538 now shows that the GOP is slightly more likely to capture the Senate. The forecast model moved the GOP from “51 wins per 100 simulations” to 55/100.
538 now shows Fetterman ahead by half a percent in Pennsylvania. No forecast or poll comes close to that kind of precision so the bottom line is – we know nothing.
Georgia is in precisely the same boat. 538 shows Walker up by a tenth of a point. There is a key distinction between Georgia and the other states in that a win on Tuesday does not mean an automatic Senate seat unless the winner exceeds 50%. Given a third party candidate and a virtual tie between the major party candidates, a December run-off seems like a strong possibility.
538 still has Nevada in the toss-up category, but it seems increasingly likely that Laxalt will win. 538 shows him winning 59/100 simulations, versus 41 for the Democrat. The problem here is that Sen. Masto (birth name Catherine Cortez), despite being Hispanic through her father’s side, has lost Hispanic support. In September she had a 19-point lead among Hispanic voters, and she now faces a 13-point deficit. A Laxalt win will most likely mean that the Democrats have to win both Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Why does New Hampshire always get ignored? Our senators count like everyone else’s. The race is pretty close.
Oddly enough, that has worked to your benefit. Although the Ralph Nader voters in New Hampshire were responsible for electing GW Bush in 2000, liberals ignored you and blamed Florida.
I wish the press would keep asking these two simple questions. “If you win will you accept it as a fair election?” and “If you lose will you accept it as a fair election?”
I’m thinking maybe we have to see what happens with the GOP taking the senate and house for them to finally cut their own throats. We know what it’ll mean. We know what they’ll do given the chance. Maybe we have to weather that storm for them to prove to the nation who they are, one last time, for them to be tossed out forever and go the way of the whigs.
If the republic survives.
Re: ratings 538 rates the all the polls, not just for potus, but ***senate/gov races*** as well. Repeating polling is a science and 538’s rating of all the polling services is also a science ie derived from mathematics which is Nate Silver’s main forte, mathematics wizard.
IIRC Nate actually was wrong predicting Tester would lose in MT 2012. Small pop states can be a crap shoot. Nate also takes into consideration an individual states political trends over the past 20/30 yrs.
So yea, Nate is not infallible, although he gave Trump a better chance ie 30+ % in 2016 than most everyone else did. Indeed, even Trump thought he was gonna lose.
After 2016/2020 polling aside, all bets are off ~ stay tuned!
Oops, this post should be under the 8:39 PM bottom post. It’s late …
Here is every Republican voter in a (almost literal) nutshell
I just don’t understand anyone who could vote for Walker over Warnock in Georgia. It seems like the action of people who believe a great many things that simply are not true.
In the 1950’s and early 1960’s there was a great deal of talk about the power of marketing and advertising. It seems to be me we are living in the triumph of right-wing marketing and advertising – largely devoid of facts, let alone truth – over common decency and common sense. No one can tell me that Kari Lake or Ron DeSantis or Rick Scott and so on and on are decent people. And Donald Trump, the person who spearheaded the breakthrough of this phenomenon, is human garbage.
And yet here we are, apparently worse off than we were in 2020. This ought to be an interesting time to be alive, but it just seems like it could be horrifying if the Republicans win. Think I’m exaggerating? My state’s gubernatorial candidate, Tim Michels, was recorded telling supporters that if he wins, no Republican will ever lose an election here again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AnJTZCcMfo
Scary.
People are voting the letter after his name. It could be a donkey, they’d vote for him. They’re voting “not a Democrat”.
There are all sorts of indications that the Red Wave is growing. Historically, the stronger the wave gets, the more undecided voters go to the party not in the White House. Don Bolduc is one of the Republican candidates I find scary because of the way he embraced the stolen election narrative. Some polls have him even or a little ahead in his race race for Senate in NH against Maggie Hassan. Mark Kelly seemed to be comfortably ahead, but that race is tightening as well. If the wave is big enough it might just push the GOP all the way to a 54 seat majority in the Senate. If that happens, Senate Democrats could face armageddon in 2024. Of the 33 Senate seats up for election, 23 are currently held by Democrats and they will be defending in states like WV, MT, and OH. Kyrsten Sinema will probably face a primary and if she is replaced by someone far to her left, it makes it far more likely that the GOP wins her seat. Basically, if there is a red Tsunami next week, it is entirely possible the GOP could win a veto proof majority in 2024.
At least if Bolduc wins he won’t have the power to steal future elections. Tim Michels, on the other hand, is the GOP candidate that scares me the most. He is running for governor of WI. Yesterday, he promised that if he wins, the GOP will never lose a race in WI again. I realize Halloween is over, but Boo! 538 has Michels up by 1%. Lee Zeldin voted against certifying the 2020 elections, but at least he sounds much more reasonable. I voted early for the first time the other day and voted for Zeldin even though I didn’t want to. I voted for Eric Adams for mayor last year because I thought he had the best chance of getting crime under control. But he needs help from the state. NY needs to reform the bail reforms that went into effect this year. We also need to get rid of DAs that believe armed robbery should be a misdemeanor.
I just wish the GOP had selected decent human beings as candidates this year. As a Republican for my whole adult life, I should be able to vote happily and enjoy the coming red wave. But I can’t.
Veto proof majority is 67. Reps have not had a 60 seat filibuster proof senate since Hawaii became a state. Rep wave in ’94, Clinton re-elected in ’96. Rep wave in 2010, Obama re-elected in 2012.
LBJ landslide in ’64. Pundits say how can Reps ever recover? Nixon elected in ’68. Nixon landslide in ’72. Pundits say how can Dems ever recover? Carter elected in ’76. The yin/yang of politics.
Or as you insinuate America could just be totally fucked! But again, climate change ie rising surface temps will probably make the Earth unliveable in 80/90 yrs so not to worry …
It’s always darkest just before it turns pitch black!
You are right, I meant a filibuster proof majority. As for electoral lock theories, I recall George Will writing columns in the early 90s saying the GOP had an electoral lock on the White House. If they did, it was a short one. I am not saying the Democrats would be finished by any means. I just mean the GOP may have a relatively free hand if they get to 60 seats in the Senate, hold the House, and with the presidency. I am not sure what policies they will enact. I will probably really like some of them, but I fear the Trumpists will take some things way too far.
There’s no “red wave” that’s a fantasy in the heads of Trumpites. Has been since 2016. Didn’t happen then, hasn’t happened since. We’re too evenly divided for a red or blue wave right now.
The polls I’ve seen seem to indicate that independent women are breaking hard toward the GOP. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the GOP wins Senate races in WA and CO. Even if they don’t win, the races will most likely be closer than anyone expected a few months ago. One way or another we should know if there is a wave in a few days.
Independent women probably have a stronger reaction re: scotus abortion ruling. Kansas notwithstanding. But the economy usually rules the day. Stay tuned …
Have you ever heard of “the Great Sorting”? The idea is that Republicans and Democrats have largely sorted themselves geographically with Democrats tending to live in deep blue states with Republicans tending to live in deep red states. The idea is that pro-choice women were already voting Democratic. Of course so many races are being rated as tossups that a 2% or 3% shift may be decisive. But ultimately there are probably pro-choice women that are more worried about the economy than the right to abortion.
Also, gerrymanders are probably contributing quite a bit to that sorting.
WHY are independent women breaking hard toward the GOP? I really have no idea.
Probably because of inflation. Remember the Bill Clinton war room. “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Re: betting odds you could have made a lot of $$$ the night before the 2016 potus election. 😮
538/Nate always adjusts each poll for sample size, pollster rating ie bias/accuracy. IOW there are certain polls 538 totally ignores. So if you want accuracy ~ 538. If you want a total right leaning blog/polls go with RCP.
btw, rasmussen/trafalgar are notoriously two of the worst polling companies. ymmv ~ Nate/538 continually rate each polling service after every election.
btw, polling is a science ~ sometimes a weird science. 😛
If RCP leans right, then I guess Warnock must be way ahead in Georgia, since they have him leading.
If you think Laxalt will lose Nevada, you can make some serious coin on the betting sites!
The ratings that 538 gives to the polling companies seem to give too little weight to their actual predictive performance.
They rank Rasmussen a C+ or B and Monmouth an A or A+, despite the fact that Rasmussen was the most accurate pollster on the popular vote in the 2016 presidential (they called it on the button), and was the #3 pollster when 538 ranked them all on their average margin of error in 2020. Monmouth, meanwhile, called Clinton by 6 points in 2016, and finished dead last among all surveyed pollsters in 2020. (And they were last by a very wide margin. Not only was their average error astronomical, but you literally could have done better with a coin flip, since they got 45% of the winners correct!)
If it were my call, I would base my weighting of polls on their performance history. Obviously Monmouth’s highly scientific A or A+ methodology is … well … I think the correct scientific term is fucked up. And if Rasmussen comes up with its results by using a Ouija Board, I don’t much care as long as it works.
The weirdest thing on 538 is to compare their 2021 rating of Survey Monkey (a dreary C) to their own chart of the most accurate pollsters in 2020, in which Survey Monkey called 97% of their races correctly (best of any company), and that was based on a very large number of races. SM (whoever they are) studied 58 races and got only 2 wrong!