2025 election predictions

 Okay, so, these might be a few hours old (EDIT: I updated the data), but meh, it's only 2025, I only go all out for major elections so YOLO. Nothing is really gonna change to invalidate my predictions.

 Yep, no fancy maps this time, just straight data. Not enough data to really do a map for. 

So, to discuss the key races:

 NYC Mayor

 Yeah, I hope you just Zohran Mamdani. Because he's gonna win. 100% shot more or less. 14 point margin. I guess it aint literally 100% and the fact that its a 3 way race could introduce more volatility, but as a numbers guy, well, I literally need to introduce more 0s to make it less than 100%. It's like 99.99%. 

That's gonna piss Trump off good, and the situation is so bleak Trump is literally endorsing Cuomo and throwing Sliwa under the bus. 

Anyway, love to see it. Again, not huge huge on Mamdani myself, but yeah I see why people like him, and he'd be my vote too. We need less establishment/corporate dems like Cuomo in charge and more progressives. Love to see this shift in the democratic party. 

NJ Governor

It's a relatively close race, but Sherrill is favored to win over Ciattarelli. Now, it should be noted it's not a 100% shot for the dems here, more 80-20, but still, I like those odds. 

VA Governor

 Looking at updated data it looks like it's actually 10.2% for Spanberger, which actually increases the odds to 99.5%, but whose counting? Point is, the dems are gonna stomp here, with them having a 99% shot at winning. 

VA Lt. Governor

 This one is expected to be closer, but less polling exists. RCP isn't really following this one, and the little polling I found suggests it's a bit more tumultuous, more similar to the NJ governor race. The democrat is favored here, but it's not a slam dunk outside of the margin of error. The democrat has an 84% chance of winning here, so a 1 in 6 chance of the republican winning.

VA Attorney General

 While the race is tightening at the last minute, the republican is still expected to win here. If anything, last minute polls have led to more momentum toward the democrats, with the margin being reduced to 1 point in favor of the republican. So this one is contentious. I still expect the republican to win, but a last minute polling surge in the opposite direction could be indicative of an upset. I mean, this is what happened with Trump before he won in 2016. The last polls shifted the predictions red, and given polling is a lagging indicator as it is a snapshot in time while public opinion is ever shifting, yeah, this is the race that we really need to keep an eye on. I still give it to the republican due to my own model's inertia given the older polls still in there, but yeah, only a 60% chance of them winning. This one is basically entering tossup territory last minute. 

CA Prop 50

This is California's referendum about gerrymandering the state in favor of democrats to respond to gerrymandering in other places like Texas. It's expected to sail to an easy win with an estimated 20 or so margin of victory, so virtually another 100% shot here. 

PA Supreme Court Retentions

So, this one isn't being followed nationally very closely, despite it being very heavily discussed here. I even wrote an article encouraging people to vote Yes on that. Basically the republicans want to push some liberal justices off of the PA supreme court to create a power vacuum and dead locked court that can't rule on anything effectively. Voting no would remove the justices, voting yes would keep them. 

Polling has been incredibly scant, and I'm mostly going off of a Franklin and Marshall poll from a month ago for these. They had different numbers for all registered voters vs likely voters. The LV ones were 10-17 points, but the all registered voter ones are down to 4-10. While it is expected to retain all 3 justices, as not retaining judges is extremely rare, republicans have dumped tons of money into this race to make it happen, and it is a very partisan issue here in PA. There's also a massive amount of uncertainty here in terms of the lack of polling, the fact that many people polled a month ago seemed to know little about the debate anyway, and things like voter turnout and partisan polarization playing a role here. So we're kinda flying blind, but the above numbers are the best I could realistically come up with. That's what the one poll I have says. Although, that really isn't a lot of data, now is it? So keep an eye on this one tomorrow, especially if you're from PA.

Conclusion

All in all, this looks like a fairly blue year, which is to be expected. The republicans control the federal government, when that happens, democrats are more mobilized and they tend to surge, while republicans sag in approval rating and energy. Most of the races are expected to go the democrats' way tomorrow, with only the VA attorney general race favoring the republicans. Even then, last minute shifts in polling have officially made the race a tossup. So...yeah. Keep an eye on that.