Silver's Model Gives Democrats 95% House Odds as Early Vote Numbers Pour In

Silver's Model Gives Democrats 95% House Odds as Early Vote Numbers Pour In

A forecast that spells trouble for the GOP

Statistician Nate Silver, 48, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday that his FLIPR forecasting model — Forecast with Leading Indicators, Polls and (Expert) Ratings, published via his Silver Bulletin newsletter — now gives Democrats about a 95 percent chance of winning the House and a 75 to 76 percent chance of winning the Senate. The Senate rating was recently upgraded from "Lean D" to "Likely D." Silver added that for Democrats to fail to take the House, he said, "the polling would have to be very wrong — more wrong than in 2016."

More than 43 million ballots already cast

According to the University of Florida's Election Lab, more than 43 million Americans had voted early as of Thursday, nearing the roughly 46 million early votes cast across the entire 2022 early-voting window. In the roughly half of states that register voters by party, 44 percent of early ballots came from Democrats, 31.2 percent from Republicans, and 24.7 percent from voters with no party affiliation. Silver noted that Democratic primary turnout has run high all year, and the early-vote data extends that pattern.

Infrequent voters lean Democratic in Texas and Georgia

An ABC News analysis of the early vote in Texas and Georgia found Democrats drawing slightly higher turnout among less-frequent voters, especially in Texas. As of Monday, 51 percent of the Texas early vote came from voters modeled as likely to back Democrats versus 45 percent for Republicans — a 14-point swing from 2022, when Democrats trailed by about 8 points. In Georgia, the split was 54 percent modeled Democratic to 38 percent Republican, with more than 2.1 million early ballots cast as of Wednesday morning. In Texas, 4.5 million people voted in the first week alone, and Hispanic voters made up 18 percent of early voters, up 2 points from 2024 and 3 points from 2022.

Silver's own caveat: the hidden Trump voter

Silver coupled his forecast with a warning: people voting early may simply be voters who would have voted anyway, not a surge of new voters. He explained that polls have previously missed Trump voters because they are low-propensity voters who turn out only for Trump — "white working class voters, certain Hispanic voters… a lot of young Hispanic men, young Black men, young Asian men, voted for Trump in '24," he said — making them hard to measure as a bloc. Black and Hispanic voters have turned out heavily so far, but the measurement problem cuts both ways.

The Senate runs through deep-red states

The steepest climb is the Senate map: to win the chamber, Democrats must carry states President Trump won by double digits in 2024, including Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, and Alaska. Silver framed it as a choice between "the hard place versus the rock" — whether the wave grows big enough to inundate those red states. With early voting in Texas and Georgia ending Friday and Election Day less than a week out, Republicans are running out of time to change the picture.