Early polling has shown that Vice President Kamala Harris came out on top after her debate against Donald Trump, but pollster Nate Silver warns against reading “too much” into such numbers.
Many commentators, including conservatives, have said that Harris was the winner of Tuesday’s event in Philadelphia. The matchup may be the only time voters get to hear from both candidates on a debate stage, however. Trump said Thursday he is rejecting Harris’ challenge for a second debate.
Trump’s campaign has said the former president gained a slight boost in his poll numbers after Tuesday, but several early polls found that viewers believed Harris outperformed him. The first national post-debate poll, released by Reuters/Ipsos on Thursday, also found Harris leading Trump among registered voters by 5 percentage points (47 percent to 42 percent).
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“The first post-debate polls are in, and they helped Kamala Harris very slightly in our forecast—but we’d caution against reading too much into any of this data just yet,” Silver wrote in his Thursday afternoon update of Silver Bulletin, a Substack publication.
The pollster, who created the polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight, said that it “takes several days to conduct a traditional poll” and that the surveys that have come out so far after the debate have been conducted online or through automated telephone polling companies.
“Harris got a good number (+5 nationally) in an Ipsos poll, but that’s generally been one of her stronger polls this cycle,” Silver added. “And Trump led by 2 points nationally in a Rasmussen Reports survey, but Rasmussen has a very strong GOP lean.”
Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.
According to Silver’s aggregate of national polling, Harris is leading Trump 48.7 percent to 46.8 percent on average. But Silver’s model still gives Trump a higher chance of winning the necessary 270 Electoral College votes in November, with the former president projected to take critical battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina. The other closely watched swing states this fall, Wisconsin and Michigan, are a toss-up, according to Silver’s predictions.
Silver’s model did give Harris a slight boost to her chances of winning after Tuesday’s debate. But as of Thursday, the pollster projects Trump has a 60.6 percent chance of victory, while Harris has 39.2 percent.
Silver said during an appearance on Maria Konnikova’s podcast, Risky Business, on Thursday that he plans to vote for Harris in November. He also said he is trying to remain as nonpartisan as possible in his predictions.
