Kamala Harris Needs ‘Weird’ Voters to Beat Donald Trump: Nate Silver

Pollster Nate Silver said Vice President Kamala Harris needs some of the “weird” voters to beat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
On SubStack, Silver wrote about Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, using the strategy this summer of calling some Trump supporters “weird,” which seemed to have minimal impact on voters.
However, with Election Day approaching, Silver contends that Harris will need to secure some of those same “weird” voters since the Democratic nominee needs more voters than she currently has, with just 49.4 percent of the vote in Silver’s national polling average.
Silver writes, “Meanwhile, Trump has 46.5 percent. That means about 4 percent of the electorate is undecided or says they plan to vote for a third party. Some will actually vote independent, but our model thinks it’s only likely to be 1 or 1.5 percent of the electorate. So, Harris needs her fair share of the roughly 3 percent of the remaining truly undecided voters — or she needs to pick off some voters who are only loosely committed to Trump without losing her weakly committed voters to him.”
The pollster noted that Harris has recently shifted her strategy to engage with a broader range of audiences, including appearing on various podcasts. The Harris campaign is reportedly seeking an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, whose audience skews male, giving Harris an opportunity to appeal to the Trump-leaning demographic.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign via email for comment.
Silver highlights the importance of reaching out to young, independent and non-college-educated voters who are more likely to be undecided. He said Harris will ultimately need to secure voters who are not fully committed to either candidate.
“More specifically, Harris has a target of 51 percent of the vote. In our simulations on Monday, Harris projected to get 51.0 percent of the popular vote — and the Electoral College was a toss-up. More than that (even Biden’s 51.3 percent from 2020 would probably do it) and she likely wins; less, and she probably loses. Trump, conversely, has a target line of 48.7 percent of the vote; that reflects the likely slant of the Electoral College toward the GOP,” Silver said.
Silver’s October 14 forecast showed that the Democratic presidential nominee’s chances of winning the Electoral College had plummeted to 51.8 percent, dropping by about 6 percentage points since late September.
The same forecast showed Trump’s likelihood of winning to be at 47.9 percent.
Harris’ steep drop in two weeks comes as new polls show Trump gaining ground in crucial swing states. According to Silver’s forecast, the former president has made gains in 19 states in the past week.
“There’s been a slight upward trajectory for Trump in our forecast over the past week.,” he said in an update last week,” Silver wrote on Monday.
A new Gallup poll could be a good sign for Harris and Democrats.
The poll showed that independent voters moved away from Republicans and towards Democrats in a 9-percentage point swing.
Gallup, a polling firm that tracks party affiliation monthly, found that 49 percent of independents leaned towards the Democrats, while 45 percent leaned towards the Republicans in its most recent survey, carried out between September 16 and 28.
In the poll before this one, where independents were questioned between September 3 and 15, Republicans were in the lead with 50 percent while 45 percent leaned toward Democrats.
The latest data is a stark shift from June when a Gallup poll saw the number of people who describe themselves as Democrats shrink to its lowest recorded level.
This was before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Harris took over as the Democratic Party’s nominee, closing the gap between herself and the former president in multiple polls.