Donald Trump Now Set for Landslide: Forecaster Who Backed Kamala Harris

 

An election forecaster who initially predicted a landslide victory for Vice President Kamala Harris has shifted his stance to favor former President Donald Trump.

Thomas Miller, a data scientist renowned for accurately forecasting the 2020 presidential election outcome, had previously supported Harris for the 2024 race, stating in September to Newsweek that his model projected the Democrat winning over 400 Electoral College votes.

However, the model, which relies on betting odds rather than traditional polling data, now indicates that Trump is the frontrunner, estimating he could secure 345 Electoral College votes. Newsweek outlined what this scenario might entail for Trump, showing him sweeping through the South and Midwest and capturing all states where Harris holds only a narrow lead, according to FiveThirtyEight's forecast.

The shift in Miller's predictions began on October 7 when betting odds started leaning towards Trump. His model emphasizes betting odds and historical election trends to assess what he terms "fundamentals," a methodology similar to that used by other forecasting models.

For this election cycle, Miller is utilizing data from the betting site PredictIt, which informed his successful 2020 prediction. Despite the data suggesting Trump’s favor, Miller noted on October 20 that “technical and fundamental analyses are not in alignment.” Historical trends suggest a Democratic victory, contrasting with the betting odds that favor Trump.

Allan Lichtman, another election forecaster, supports a Harris victory based on his "Keys to the White House" model, which relies primarily on long-term historical trends.

While polling indicates a competitive race, betting odds continue to favor Trump. According to Polymarket, Trump has a 60.3% chance of winning nationally compared to Harris’s 39.7%. Although betting odds have historically predicted presidential winners accurately, they lack the same representational statistics as polling and may be influenced by biases.

Miller acknowledged this bias, stating, “Prediction markets have a Republican bias. We assessed the degree of Republican bias in 2020, and we currently correct for that degree of bias. However, the level of Republican bias in prediction markets for 2024 remains uncertain, and we are conducting studies to better understand it.”

Miller's latest prediction represents a slight improvement for Harris; on October 26, his model projected she would only receive 171 Electoral College votes, the lowest for a candidate since Republican Bob Dole in 1996.

“The 2024 presidential race has fluctuated from toss-up to potential Republican landslide, then back to toss-up, possibly leaning towards a Democratic landslide, and now appears poised for another Republican landslide,” Miller remarked. “Can prediction markets and related election forecasts change again with less than two weeks until voting ends on November 5? Yes. We anticipate increased trading activity and significant volatility as the race concludes.”

Historically, since 1980, the only instance where the winning candidate had worse odds than the losing candidate was in 2016, when both betting markets and traditional polling failed to predict Trump’s victory.