Pollster Nate Silver: 'It's Not Great News for the President'

Top pollster Nate Silver said he expects President Joe Biden's poll numbers to decline after his halting debate performance last week, The Hill reported.

Silver's "2024 Silver Bulletin presidential election forecast" tipped slightly in former President Trump's favor Monday evening, after the first batch of post-debate polls were released.

The results proved to be "mostly poor for Joe Biden," the pollster said in his latest update.

Trump leads Biden by 2.7 percentage points in Silver's model's national polling average, and Biden's win probability dropped to 28%, down from 35% on debate night, per the forecast. Silver said he expects polls to continue in the same direction.

"Our guess is that more likely than not, there's some further decline ahead: the model is trying to figure out whether this is random noise, but instead it's almost certainly caused by a challenging first debate for Biden," he wrote Monday. "It's not great news for the president."

Trump leads Biden 41% to 38%, according to an exclusive USA Today/Suffolk University Poll taken Friday to Sunday.

The previous survey in May showed the two contenders tied 37%-37%.

The findings still signal a close contest, not a decisive lead, USA Today noted. The difference in support and the shifts since the spring are within the polls' margins of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The new survey of 1,000 registered voters was taken Friday through Sunday.

There was little change in the standing of third-party candidates, with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at 8% and three others at about 1% each.

In the survey, 41% of Democrats said they wanted Biden replaced at the top of the ticket.

"Trump voters are much more excited about their candidate than Biden voters are about theirs," according to USA Today's analysis. "That enthusiasm gap could be critical when it comes to convincing supporters to actually cast a ballot in the fall."

Various news publications, including The New York Times, have urged Biden to stand down and be replaced by a younger, more vigorous Democrat candidate.

Meanwhile, Biden's longtime advisers and first lady Jill Biden have said he will remain in the race.

"A concerted effort by the Biden campaign and the White House has sought to quell concerns in the party and reassure the public that he is best to take on former President Donald Trump in November," USA Today wrote. "The latest batch of polling suggests the campaign has a lot of work to do."