The presidential race between vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump is tight. There is a parallel race among the pollsters as to who gets the closest to the actual outcome. Poll guru Nate Silver, who is a statistician, recently said the pollsters are fudging their numbers to predict a close race — while the race is close, some of the predictions have it too close so that they don’t have any face loss in case of either a Trump or a Kamala victory.
Nate Silver’s prediction all along was a toss-up race but in October he said his gut feeling is that Donald Trump will win.
In a pole opposition position is American University professor Allan Lichtman who is called the Nostradamus of the US election as he correctly predicted nine out of 10 of the last presidential election. Lichtman says Kamala Harris would win the election.
Nate Silver vs Allan Lichtman
Their method is also different as Allan Lichtman does not rely on any polls but 13 keys and Kamala Harris was ahead of Trump. Silver and Lichtman fought over their methods as Silver said Lichtman’s method was favoring Donald Trump but he was projecting a Kamala Harris win.
Silver is a statistician and Lichtman is a historian and both of them have their record speaking for them. Lichtman predicted nine out of 10 last elections since 1984 except the 2000 presidential race between George W Bush and Al Gore. Nate Silver’s model in 2008 forecast correctly the outcome of the presidential election in 49 out of 50 states. His model since then predicted the outcome correctly in 2012 and 2020. In 2016 however, he got it wrong as his model suggested a likely victory for Hillary Clinton.
Experts are divided as to whose method is better but one will be proved wrong this election as they are betting for the rival candidates.
