Nate Silver Tells Ezra Klein He's 'a Little Skeptical' of Kansas, Iowa Polls

Statistician and election forecaster Nate Silver says his model favors Democrats to win both chambers of Congress next week, but he told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein that his gut is less sure about the state polls behind it, particularly in Kansas and Iowa.

On The Ezra Klein Show, Klein said Silver's model gave Democrats a 70-plus percent chance of winning the Senate two weeks before the election, and Silver cited a "90% plus chance of winning the House." Asked whether his gut agreed with his model, as it had not in 2024, he said: "I worry more about the state polls being wrong than the national race being miscalibrated."

Why Nate Silver Doubts the Midwest Senate Polls

Silver said it "would be more embarrassing for the industry, meaning pollsters, forecasters, pundits, whatever, et cetera, if once again, Republicans beat their polls in the Midwest."

And yeah, I'm a little skeptical of Kansas maybe in Iowa and that tier of states," he said.

He added that his gut is "really contradictory." In 2024, he said, he could list 21 reasons the environment favored Donald Trump and only four or five for Kamala Harris. This year he sees the reverse. "The fundamental conditions feel terrible for Republicans, right?" he said, pointing to the Iran war, gas prices near $4.50 and an 80-year-old president in his second term. The national average for regular gas is $4.28 a gallon, and Trump's approval stands at 37.6 percent in PolitiKool's polling average.

Collins trailed Democrat Sara Gideon by 5.5 points in the final RealClearPolitics average, then won by eight percentage points, a miss of about 13.5 points.

The Ann Selzer Miss in Iowa

Silver also pointed to the final 2024 Iowa Poll by Ann Selzer, who he said had been "literally the highest rated pollster." The poll showed Harris winning Iowa by about three points, Silver recalled, when every other poll had Trump ahead. Silver estimated the error as "Like 13 or 14 or 15 points."

Polling error has not run consistently against Democrats in midterms, Silver said. He called 2018 "one of the most accurate years for polling ever" and said 2022 was "similar."

What a Uniform Polling Miss Would Mean for the Senate

Silver told listeners to ask what happens if the polls are "off by three or four points in the same direction in every race." If you had a three point polling error, you would have a very long night."

PolitiKool's averages show how little room there is. Democrats lead by less than two points in three Republican-held states: Iowa (Josh Turek +0.4), Kansas (Adam Hamilton +0.6) and Maine (Troy Jackson +1.7). They lead by less than four points in Republican-held Ohio and Alaska, and by similarly narrow margins in the open Democratic-held seats in Michigan (Abdul El-Sayed +3.0) and Minnesota (Peggy Flanagan +3.7). Overall, PolitiKool's Senate map rates control a toss-up.

Asked what a better-than-expected Republican night would look like, Silver gave a concrete version. "One is just Democrats lose all the toss-ups, right? Talarico loses by a point. Jackson loses by a point," he said. In that version, he added, Sherrod Brown wins but Turek loses by three points, an outcome he called "very feasible in the thick part of the probability distribution."

In that scenario, he said, the lesson would be that "we ran out of oxygen climbing up that big red hill."

Why the Error Could Run Toward Democrats

Silver did not predict a Republican surprise. He said pollsters already know they underestimated Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. "Every single person in the industry is aware of that," he said, adding that they "have pretty good incentives to correct for these problems."

He also said that in early voting, the low-propensity voters "appear to be quite democratic so far." If they keep turning out and Republicans do not catch up by Election Day, he said, the polls could underestimate Democrats instead. That would fit a midterm in which, by his estimate, the national environment has swung about 11 points against the president's party.

Silver said that if the polls hold, the result "would mark the end of the Trump era," leaving the president a lame duck for his final two years. Whether Democrats flip the Republican-held seats in Kansas and Iowa will be settled next Tuesday.