Nate Silver Dumps Cold Water on ‘Notion’ of Republican ‘Rebound’ in Midterms

Polling guru Nate Silver poured cold water on the notion that Republicans would enjoy a post-Labor Day rebound in the polls, arguing the expected shift toward the GOP simply has not materialized.

Silver made the assessment on Thursday’s edition of his Still Counting podcast after co-host Galen Druke noted Democrats were leading Republicans by roughly “eight and a half points” on the generic congressional ballot among likely voters.

When Druke began explaining the metric as the question pollsters use to ask voters whether they support a Democratic or Republican candidate, Silver cut in to joke: “I think this audience knows what f*cking generic ballot is.”

But the numbers themselves prompted a more serious warning for Republicans as Silver cautioned the Democratic advantage was broadly in line with what his forecasting model had anticipated.

“Yeah, we talked about last week how after Labor Day, pollsters traditionally switch over from using registered voters to likely voters, and our [forecast] model FLIPR […] had detected that likely voter polls were likely to be better for Democrats,” he said.

The shift was therefore “kind of priced in to some extent,” he noted, adding: “But, still, to see Democrats up by eight and a half points – it can be eight or nine depending on how you round it – is consistent with what we thought.”

He continued: “Any notion of like, ‘Oh, people will come back, kids come come back to school and then we’ll see Republicans rebound because their voters will get fired up by Democrats being too left-wing or or be loyal to President Trump’ – I mean, there’s not very many signs of that.”

Silver pointed in particular to the latest New York Times poll, saying it showed a sizable difference in likelihood to vote between supporters of Kamala Harris in 2024 and those who backed President Donald Trump, while independents were also breaking toward Democrats in congressional contests.

Druke noted that a little more than 60% of Harris voters said they were almost certain to cast ballots.

“Which is why JD Vance is telling all of the Republican voters to go out and vote,” co-host Clare Malone said.

Watch above via YouTube.

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