AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
President Joe Biden plunged even further in Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin presidential election forecast on Monday in the wake of his disastrous debate performance last week.
“[We’ve] got a string of polls in late this afternoon, they’re mostly poor for Joe Biden, and they’re beginning to have a bigger impact on the model,” wrote Silver in Monday’s forecast. “Trump now leads by 2.7 points in our national average. And Biden’s win probability has dropped to 28 percent from 35 percent on debate night.”
He continued, “Our guess is that more likely than not, there’s some further decline ahead: the model is trying to figure out whether this is random noise, but instead it’s almost certainly caused by a challenging first debate for Biden. It’s not great news for the president.”
Biden had been hovering at 41.3% in Silver’s poll average, just 1% lower than former President Donald Trump, until CNN’s first presidential debate on June 27.
On
June 27, Biden fell to 40.6%, and then again to 40.3% the day after.
Trump’s position also fell slightly on debate day, from 42.3% to 42.1%, and again down to 41.8% on June 28. However, he went back up to 42.7% on June 30 and then to 43% on July 1 – a higher poll average than before the debate.
Biden has not beaten Trump in Silver’s forecast since April, when he held a marginal lead over the former president.
Biden’s performance in Thursday’s first presidential debate sparked panic in the Democratic Party and even Biden’s inner circle. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, and the New York Times editorial board all subsequently called on Biden to drop out of the race.
Even prior to the debate, Silver suggested the possibility of Biden dropping out after his approval rating sunk to an all-time low.
“Biden just hit a new all-time low in approval (37.4%) at 538 yesterday. Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk,” said Silver last month. “Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.”