an Electoral College winner are fewer than one in a hundred.

Read more about US Elections 2024: Catch all the newsmakers, detailed explainers and deep analysis of the US Elections

Here’s what Nate Silver’s model say about Harris

Nate Silver, the creator of FiveThirtyEight, has also officially declared Harris a winner even though he is no longer connected to the site. In his final election prediction with FiveThirtyEight’s “direct descendant”, he predicted that Harris would win by a slim margin.

According to Silver’s model, the former president won 49.65 percent of cases out of 80,000 simulations, compared to 50.015 percent for the US VP. The outcome of about 270 simulations was a 269-269 Electoral College tie.

HT in US: Special Coverage of the American elections by Prashant Jha

Harris campaigned in Pennsylvania the day before the election. With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is ranked as the most valuable among the battleground states that will decide the winner of the Electoral College. Meanwhile, Trump conducted rallies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, before concluding his election campaign with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday night.