Polling guru Nate Silver has upgraded Democrats’ chances of winning control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections, with his forecast now giving the party a 75 percent probability of victory.
Silver’s FLIPR 2026 midterm election forecast, published by Silver Bulletin, previously classified Democrats’ chances as “Lean D” as their prospects of retaking the chamber improved. The forecast has now moved into the “Likely D” category, marking a further shift in the model’s outlook.
Silver’s model uses polling data and other indicators to estimate the likelihood of different election outcomes. Its probabilities are estimates rather than guarantees, and the outlook can change as new polling and other information become available, but the latest upgrade suggests the model increasingly favors Democrats in the battle for the chamber.
You really should learn how statistics work. It’s a common problem. And not all of it is easy. But let’s round that down to 80% to make the numbers easier to understand: It means that if there are five universes where that election took place, four of them should go for Clinton and one should go for Trump. On average. Really, it’s more like if there were 5000 universes, not 5.
But assuming the prediction was correct - that’s still 20% of the time - one time out of five - that it was predicted to go how it went.
That is not shocking or odd or wrong at all.
Nate said Kamala Harris was 50-50 with Donald Trump in 2024. In reality, Trump won every swing state. It wasn’t neck and neck.
He also called it for Trump the night before the election.
And that again misunderstands statistics going on here.
The prediction was who won, not by how much they won. In fact, his prediction was that it was a 60% chance that one or the other of them would win six out of the seven close races.
This stuff IS difficult to understand. Some of it is pretty intuitive, and some of it really is not.
edit: Fucking go LEARN before you fucking downvote. I am correct. So feel free to try and prove me wrong. But if you’re just going to downvote, fuck you and fuck off. Stop being willfully ignorant. Jesus christ.
If Trump wins every swing state there was never a 50-50 chance Kamala could’ve won.
That is not how statistics works.
You’re thinking of statistical prediction as divination. That an 80% chance of something happening means it’s going to happen.
Statistical predictions are a combination of two statements.
AND
In order to be accurate, event B must occur Y% of the time, event A X%. There may be dozens of ways either even can unfold, but the ultimate outcome should fall in to one of those two possibilities, roughly as often as predicted.
I’m hot being hyperbolic when I say this, saying “60% of the time it works every time” is literally a more accurate way of looking at it than what you’re saying.
Incorrect. You can fucking look this stuff up and learn instead of being aggressively ignorant.
Analogy: Flipping a single coin has a 50% chance of “winning”. Flip one coin, however, and ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of ALL COINS FLIPPED are HEADS (or TAILS), and yet it was a 50% chance of winning.
Please. Please go fucking learn how this works, or just accept that it is the case. Google it. Talk to an LLM if you want - they are great at explaining this sort of thing. Do something. Please don’t continue to make ignorant replies.
Don’t talk to an LLM, it will end up telling you what you want to hear.
Do actual research