Finally read the methodology on FiveThirtyEight's 2024 election model.

https://abcnews.go.com/538/538s-2024-presidential-election-forecast-works/story?id=110867585

Since Nate Silver is gone, he technically still controls the rights to his model. They've rebuilt a model from scratch this year.

My memory might not be perfect here, but from just a look at it the new model seems to do similar stuff to the old Nate Silver model. With perhaps some improvements.

They are relying on economic and political fundamentals in addition to polling. They've made some tweaks to how they forecast polling, which is probably for the better.

On the fundamentals side, they made some adjustments for the pandemic inflation era that I think were smart. They are incorporating economic data over a long time horizon to capture the impact of inflation.

They also are keeping consumer sentiment in there (that may be negatively biasing the economic fundamentals here), which while it may not model economic behavior well anymore, might model political behavior well.

Biden on the economic fundamentals basically is about historically average currently. That seems about right given the objective economic data is pretty good, but it is weighed down by inflation and consumer sentiment.

The rest is pretty similar to the old model if memory serves.

I don't think I'll get too focused on this model. This cycle we have a few big things happening over the next few months, so it probably makes sense to wait till like September to pay attention.