Statistician Nate Silver has mapped out a clear lose-lose result for Donald Trump in the midterms.
The political analyst appeared on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, with the host noting: “Your model at this point says the Democrats have about a 75, 76 percent chance of winning the Senate, and a 95 percent chance of winning the House.”
Those odds come from FLIPR, the forecasting model Silver runs on his Substack, Silver Bulletin. Newsweek reported that his model upgraded Democrats’ Senate chances from “Lean D” to “Likely D.”
Silver explained that behind the pro-Democrat prediction was a pool of specific, diverse—and quite dire—GOP statistics.
“If you take a step back and think about ‘what are the background conditions in this election,’ you have gas at four dollars 30 cents a gallon,” he began.
“You have a president with a 37 percent approval rating,” he added of Trump’s plummeting popularity, while noting of the common voting trend: “You have a long history of the president’s party doing poorly in midterms, including in 2018 when under President Trump the GOP lost 41 seats in the House. ”
He added of increased participation from the opposition: “You’ve seen high turnout in Democratic primaries all year. We can talk about the early voting data, too.”
Zakaria questioned Silver’s bold percentage conclusions, pointing out: “What makes everyone worried is in ’16, ’20, and ’24 polls underestimated Trump’s support.”
The host broached the idea of an “almost inherent problem in the way polling is done,” or the existence of “shy Trump voters who don’t reveal their preferences.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to assume there will be shy Ken Paxton voters or shy Roger Marshall voters,” Silver said. “Republicans did not beat their polling in 2018 or 2022. The midterm polling was quite unbiased.”
Toward the end of their conversation, Zakaria asked Silver to confirm the two major metrics he weighs in his assessments.
The host first clarified the “generic ballot where the Democrats are leading by a lot,” followed by Trump’s approval rating.
Referencing his CNN colleague Harry Enten’s stats, Zakaria outlined: “It’s the lowest approval rating for any president before midterm election. Worse than Harry Truman in ’46, worse than Bush in ’06. And in both cases, of course, that party lost both the House and the Senate.”
Silver added a third vital point to consider in light of Trump’s war with Iran and the ongoing affordability crisis, with the public’s view of a stable MAGA economy having tanked drastically.
“The third number I looked at is gas prices,” he said.
Suggesting empty pockets were one of the Republicans’ most salient threats, he mused: “So what if you had another tick up in prices before election day?
“That would, you know—any time you see a gas station it’s an advertisement for the Democrats, basically.”
