Nate Silver on Kamala Harris's Chances and the Mistakes of the 'Indigo Blob'
About this episode
Election forecaster Nate Silver discusses his model's roughly 52 percent odds for Kamala Harris and her extraordinary polling turnaround since replacing Biden, while cautioning against overreading hypothetical-candidate polls. The conversation centers on Silver's break with what he calls the 'indigo blob' — the aligned liberal media-political establishment, or 'the village' — which he says failed to 'decouple' analysis from partisanship across three episodes: the 2016 aftermath, the pandemic, and Biden's decline. Silver contrasts the village with 'the river,' the risk-taking world of gamblers and venture capitalists explored in his book 'On the Edge,' illustrated through encounters with Peter Thiel and Sam Bankman-Fried. They close on the VP picks — Silver rates Walz an above-average, risk-averse choice — and on gut instinct, poker, and Nancy Pelosi's political skill.