Category Archives: General Election Forecast

2018 Mid-term Election Preview — Atlantic South

By tmess2 | Published October 24, 2018

There is an old joke about Pennsylvania that (at least politically) it is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle.  The same joke, in many ways, can be made about the five southern states that border the Atlantic Coast, particularly Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.  All three states are divided between regions that very much resemble the Democratic areas in the Northeast and Pacific Coast, and regions that are very much still the rural South.  These divisions have made all three states very purplish at the state level and have made the drawing of district lines very crucial to the race for Congress.

Starting with Virginia, Tim Kaine has a solid lead against the Confederate Republican nominee Corey Stewart.   The real battle in Virginia will be for House seats.  Democrats currently hold four seats (out of eleven seats).  Democrats are currently looking at taking anywhere between one and four seats.  The key to Democratic growth in Virginia has been the D.C. suburbs and the Republican disrespect for any type of expertise.   These districts are a model of how Trump is driving moderate Republicans to the Democratic Party.

In North Carolina, Republicans in the state legislature have stated that the current map was drawn as it is (a 10-3 Republican advantage) because it was impossible to draw a map that would have allowed the Republicans to reliably win eleven seats.  While the local federal court struck down the current map less than two months ago, there was not enough time to redraw the lines for this year (and the Supreme Court would probably have intervened if the judges had tried).  Fighting against this stacked deck, the Democrats have a decent shot at one seat due to Republican divisions in that district (the incumbent lost in the Republican primary).  There are two other districts were, with good results, the Democrats might be able to pick up the seat.  Like Virginia, North Carolina is another state where the hostility of the Republican Party to basic science is driving college educated votes associated with is research corridor into the Democratic Party. Continue Reading...

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2018 Midterm Election Preview-Mid-Atlantic

By tmess2 | Published October 23, 2018

If the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives, the Mid-Atlantic region (especially New Jersey and Pennsylvania) will play a significant role.  Just two years ago, the Republicans had thirteen of the eighteen House seats in Pennsylvania and has six of the twelve House seats in New Jersey.   After picking up one House seat in New Jersey in 2016 and one House seat in Pennsylvania in a special election earlier this year, Democrats are posed for major gains in this year’s election.  The other states are a little less likely to see major changes.

Starting up north in New York, New York has a race for Governor, a race for Senator, and 27 House races.  Democrats should easily win the state-wide races and keep their current seats.  Picking up Republican seats, however, will not be easy.  It looks like the Democrats should gain at least one seats, but there is a real chance at gaining as much as five seats.  The most interesting race will be New York’s Twenty-seventh District where Republican crook Chris Collins is standing for re-election.  Collins is on the ballot mostly because New York law did not allow the Republicans to replace him.  The race may come down to how many Republicans vote for the Reform Party candidate.

New Jersey is where things can flip dramatically.  In barely two years, the Congressional delegation could go from evenly divided to 11 Democrats and 1 Republican.  Senator Menendez is in potential trouble given his recent scandals.  He has an opponent who has just as many issues but also a very big wallet. Continue Reading...

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2018 Midterm Election Preview — New England

By tmess2 | Published October 21, 2018

Sixteen days left to take our country back from the heirs of the anti-federalists and give voice to the silent majority that the President loves to ridicule and marginalize — women, the children and grandchildren of immigrants, the Native Americans whose ancestors were here before any of ours, those who have worked hard to get a college or professional degree so that their children will have better lives than they did,  the LGBT community, those who believe in science, those working hard at a minimum wage job trying to make ends meet, the list goes on and on under a president who only values those with money to burn and believes that there is no solemn commitment that we have made as a country that we can’t break merely because it is inconvenient to his agenda.

Over the next week or so, I will have a series of posts breaking down the election by region.  Writing from the dead center of fly-over country, I am likely to miss (a lot of) the interesting local races and local color while trying to identify what seem to be the key races.  So I am hopeful that we will get some comments pointing out what has slipped under the national radar.

We start with New England  — home to the Patriots, the Red Sox, and a tradition of moderate Yankee Republicanism that is on the verge of needing Last Rites (represented primarily at the national level by the Cowardly Lioness of the Senate — Susan Collins — stumbling desperately in the last two years of her career between the conflicting tasks of keeping a majority of Maine Republicans primary voters happy and keeping the majority of Maine general election voters happy). Continue Reading...

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Three Weeks to Go

By tmess2 | Published October 14, 2018

Three weeks out is a good time to take stock of how things are looking in this year’s election.  Voter registration has closed in about half the states and will close in a good chunk of the remaining states in the next seven to ten days.  (Some of these states do permit “same day voting” where you can register in person when you vote, but most do not.)  Meanwhile, early voting has started in about one-third of the states.   (One-third of the states do not technically have “no excuse” early voting.)

The 2016 elections should serve as a reminder of the limitations of polling.   By definition, undecided voters have not decided and they can break in any proportion.  While national polling tends to be more accurate than district-level polling (and more common), elections are decided on a district-level basis.  And, all polling uses turnout assumptions that may or may not reflect who actually votes in an election.  The one advantage that Democrats have over the poll numbers is that groups that tend to vote Democratic tend to have low turnout, especially in the mid-terms.  Thus, if we can get a high turnout from these segments of the population, we should exceed the current poll numbers.

With that caveat, this year’s election appears to be a creature of the calendar.  Because 2014 and 2016 were good years for the Republicans, it looks like Democrats are poised to make significant gains in the U.S. House and in state legislative races.   It is clear that Trumpism is redefining the Republican party putting many suburban voters who used to lean Republican up for grabs.  That has created a decent number of “Romney-Clinton” districts and even more districts that Romney won solidly that Trump barely won.   A classic example of the districts that will decide who controls the House is one of the districts from the area where I grew up, the 7th district of Texas.  For the past fifty years. dating back to the first President Bush, this district has been a Republican district.  Forty years ago, the minority population in this district was non-existent.  It is now minority-majority, but just barely.  It also includes several very highly educated parts of Houston including the area around Rice University.    It also includes some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Houston.  Will the Democrats win this district this year?  Maybe.  But the fact that Republicans are having to defend this district is a problem for the Republican Party in the near future. Continue Reading...

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By Matt | Published November 7, 2016

Welcome to the final edition of the Democratic Convention Watch 2016 Presidential Forecast, showing Clinton up 306-232, down 15 EV from our last forecast, but still above the 300 mark.

The forecast is based on a average of pundit and poll based forecasts. The right hand column shows a running total of Electoral Votes. Find the state that crosses 270, and that’s the tipping point state, finally now longer Wisconsin – Nevada is the new tipping point state.

The convention wisdom is that the Latino vote will win Florida and Nevada for Clinton, and then it’s all over. Continue Reading...

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look For (Part Five)

By tmess2 | Published November 7, 2016

capitolThere are potential ways that the votes could come in tomorrow that would lead to one of the candidates reaching 270 before 11 p.m. (EST).  It is also theoretically possible that one party or the other could wrap up the Senate or the House by 11 p.m.   Both, however, are very unlikely in the absence of a clear landslide.  The last batch of states represent 10 likely electoral votes for the Republicans and 78 likely electoral votes for the Democrats.  (To make up for the 78, Clinton would essentially have to win all of the contested states.  To make up for the 10, Trump would need to win Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin in addition to the other contested states.)  The Republicans are defending twenty contested House seats in these states (and it is unlikely that all of the House seats from the earlier states will have been declared.)  The Republicans have three Senate seats in the last batch of states and the Democrats have two (not counting California in which the two candidates in the run-off are both Democrats).

11:00 p.m. (EST) — The polls in most of the remaining states close.  In particular, the remaining polls in Idaho, North Dakota, and Oregon close.  All of the polls in California, Hawaii, and Washington close.  Of the state-wide races, the only potentially close race is governor in Washington.  Most of these races should be called pretty quickly.

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look For (Part Four)

By tmess2 | Published November 7, 2016

fireworksAs 9:00 p.m. rolls around, enough states have been closed long enough that exit polls become less significant, and raw vote count becomes more significant.  If the exit polls and early returns in the state had been clear enough, those states would have already been called.  The question at this point in time is which if any of the contested states and races have been called.  While enough states remain that technically nobody will have yet won the White House, or the majority in the Senate, or the majority in the House, it should be becoming clear whether it is simply a matter of waiting for the polls to close in “safe” states or if it is going to be a long night waiting for the last votes in a handful of states.  While the race is not yet over, the next two hours should determine the winners.

9:00 p.m. (EST) — The remaining polls close in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  Additionally, the polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.  Colorado and Wisconsin are the last of the “at risk” states that are part of Secretary Clinton’s easiest path to 270.  Arizona and Nebraska 2 join Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine 2 in the batch of electoral votes that Trump absolutely needs to get to 270.

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look For (Part Three)

By tmess2 | Published November 6, 2016

animated flag glitterAs evening turns into night in the Eastern and Central time zones, the pace picks up.  For whatever reason, 8:00 p.m. is a popular time for states in the Eastern time zone to close their polls as is 7:00 p.m. in the Central time zone.  As discussed in part two, lines at the polls means that the networks typically only have enough results to call races if the races are not close.  Most of the states that will be called by 8:00 p.m. are not the races that will decide the election.  Because most of the polls will have been closed for two hours, there is a good chance that the Indiana senate race may be called by 8:00 p.m.  There is some chance that Georgia (an at-risk state that Trump needs to win) or Virginia (an at-risk state that Clinton needs to win) will be called before 8:00 p.m.  Sixteen states will close their polls at 8:00 p.m. as will the polls in part of several other states.  While the results from the early states give some clues about the shape of the race, the shape of the race will become much clearer when the returns from these states start to come in.

8:00 p.m. (EST) — The remainder of the polls close in Florida.  The polls close in Alabama, Connecticut, D.C., Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.  The polls close in the eastern part of Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  Several of these states should have quick calls for president, but several states are key states for the outcome of this election.  (Assuming that none of the “close” states from early are called by 8:15 p.m., the projected electoral vote should be approximately 76 for Trump and 55 for Clinton.)

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look for (Part Two)

By tmess2 | Published November 6, 2016

VotingBoothImage_0As with many other details of election law, each state gets to choose their voting hours on election day.  Thus, unlike a place like the United Kingdom where all polls close at the same time and when results are announced is a matter of how long it takes to count the vote, there is a slow progression across the country as the different states close.  A complicating factor is that some states are split down the middle by time zones.  In most of the states with multiple time zones, the polls close based on the local time (i.e. the polls in the eastern part of the state close an hour earlier than the polls in the western part of the state) rather than all polls in the state closing simultaneously.  Another complicating factor is that all states only require that you be in line to vote at the time that the polls close; so, in larger precincts, there can be a long line delaying the report of votes from that precinct.  As noted in Part One,  part of the projection process is looking at what precincts are still outstanding.  In a close state, the long lines at urban precincts (which are likely to favor Democrats) can make it hard to figure how strong the Democratic vote in a state is for an extended period.

In terms of interest, not every state is the same.   A lot of states and districts are considered “safe” for President or Senate or Governor or U.S. Representative.  Of course, if something surprising happens in those areas, it could be a sign of a wave developing, but most of the attention will be focused on the “battleground” areas that will decide a close election.  What follows in the rest of this part and the rest of this series is a review in chronological order of closing time (using Eastern Standard Time) at what to look for as the evening progresses.

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look For (Part One)

By tmess2 | Published November 5, 2016

VotingBoothImage_0After over one year of hate-filled rants from Donald Trump, the fiasco that was the Republican convention in Cleveland, the on-going scandals involving Donald Trump, Trump’s refusal to disclose his taxes, three presidential debates, and recent Republican threats to throw a tantrum for the next two to four years if they don’t win, there is little more that can be said about why the only choice in this election is to vote for the Democratic ticket.  The continued loss of rationality and respect for facts in the Republican Party is a long-term problem that needs to be fixed because democracy requires, at least, two viable alternatives to work.  But this year, the choice is clear.  Even if you think that a Democratic candidate for a particular office is less than perfect, those candidates are still way better than what the Republican Party is offering.  While there is still more to be done over the next three days to get every Democratic voter to the polls, Tuesday night is now looming ever closer.  So, for the next several days, some thoughts about what to look for on Tuesday night.  While the remaining posts in this series will take a chronological look at Tuesday night, this post is more about the basics and the mechanics.

For the media, there are two main tools for calling the election.  While these tools have changed slightly over time, the fundamentals have basically stayed the same.  The first tool is the “exit” poll.  The second tool is the unofficial vote count.

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