Pollster Nate Silver on Trump’s victory: This candidate was ‘mediocre’

Pollster Nate Silver labeled Vice President Harris a “mediocre candidate” in his latest blog post detailing the 2024 election.

President-elect Donald Trump won a decisive victory in the White House last week after defeating the seven battleground states. Silver, who viewed the race as a toss-up until Election Day, said in Friday’s post that Trump’s victory was largely President Biden’s fault and argued that Harris was not a strong enough candidate.

“Trump’s victory is largely Biden’s fault, not hers. Yet she was a mediocre candidate in a year when Democrats needed a strong candidate,” Silver wrote in his latest blog post.

He wrote that he had “a lot of sympathy for Kamala Harris’ position, perhaps more than I’ve ever had for any losing candidate” before explaining how Biden may have hurt her campaign more than it helped.

“It was clear that this was a position of her choice. Harris is ambitious: She sought the Democratic nomination in 2020 and then the vice presidency and moved quickly to consolidate support within the party when Joe Biden was ultimately pushed aside,” he wrote.

“But Biden has done her a disservice. He gave her tough assignments: the border, perhaps the Democrats’ worst issue, and voting rights, an issue the White House probably knew would not make any progress. He blew up the debate calendar and left nothing after September 11, even though this was one of Harris’ best formats. Even to the bitter end, Biden remained true to her message,” he added.

Silver also highlighted how many Democrats outperformed Harris in Senate races in battleground states, suggesting it could have been a winnable race for Democrats. He also added that some of his criticisms of her included her “inability to deliver a message and her refusal to more clearly separate herself from Biden.”

“Now I’m not going to pretend these were easy waters for Harris to navigate, given that she was Biden’s sitting vice president. But – you should at least try, I guess? At least throw your unpopular boss under the bus a little?” he said

“At times, the Harris campaign — headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware and staffed mainly by ex-Biden people — seemed reluctant to criticize Biden for fear of being seen as disloyal, a stupid thing to worry about, since you must win elections. and that Biden regularly undermined her,” he added.

In the days after Election Day, Democrats have scrambled to figure out where things went wrong for Harris. Lots of Democrats and pundits have blamed Biden And his late departure from race as a driving factor to why Trump won in swing states.