Senate/House 9/27/2022

So, turns out right after I made that big analysis at the end of last month, everything shifted dramatically. Of course by the time I noticed I was on the cusp of my vacation and didn't have time to rework the numbers, and I can't copy my charts properly on my tablet, so I ended up having to wait until I got back from my trip. So now I am going to do that. Buckle up, this is looking messy.

Senate

Lots of changes here. A lot of polling data has come in over the last month and a lot of margins have shifted dramatically, mostly in the GOP's favor. I guess outrage over the fall of Roe is waning and democrats couldn't count on that all the way to the election. Anyway we're now looking at 11 races in place. RCP cut it down to 7 but the 4 in the "leans" categories are mostly within the margin of error (with the one that isn't being JUST outside of it for all intents and purposes) so I'm going to include them. Which means we're looking at 44 safe seats for democrats and 45 for republicans.

States	Winner/Margin	SD	% DEM Win	% GOP Win	Seats if DEMs Win	Seats if GOP Wins
Colorado	Bennet + 8.6%	+2.15	98.4%	1.6%	45	55
New Hampshire	Hassan +8.0%	+2.00	97.7%	2.3%	46	54
Washington	Murray +7.7%	+1.93	97.4%	2.6%	47	53
Arizona	Kelly + 6.2%	+1.55	93.9%	6.1%	48	52
Pennsylvania	Fetterman +4.5%	+1.13	87.1%	12.9%	49	51
Georgia	Warnock +0.3%	+0.08	53.2%	46.8%	50	50
Ohio	Vance +1.2%	-0.30	38.2%	61.8%	51	49
Wisconsin	Johnson +1.5%	-0.38	35.2%	64.8%	52	48
Nevada	Laxalt +1.7%	-0.43	33.4%	66.6%	53	47
North Carolina	Budd + 2.0%	-0.50	30.9%	69.1%	54	46
Florida	Rubio +2.8%	-0.70	24.2%	75.8%	55	45

Oh crap, this is looking like 2020 all over again. Remember the control of the senate coming down to Warnock and the margins being razor thin? At this point, control of the senate could literally go either way, it's a literal coin flip. Dems have a 53% chance of controlling the senate, the GOP a 47% chance. Extremely close. Beyond that, the democrats' seats look pretty locked down. While Fetterman's margins have dropped to 4.5% from 6 something, he's still in good shape with an 87% chance of winning. On the GOP side, the race looks a lot more mushy, with any of the seats in question technically up for grabs. Given the GOP has only a 60-75% chance of winning each individual seat while the democrats have an 87% chance, the dems have more of an edge of races outside of georgia are in play. Even if the democrats lose Georgia if they can pick up one other close seat that was in play like say Wisconsin or Nevada, they should be golden. If the GOP has a wave election, the worst scenario I honestly think would happen is 49-51 GOP or possibly 48-52 if things go REALLY wrong. Meanwhile the GOP's leads are soft and mushy, and could theoretically switch back. And if the GOP loses even one of those seats, the race is out of their hands. 

Still, I find the more "wave" oriented model to be more accurate on the whole. While variability can exist, I do tend to view the national environment in a way in which the races all relate to each other, and what happens in one also happens in several others. They're not all independent, you know? Trump in 2016 had the whole "he needs to perform perfectly to win" things where by a trend model I had trump at a 44% chance whereas if i factored in every single race Hillary seemed to be in a much stronger position. So national environment is important. And if anything the national environment is arguably favorable to the GOP. Yes, the dems got a wave back in July over Roe v Wade being overturned, but they aren't maintaining it, and the margins are hollowing out a bit. Still, all things considered, it's almost 50-50.

House

Like always, I'm not going to analyze the house in detail as it's too many races with nowhere near enough data, but the fundamentals are as such where RCP still projects the GOP having 218 seats that lean their way strongly enough where I don't think the democrats have a realistic chance. I'm going to spitball a 98% chance the GOP takes the house, and a 2% chance that the democrats retain it, based on that. For a second opinion, Fivethirtyeight seems to estimate a 61% chance the GOP wins, while the dems have a 39% based on their "lite" model (polls only, no "expert opinions"). So maybe RCP is wrong? Who knows. 

Conclusion

I'm not gonna do governors this time because I didn't plan on doing this again until about a month from now, I just wanted to record shifts in the congressional races. And it's been a major shift. Democrats are no longer riding high from the GOP going too far in overturning abortion rights, and the GOP is now looking like they once again have a decent shot at the senate. If anything this election is turning into a nailbiter. Right now we're at 53/47 for the democrats keeping the senate, with any chance of expanding their margin looking less likely than before. They're not out of it, and this isn't looking to be an apocalyptic red wave like it did earlier this year, but it's close. There's a lot of energy running high in multiple directions and the results are very much up for grabs.