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The polling guru says the rising star Democrat is a sure bet.
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Polling analyst Nate Silver has revealed his top pick for the 2028 Democratic presidential race.
Speaking at a political conference on Saturday, Silver declared Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff was his far-away No. 1 choice to lead the Democrats into the next presidential election, arguing the 39-year-old rising star has the rare ability to bridge the party’s increasingly bitter divide between progressives and centrists.
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Jon Ossoff, 39, coasted to an Election Day win by 18 points in Georgia—a state Donald Trump won in 2024.
Anadolu/Anadolu via Getty Images
“He’s such a slam dunk number one pick,” Silver told the Crooked Con political conference in Washington, DC.
“He won by what was like 16, 17, 18 points or something. He seems like the uniformly ‘compromise candidate’ between the progressive and the more centrist factions of the party. And he seems very talented.”
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Ossoff also has another thing going for him in the race for presidential nomination, Silver suggested: his looks.
Nate Silver and his Still Counting co-hosts at Crooked Con in Washington, D.C.
Farrah Tomazin
“Is he looksmaxxing or something?” he joked, referring to the online trend of maximizing one’s physical attractiveness.
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Ossoff has emerged as one of the party’s rising stars after winning re-election against Trump-endorsed candidate Mike Collins.
He came to national attention earlier this year when he accused Trump of being more concerned with jet-setting around the world with White House aide Natalie Harp than with governing.
Donald Trump’s aide Natalie Harp beams as the president reaches out to her on stage at a recent rally in Nebraska.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
The Georgia Senator is also fast becoming one of the most thirsted-after politicians on the internet, with Instagram and TikTok filled with images of the former documentary maker at campaign rallies and events.
“I’m so glad I’m going to be able to experience a hot president in my lifetime,” one Florida-based content creator recently mused in a video comparing Ossoff to Fitzgerald Grant, the fictional president played by Tony Goldwyn in the political drama Scandal.
Sen. Jon Ossoff is favored to be the Democratic nominee on prediction markets like Kalshi.
Carlos Barria/REUTERS
But Silver also had a bigger, ominous prediction for what could be coming for Republicans in 2028.
He said that if Democrats can replicate the electoral earthquake that hit the GOP on Tuesday, a Senate majority of 60 seats “would be on the table.”
Farrah Tomazin
Tuesday’s midterms were an extraordinary rebuke of Trump and his party, with Democrats flipping the House and seven Senate seats.
Democrats now hold the majority, paving the way for congressional inquiries into Trump and his allies, as well as two years of lame-duck status for the president.
“This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country,” the GOP’s outgoing Florida governor Ron DeSantis said in the aftermath.
But Silver sounded a note of caution about how Democrats should use their newfound power.
He argued that lawmakers should reassert congressional authority over the executive branch, pointing to Congress’s ability to override a presidential veto—a power rarely used successfully in recent decades—as one potential tool to reclaim its constitutional authority.
Farrah Tomazin
But he questioned whether Democrats should rush to rescue Trump from the consequences of his own decisions.
“There are certain things like exerting more congressional authority over tariffs and more powers and things like that would probably like good for ‘lowercase D’ democracy, right?,” he said.
“But on the other hand, like if Trump keeps misstepping and f—ing … his successor’s (chances), then why would you save him from himself?”
Silver picked Ossoff as first choice to win the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries during a segment at Crooked Con with his Still Counting podcast colleagues Clare Malone and Galen Duke.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. arrives to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, New York, U.S., Sept. 11, 2026.
Adam Gray/Pool via REUTERS
Malone’s top choice to win the nomination was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while Duke picked Pete Buttigieg.
Ossoff was also the clear winner of the Crooked Con straw poll for the Democratic nominee in 2028. Attendees voted and results were announced at the end of the summit. Ossoff garnered 38.4 percent of the vote, Ocasio-Cortez 16.6 percent, and Buttigieg 13.9 percent.
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