FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver believes the 2020 election outcome is not written in stone.
During a Sunday appearance on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, the polling guru said the president’s reelection ambitions are “clearly in trouble” amid the coronavirus pandemic but that he does not believe his “fate is sealed.”
“There are a lot of unknowns. It’s probably too optimistic to expect major progress on a vaccine by November, but you never know. And people’s behavior around issues like masks can change. So how do you account for this in an election model? Basically, you add more uncertainty,” Silver said.
“We’ve found, historically, that when there are lots of major news events and economic disruptions, an election becomes harder to predict. So while he’s clearly in trouble, I do not buy that Trump’s fate is sealed. A lot could change in the next 100 days, things could get worse still for the president. But a turnaround in the COVID situation by the fall could make the election more competitive,” he continued.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, currently has a 9-point national lead ahead of Trump, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Silver noted last month that “a Biden landslide is possible.”
