“It is no longer the case that Trump can lose the election.”

• Nate Silver is known for his election predictions.

• Over the past year, he predicted that Democrats would lose if Joe Biden came out on top.

• Now that Biden has dropped out, he sees the race as a toss-up, with Kamala Harris holding a narrow lead.

Nate Silver is perhaps the world’s most famous bookmaker: he first rose to fame by correctly predicting nearly every election in 2008, and then repeating the feat in 2012. And when Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, after Silver gave her a 71% chance of winning, he became the subject of much (misplaced) scorn.

Now, Silver has a new book — On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything — aimed at people like himself who make a living calculating odds and placing bets. That includes professional gamblers, as well as entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and crypto speculators. (Silver is also a big gambler, by the way: He’s a serious poker player and also spent $1.8 million betting on NBA games in one year, netting him a whopping $5,242 in profits.)

Silver wants his book to teach you about risk taking and how it applies to people like Sam Bankman-Fried and Sam Altman, and why people in sectors like government, academia, and the media are uncomfortable with risk.

But the rest of the world wants to know who Silver thinks will win the 2024 election. He scratches that itch by running a Substack that offers detailed models to subscribers and more general updates to profiteers.

We’ve all talked about that in a recent conversation. But I’m also taking a chance here by focusing these edited excerpts on his election thoughts. Plus a look back and forward at his career.

I know you don’t want to be known as “the political forecaster,” but I want to know how you see the election. Your most recent forecast is a Trump-Harris toss-up, though Kamala Harris appears to have momentum. You also wrote that Normally you’d expect her recent upswing to stall, but given how close we are to the election, that might not happenWhat do you think about it now?

If it were November [Silver’s election model] would be really aggressive. You would say Harris is going up, and there is not enough time for a turnaround.

Since it is only August, people are more cautious as we have already seen major momentum swings.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the next few weeks are going to look good for her in the polls. She’s got her convention, and Harris and Tim Walz are relative unknowns, so it could be a little more exciting than usual.

There’s usually a jump in the polls after the convention. So she can get a 3, 4, 5 point lead in national polls. And then September and the debate, or debates, if they’re multiple, is the reality check.

But yeah. Even I thought she would be an underdog, just less of an underdog than Biden would have been. Now I think you would probably rather be in her position.

It’s getting pretty close. It’s no longer Trump’s election to lose. It’s up to someone to seize a moment and seize it.

Long before the Biden-Trump debate — if we go back at least a year — you were consistent claiming that Biden was unable to run a real campaignThat his age made his chances smallerand that Democrats should have replaced him.

Were you worried about what would happen if you got all that wrong? That people would be as angry with you as they were after the 2016 campaign, when you said Hillary Clinton was heavily favored to beat Trump?

In 2016, I thought people were in denial that Trump actually had a chance — he was only a few points behind in these critical states, and Clinton was showing all sorts of signs of weakness. So I tried to make the case that Trump did have a chance, and [the fact that people didn’t understand that] was frustrating.

This time I was even more skeptical about Biden than I was about the polls. He was down to, let’s say, a 26% chance in our model, but that assumes he runs a normal campaign and doesn’t try to avoid media appearances and all his fundraising doesn’t dry up and all that stuff. And so I thought his real chance was maybe 10% or 15%.

As a poker player, it’s like going all in with aces against kings. It’s a very good bet. Biden would probably lose.

And yes, I took a risk by being quite vocal and insistent about it. A calculated risk.

But it’s also kind of how I felt as a citizen. Usually these things have more than one motivation, right? I was very frustrated that I didn’t feel like I had a responsible alternative to Trump, and I wasn’t going to vote for Biden. I was going to vote for the Libertarian or Working Families Party or something like that.

By the way: Why don’t you want to be known as the election predictor? Why don’t you want to be known as the guy who’s really good at this?

To use a self-aggrandizing analogy, it’s a bit like if you’re an indie band that has a big hit, there’s always pressure to play the hits. That’s part of it.

Part of it is that we live in a world where people don’t understand probability as well as I do. And so if it’s Harris 80/20 and Trump wins, or Trump 80/20 and Harris wins on Election Day, that’s a career risk.

I first met you during your indie band phase, when you were a nerd idol your own blog. Since then you’ve worked at two very large media companies — The New York Times and Disney — and now you are on your own againLooking back, are you useful at a big company, or do you think you’re better as a solo act?

I think I’m constitutionally qualified to be a solo practitioner. And also Substack’s business model is very attractive from a cash flow standpoint: all revenue comes in up front, and you get an 80% gross profit margin.

But I certainly hope that I will hire some people soon. I almost certainly will — but maybe half a dozen people, not 35 people.

I know friends who have been through this at all scales, from small to medium to quite large — people who got lucky with an idea and became CEOs. I don’t think their professional lives are very happy. You spend all your time on internal politics, external politics, compliance, litigation, investor relations. Those things are definitely not my strong suit and not how I want to spend the rest of my career.

So it’s just accepting what you can do with… let’s say I can only hire six people, and that’s a limitation. And let’s say half the bylines have to be mine, right? And with those two limitations in mind, that’s where you build the best business. I think limitations are sometimes a good thing.

Did you say how many paying Substack subscribers you have?

It’s good. It’s a very healthy number.

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