2024 'Coin Flip' Forecasts vs. a Trump Sweep of All Seven Swing States

05 NOV 2024 · FiveThirtyEight (ABC News), Silver Bulletin

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■ The claim

Final 2024 forecasts called the presidential race essentially a 50-50 toss-up. FiveThirtyEight gave Harris about a 50 percent chance and Trump about 49 percent, and Nate Silver's final model also landed at roughly 50-50 with a slight Harris edge.

■ What actually happened

Trump won all seven battleground states for 312 electoral votes and became the first Republican in two decades to win the national popular vote. Errors again ran in Democrats' favor, and the result was a clear win rather than a near tie. Forecasters note a sweep was within their range of outcomes, but the toss-up framing understated Trump's strength.

■ The proof

Certified 2024 results: a 312-electoral-vote Trump win with a swing-state sweep and a popular-vote win.

■ Original reporting

ABC News/538: 538's final forecasts for the 2024 electionhttps://beta.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/538s-final-forecasts-for-the-2024-election-115511051
Salon: Nate Silver's final forecast is as close as you can get to 50/50 (Nov 5, 2024)https://salon.com/2024/11/05/nate-silvers-final-forecast-as-close-as-you-can-possibly-get-to-5050

■ Corrections, findings & records

Axios: Trump officially sweeps all 7 swing stateshttps://www.axios.com/2024/11/10/trump-sweeps-seven-swing-states
Al Jazeera: Trump wins Arizona, completing sweep of all seven swing stateshttps://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/10/trump-wins-arizona-completing-clean-sweep-of-all-seven-swing-states

■ Wayback Machine copies

Stories sometimes get edited after publication. These links open the Internet Archive's earliest snapshot of each original.

Archive copy: ABC News/538: 538's final forecasts for the 2024 electionhttps://web.archive.org/web/2/https://beta.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/538s-final-forecasts-for-the-2024-election-115511051
Archive copy: Salon: Nate Silver's final forecast is as close as you can get to 50/50 (Nov 5, 2024)https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://salon.com/2024/11/05/nate-silvers-final-forecast-as-close-as-you-can-possibly-get-to-5050

Who it helped: Neither partyCalled it a coin flip; the miss was the margin, not the favorite.

■ Grade

BAD CALL: A confident prediction or dismissal that turned out wrong. Not a lie, but on the record. How we grade →