Nate Silver Forecast Reveals Possible ‘Tipping Point’ For Kamala Harris

North Carolina could be a “tipping point” for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, according to polling analyst Nate Silver.
The Tar Heel State, which has 32 electoral votes, is viewed as one of seven critical battleground states in the 2024 presidential election, and most polling has shown Harris locked in a neck-and-neck race with former President Donald Trump among the most-watched contests.
But two surveys released earlier this week showed Harris leading her Republican opponent by a slim margin in North Carolina, and Silver said in the latest update of the Silver Bulletin that his polling model “thought this was the best day of state polling for Kamala Harris in a long while.”
“That was particularly true in North Carolina, where she got two high-quality polls showing her ahead,” Silver wrote, adding that North Carolina is now considered “the second-most likely tipping-point state,” according to his model.
One of the polls Silver is referring to includes a survey released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University, which found Harris leading Trump 49 percent to 46 percent in the state. The poll was conducted between September 4 and 8 and included the responses of 940 likely voters in North Carolina. However, given the poll’s margin of error of 3.2 percentage points, Harris and Trump are considered in a statistical tie.
The other poll mentioned by Silver was one conducted by WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina, which also found Harris leading by 3 percentage points (49 percent to 46 percent). The survey was conducted between September 4 and 7 and included the responses of 900 people. Harri’s lead was also within the poll’s margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
According to Silver’s estimate, North Carolina has a 16 percent chance of tipping the 2024 election. The state with the highest potential impact is Pennsylvania, which has a 32 percent chance.
Silver currently gives Trump a higher chance of winning North Carolina (66.4 percent to 33.6 percent). His election model also predicts that Trump has a better chance of winning the necessary 270 electoral votes for victory—as it states, Trump has a 61.3 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, while Harris has a 38.4 percent chance.
Harris also recently took a polling hit after the latest New York Times and Siena College poll found Trump leading the vice president by 1 percentage point (48 percent to 47 percent). Across national polling, however, Harris has stayed consistently in the lead. On average, the vice president is winning 48.9 percent of voters’ support, per the Silver Bullentin’s averages on Tuesday, with Trump winning 46.7 percent on average.
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaigns via email for comment.