The presidential race remained tight heading into the November election, and with four months to go, Donald Trump appears to have lost a slight advantage, according to the latest polling.
On Sunday, pollsters at FiveThirtyEight released the results of a series of election simulations that show Trump winning 51 times out of 100. While the former president still narrowly beats his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, previous simulations have shown him doing slightly better. When the same method was applied on July 3, Trump won 53 times out of 100 simulated elections.
Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, are both seeking a second run at the White House later this year. With the presidential election set for Nov. 5, the candidates are campaigning in what promises to be a fiercely contested race.
The candidates are accusing each other of being unfit to run, and Trump, the first former US president to be convicted of criminal charges, is also facing a series of legal problems.
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The election analysis technique used by FiveThirtyEight involves 1,000 election simulations – using polls, economic and demographic data – to see who wins.
The most recent simulations showed that Trump won 511 out of 1,000 elections, Biden 486, and no winner could be declared in three elections. This equates to a Trump victory 51 out of 100 times, while Biden won 49 out of 100 times.
According to Wednesday’s results, Trump won 530 simulated elections, Biden won 467, and no winner could be declared in three simulations. That equates to a Trump victory 53 times out of 100, while Biden won 47 times out of 100.
Newsweek reached out to representatives for Trump and Biden via email for comment.
The gap between the two sets of simulations could indicate that Trump’s popularity is declining. However, Nathaniel Rakich, a senior election analyst at FiveThirtyEight, said the election is “a game of chance” at such a distant date from November 5.
“With four months to go until Election Day, the 2024 presidential election is a toss-up,” he said in the polling analysis. “Currently, President Joe Biden is the favorite in 486 of our model’s 1,000 simulations of how the election might unfold, while former President Donald Trump is the favorite in 511 of our simulations. There is still a small chance that the pure chaos scenario could play out: In three simulations, no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College votes, which would flip the House of Representatives.”
The gap between the two candidates has been oscillating for months. Trump first suffered a blow in the polls after being convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a payment to an adult film actor. He then regained the lead after Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate.
Biden got a boost last week when new economic data showed 206,000 jobs were created in June, allowing him to “counteract Trump’s gains in the polls,” Rakich said.
Trump’s convictions do not appear to have deterred his key constituency, with a CBS News/YouGov poll suggesting they would not dissuade most voters from casting their ballots for him. Since the historic verdict, polls have been divided on whether Trump’s convictions for serious crimes have hurt or helped his chances of winning the 2024 presidential election.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
