Nate Silver took down his election model Tuesday night after it continued to project Vice President Kamala Harris as the winner of this year's election, despite her falling behind in the popular vote.
“UPDATE: We are taking the model down for two reasons. One, it isn’t capturing the story of this election night well. It’s based only on called states and the timing of those calls,” Silver wrote on his Substack.
“But no swing states have been called, and there is a lot of information it doesn’t capture, information that is mostly good for Donald Trump and bad for Kamala Harris — not the 50/50 race the “called” states might imply. Something like the New York Times Needle is a much better product,” Silver added, referring to The New York Times’ election prediction model.
Just after 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday night, Silver’s model projected Harris had a 53% chance of winning the electoral college vote. It also showed Harris winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with Trump winning Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
But with most of the polls closed, things look far better for Trump than Harris, whose final hopes lay in the blue states of the Midwest. Pennsylvania and Georgia, two crucial battleground states, are yet to be called, but Trump leads the vote count in both.
Exit polls also project a grim outcome for the Vice President, as does The New York Times needle, which predicts Trump has a 91% chance of victory.
The small team behind the Silver’s model was struggling to fix the code for the model in real-time, which ultimately led to the decision to shut the model down. “We think we took on one too many things, and we appreciate your patience,” Silver wrote on Substack.
Earlier on Tuesday, Silver predicted this year's election would be "as close as you can possibly get to 50/50."
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