‘People should be making their contingency plans, like, right away’: America’s leading forecaster on the chances of a Trump win

Just how useful is a forecast in a knife-edge election like this one, anyway? Even the insight that it could go either way is useful, Silver argues. “One potential advantage of having a forecast that says … it’s 50/50, is that people should be making their contingency plans, like, right away. It doesn’t mean you need [to stockpile] ammo and peanut butter” – that giggle again – “but it means, you know: what’s your strategy to protect American institutions in the event of a Trump second term? Or, in 2028 [or] 2032, a Trump-like Republican who maybe is more effective than Trump? If I were a liberal donor, for example, I would want to begin funding now … to protect institutions in that eventuality, instead of giving another $100,000 to Kamala Harris, who has more money than she needs.”

And while he fears a Trump win – “There were a lot of guardrails in place last time that prevented complete and utter disaster, but those guardrails have been weakened, right?” – he warns against painting it as an existential threat to democracy, at least as a political strategy. “The notion of basically holding voters hostage in that sense is very unappealing … Biden was like: ‘OK, sure, I may be running for president until I’m 86 and can barely form a complete sentence, but if you don’t vote for me, the country gets it’ – that’s a very unappealing message to swing voters … whereas Harris brings more joyfulness and is obviously a very talented woman”. He worries, though, that she has “retained too many of the Biden people who thought it was a good idea to keep running [him]. I guess she kind of had to.”