Electoral College simulations
Electoral College simulations is the forecasting methodology used by FiveThirtyEight, The Hill, and The Economist for predicting the outcome of an upcoming election, such as the 2024 presidential election.
The Economist
The Economist, a highly respected British weekly magazine that covers U.S. politics closely, has an Electoral College simiulator that consistently shows Donald Trump far ahead.[1]
FiveThirtyEight
As of June 15, 2024, FiveThirtyEight said that:
| “ | Trump wins 51 times out of 100 in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election.
Biden wins 49 times out of 100.
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” |
Interestingly, FiveThirtyEight predicts a Trump victory even though it shows him unlikely to prevail in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. But while Biden leads in each state, it is unlikely that Biden will win all three swing states as he needs to prevail.
The Hill
The Hill runs its own Electoral College predictive simulations:
| “ | These graphs represent the distribution of outcomes from 14,000,605 simulations of the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.[3] | ” |
The Hill gives Trump a 56% chance of winning the presidency, as of June 15, 2024, and predicts an Electoral College result of 279 votes for Trump and only 259 for Biden.[3]
Nate Silver
Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight who is independent of it now, has his own prediction model for the 2024 presidential election.[4]