Why there is no good conservatism

 So....I already see the rats scrambling to escape the sinking ship, and discussing the idea of where the GOP should go next. And while some MAGAts are basically saying that the problem was they weren't extreme enough, the most rational conservatives are saying that the answer is for the party to moderate and go back to its roots, focused on constitutionalism, limited government, etc. And....I'm here to explain why that won't work, and why there isn't good conservatism. My views are nothing new if you've been following me for a while, but I really wanna write this one out while the conservatives are still thinking about this stuff.

We've been here before...

 The current political environment reminds me of the republican party in 2006 and 2008. They were looking to jump ship from Bush's neoconservatism, and thought that some "going back to the roots" mindset was the path forward. However, rather than being a moderation, it was a radicalization, and led to the tea party. And the tea party....led to me abandoning conservatism for good. 

And once again, I'll say why. I realized it wasn't just the implementation of conservatism that was bad, it was the whole ideology. There isn't a good version of it. Quite frankly, the "good" version of conservatism is the centrist wing of the democratic party. But as far as the actual "conservative" movement goes, you cant renovate or rehabilitate it, it's just bad. And while, yes, going back to the tea party seems like an improvement after a decade of MAGA, remember, the failures of those previous brands of conservatism are what led to MAGA in the first place. With that said, I wanna discuss WHY conservatism is bad.

Explaining conservatism

 The modern iteration conservatism goes back to Reagan, although you could arguably go back to Goldwater, or right libertarian thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, etc. It's a mix of religious reverence for the constitution, or alternatively christian nationalism on social issues, small government on economics, and on foreign policy it bounces back between "america first" and being a psychotic neocon warmonger. 

On social issues, again, various strains. Some are super reverent of the constitution. And that's fine...in moderation. We liberals also have our own reverence toward it but we're a bit less...zealous about it. We like liberal democracy, separation of powers, but conservatives seem to respect the "originalist" version of 1789 and its interpretations and that's just...dated. Here's the problem with any legal code. if we stick to those codes for forever, no progress is ever made. And life never gets better. Biblical christians believe we should stick to a code from 2000+ years ago in the bible. The constitution was written 200 years ago. Laws are a snapshot at that point of time of where society is. As we become more distant from the events in which they were written, the more out of step with the problems of the modern era they become. And that's a problem. While we liberals support the spirit of the constitution, but are willing to be adaptable with it, conservatives take things more literally and care more about the letter of the law uncritically. Which just...doesnt allow us to address modern issues. They throw out and ignore all case law that doesnt supprot their "originalist" interpretation of these ideas. Like, on the left, we support the idea of the "living constitution", we want ideas to evolve over time. On their side of the aisle, it's 1789 forever, even if it makes zero sense. 

You also got a lot of religious conservatives. And these guys want to adapt the values of the bible and force them on the rest of us. These guys are the backbone of the modern conservative movement, and that movement will implode if not for them. But if you take their ideas literally, you get...the same christian nationalism and project 2025 crap is doing now. You get people trying to impose christianity on the rest of us. While we secular progressives are more live and let live in terms of religion, support separation of church and state, and support religious tolerance, these guys just wanna impose their views on the rest of us and are authoritarian. And quite frankly, that's how we got to trump anyway. These zealots took over the government and because they wanted to force the rest of us to live according to their values, they decided to impose that stuff on us legally. And trumpism...is just the logical outcome of that. You cant go back to some pre trump version like it's better, as I learned during the tea party era, it's all bad, it's all horrible governance. If anything, I kinda went in a liberal direction BECAUSE of my reverence for separation of church and state and not having the government regulate stuff it clearly sucks at. Again, it's really about the spirit of the law and the constitution rather than the letter. Liberals and progressives also support American constitutional values. We just tend to take the spirit of them and adapt them to the times rather being a stickler for the letter of the law and trying to impose weird outdated interpretations of things on people, or to allow for weird interpretations that allow religious authoritarians to push religion on people.

On economics. Here's the problem with small government cosnervatism. It doesnt work well for us. You do trickle down economics, as I've discussed, you get a world where the rich people have all the money, they're the "job creators", and the rest of us are just expected to work for them and basically be their slave. The liberal regulatory state literally developed to curb the problems with this system, and conservatives have been on the war path believing if only we deregulate everything, cut all the safety nets, cut all the taxes, and let the free market as they envision it work, that we'll create the best possible outcome for people. But what we really get is hell on earth for most people. The wealthy are incentivized to work people as hard as possible while paying them as little as possible. And that's why income inequality is so high and why poverty and economic scarcity continues to exist even though we keep growing infinitely. It doesnt work for the people. it cant work, and if the people are smart, they'd reject it like I did. There is no good version of conservatism here. The closest thing is the economic moderation of centrist liberals who like SOME basic regulation and safety nets, while also being largely pro market. Not everyone on the left is pro DSA. Hell even Im leery of the DSA at times and often have a more pro market ideology than them in my own way. Either way, there is no version of small government conservatism that works. Sure, you might not get dumb### Trump with his tariffs or the iran war making gas $5 a gallon, but you also won't get a recipe for shared prosperity. it just leads to gilded age economics.

On foreign policy, look, the American conservative movement has oscillated wildly between being isolationist and "America first" while also being imperialist since the 90s. They opposed the UN and Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the 90s, only to turn into neocons in the 2000s. Trumpism made them more isolationist to the point of withdrawing from alliances in the 2010s, but then in the 2020s, they suddenly invade Iran? make it make sense. The point is, these two ideologies are linked. It's nationalism and this idea that the best way to make america safe is peace through strength. We give a middle finger to our allies, do what we want, and then we decided to invade an enemy who we dont like because of some made of pretext involving them being a threat to us. And then we're in a quagmire. Then we say were america first, and wanna be left alone and spend our money at home, but then we go nuts and wanna attack another country again because we perceieve them as a threat. And it's just insanity. Neither one of these extremes works. What does work is creating an international order in our image like we did, actively working with allies as security partners against mutual threats, and keeping the world safe and running around our ideologies. Republicans have this mentality that if only we hit our enemies with a stick they'll learn to respect us or something, they dont. It just makes us look weak. That's the cave man's mentality. The smart modern person's mentality is to use institutions and relationships and to only leverage military force when absolutely necessary. Keep in mind, we liberals arent super anti war hippies. Like, those are leftists, an entirely different animal. Most liberals want similar things as conservatives, we just have the smarter way of doing it.

Conclusion

With that said, I come back to my original statement, there's no good conservatism. The "good conservatism" is just centrist liberalism. They want the same things as conservatives, they're just smarter and more nuanced about it. But as far as the conservatives rediscovering their ideology and going back to the roots, yeah, you guys did that before, it was called the tea party, it sucked. The fact is, the modern conservative movement is just played out. Moderating is desirable, but a proper moderation will just make you centrist liberals. Sticking to those values in any purist form is gonna suck, because there is no good iteration of those values. They suck. Abandon them. become a liberal like I did. Seriously. Just my take on the situation. 

What 2028 will look like if people vote like 2026

 So, I just came up with a thought experiment. What will happen if people vote in 2028 like they did in 2026? What will the electoral college map look like? I thought about it for a while, looked at the results, and came up with this monstrosity of a map. 

 This is what the current senatorial/gubernatorial results will look like if imposed on the 2028 presidential electoral map. I prioritized senate data here since that's federal, but if none was available, i went with the gubernatorial results, and if there werent any of either, i just went with the default designation. Yeah. Landslide. This is why these 2026 results are being treated like an electoral earthquake. This is what the map would look like. And this is 1/5/10 margins btw (using that since I plan to post these elsewhere). 

Only result that seems off is vermont, but they didnt have a senate race and they elected a republican governor, so...

Otherwise, yeah. That's what the current political environment looks like. That's how many people Trump pissed off. it's bonkers. But yeah. That's where we are. 

WTF just happened? (2026 edition)

 So...now that the results are in...mostly...kinda, time to actually discuss them. 

How election night went

 I'm not gonna do a full hour by hour breakdown like I did in 2024, this night was VERY straightforward. I used Florida to gauge the mood of the country like I always do. It's the earliest state that has results as they close early and count fast. The par was R+6, as per my model:

 Basically, if the republicans win by 6, the rest of the country performs on par with this model. If we got something like R+8-9, dems were in for a rough night. If we got something like R+2....we're in for one heck of a good night. Early on, we were seeing Angie Nixon tying Ashley Moody. That's INSANE. I'm just thinking, that can't be right, that's D+6. That means the rest of the map looks something like this:

 I mean, can we just appreciate how nuts that is?

Of course, I didnt wanna count chickens before they hatch, urban vote could come in before the rural vote, that sorta thing. I mean, we were also looking at like D+15 in Georgia at this point and I'm just thinking, no, this is too good, let's wait for it to even up a bit.

It didnt even up, but we were left with Moody beating Nixon by about...2. So basically, D+4. This was the benchmark for the rest of the night:

 And it largely seemed to follow it. South carolina closed earlyish and was called for Andrews pretty early. WHAT? THIS IS NUTS! And it just kept going on like that, all night. Admittedly, not all states quite lived up to this model. Louisana I had very little polling data and was using NYT for that, but the republican only won by 2 there. Ohio performed closer to par. El Sayed went on for quite a long time, and I was worried until I realized he was winning and detroit didnt even come in yet. We lost Nebraska. But everything else seemed to very quickly go blue as per this model. Talarico won by like double digits. Like, WHAT?!

As things stand, its 54-44 with 2 races too close to call. Those two races are Alaska where Peltola is performing closer to model expectations and it's a tossup right now, and Mississippi, which is a tossup in a D+4 scenario. And yeah, we got a D+4 scenario overall even if some states didn't exactly track perfectly onto it.

Governor races, once again, on par with or exceeding expectations mostly. House races, I got a lot wrong as per my model (I did the best I could with limited data), but yeah, the overall number seemed to track, again, with a D+4-6 scenario, with the democrats expected to get in the ballpark of 255 seats to the republicans' 180. 

So yeah, this was a CRUSHING victory for the democrats. But what exactly happened?

Trump happened

When one thinks about it rationally, why WOULDN'T we see a landslide like this? if the public were rational they'd send him such a strong message that the republicans would never be electable again until around 2040. Ya know, we're talking party realignment numbers. Sadly, and this is why my expectations were more conservative, I've found the intelligence level of the median voter to be...lacking. It's like there's a certain segment of the population where Trump could kick them in the teeth and they'd be like "thank you, can i have another?" with blood and teeth all over the sidewalk. But Trump REALLY screwed the pooch with this one.

While we can go on about his many constitutional and human rights abuses, ICE patrolling city streets and shooting people in the face, the christian nationalism, that whole epstein thing, and his his fixation on his ballroom, reflecting pool and stupid arch,, I think the big thing is a lot more straightforward: it's the economy stupid!

Trump was elected after a period of inflation under Biden. He was supposed to bring the cost of living down in an era of greedflation, and he campaigned primarily on bringing back the normalcy of the pre COVID era. Instead, he made things worse. His tariff policy was psychotic and ill advised, and in an era of "full employment" only made things more expensive and slowed down economic growth. And then he did the worst thing he could have done: he invaded Iran. And iran responded by closing the strait of hormuz, raising gas to $4.50 a gallon or even higher in some places! This "very stable genius" is causing a very unstable economy. And if there's anything people should learn from history, it's that you don't F with Americans' pocketbooks. The last time this happened, Jimmy Carter was in office, he told people to wear sweaters and turn the heat down, and the public rewarded him by voting for Reagan so hard it caused the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. That's why I make the analogue of republicans possibly being in the dog house until 2040. Because he made America the 1970s again in all the worst ways that you definitely don't want to do if you're running for office. And as such, the public punished Trump harshly for this, giving this blue tsunami to democrats.

Striking down parts of the voting rights act happened

I think a factor that really went under our radar until I saw the results and looked at where these blue votes are coming from is the fact that the republicans tried to gerrymander black voting power out of existence caused the black vote in places like South Carolina and Mississippi to skyrocket to near presidential election levels. They didn't take too kindly to that. And a lot of otherwise rural districts in states like that went hard blue. Don't F with the black vote, they will F you up electorally, and the republicans stirred the hornets nest with that one. 

A warning against "mandates"

While this is a political earthquake that can signal a potential political realignment into the seventh party system, I would be skeptical at this time to inject any ideological mandate into the results. Quite frankly, I think it's best to interpret them this way. The country voted AGAINST Trump and the republicans. I don't think many of them voted FOR democrats. I don't think that progressives have a mandate from heaven to pass UBI and universal healthcare. If anything, I kinda feel like progressive underperformed relative to the rest of the blue wave. The biggest victories were actually among moderate candidates in places like Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas. Northern states performed more on par with my model, with a lot of those states taking longer to call. To be fair, looking at the results now, a day later, results exceeded my model there too, but only by about D+2, rather than D+4. The point is, the democratic coalition right now IS a big tent, with a lot of these new members being a lot more moderate than we are here on this blog. I don't think we're gonna get medicare for all or UBI out of this. I think trying to push such things might actually backfire on us hard. I think what the public as a whole wants is a return to normalcy and sane governance. I do think that the public won't be happy with it for long, and I think that ultimately, they will want the democrats to do something to address the economic crises of the past 20 years, BUT, they don't have a solid idea of what that is, what the problems are, etc. And even if we have the answers here, the public isn't always on the same wavelength as I am. 

So I'd advise against interpreting this as a sign that we should definitely try to force through a relatively extreme agenda now. I do think left wing support is growing within the democratic party, but this cycle was ultimately more about getting Trump out, establishing checks and balances, and going back to some semblance of normal. We will have to see how the 2028 election cycle goes for us to get a better idea of the ultimate direction the public wants. 

Thankfully, we don't really need to do much right now. Trump is still president. He's the big bottleneck. And despite him (surprisingly) accepting the results and calling for working together with democrats, I expect divided government, constant shutdowns over budgets, and maybe an impeachment process that never goes anywhere because despite how great tonight is, we don't have the needed supermajority in the senate to the topic of the day. Ya know? The point is, we cant really inject our own ideas and ideology on this election, as i dont think even the public has any idea what they want. They just know it's not whatever the past two years have been. 

Discussing local politics

As expected, Josh shapiro dominated the governor race in Pennsylvania. We also got a legislative trifecta for the first time in thirty years, meaning perhaps conservative obstruction has finally come to an end and we can pass some decent legislation. I wont set my standards insanely high here, but a higher minimum wage (say, $15), codifying abortion protections, and some restrictions against datacenters would be a nice start. Again, I'm being open minded this time. I understand that this coalition isn't necessarily reflecting my exact politics, and can't or won't do everything I want it to do, but if we get some decent progress out of this, I'll be happy. 

Conclusion

 This was a very good night for democrats. It wasn't a blue wave, it was a blue tsunami. Heck, it might not even be fair to call it a tsunami, it's more a blue 'rumbling' to use an attack on titan term. Like, seriously, this was a republican rout of apocalyptic proportions, and could possibly signal the end of the current conservative dominated era of US politics. I'm not kidding. Ultimately, it depends on what the democrats do. With that said, I wanna give the democrats a warning. Just as the people giveth, the people taketh away. They need to do SOMETHING with this. Im not sure they can now. If anything I expect the anti republican attitudes to continue into 2028. But in 2028, if this mid term is any indication, we WILL win, and then we will have to govern. And most elections of the modern era are ultimately a referendum on the current party in power and their governance. If the democrats rise to the challenges of the times and succeed, the future will be theirs. If they fail, they will be booted out of office and the republicans will win again. If anything, given my dismal takes on the future of the republican party, i think the only thing that can save them at this point is the democrats failing to BUILD a mandate and KEEP the public on their side. If they dont do that, the mistakes of the trump era from 2016 through 2024 will repeat, and we'll be in the dog house again from 2030 onward. And the republican party might be even WORSE. There's a nonzero possibility the post trump republican party gets taken over by groypers or the dark enlightenment tech bro class and we'll have to deal with a threat even worse than MAGA. MAGA is fronting a lot of evil crap behind it, BUT that evil crap doesnt disappear just because we win a single election. It's gonna take a good 12 years of constant losses for them to get the message that they need to shape up for real. Otherwise, they'll come back and keep pulling the same crap, and the same crappy cycle will continue. Just a warning. Govern well, and you'll be rewarded. Ignore your voters, take them for granted, or go in some insular direction that makes them hate you and you'll be back out on your butts again. 

And yeah, that's my initial take at least. I'll probably discuss more stuff over the next month or so. It's still too early to process everything and really sift through it all. This is just my initial opinion.  

The Daily Show viewer's guide to elections

 Ok, so Jon Stewart gave a rather cringe inducing take on polls, which basically seemed to lampoon experts for not knowing anything because they can't be certain, and how we can't know what state it will come down to. So I figured I'd do a really dumbed down version of my senate forecast for these kinds of people. 

Why can't we know for sure what the results will be before hand?

 Pollsters operate on statistical probability, not dualistic certainty. I know most Americans are woefully ignorant of statistics (hence why I tend to have more conservative takes on, say, gambling than I otherwise would), and epistemology in general, so I'll dumb it down. Polls attempt to simulate the actual electorate that will vote. However, because it's impossible to get these simulations perfect, they're more approximations. Polls have a margin of error to them. Kinda like the weather forecast. If a forecast says 70% chance of rain and then it doesnt rain, you cant blame them because 1/3 times, it WONT rain. Good polls are typically 95% certain within 3-4 points. I assume 4 within my statistical model, where I take polling averages and convert these to probabilities. However, this 4 point margin applies to both candidates, meaning that the results can be off by as much as 8.

But if the polls can be off as much as 8, how can we know anything?

 That's the thing, we can't KNOW. Something the typical person needs to get over, if they really want to think on a high level, is the fact that almost nothing is CERTAIN. A lot of weak minded people seem to crave certainty. It's what drives religious thinking. "Science cant know everything 100% and it changes its mind so I'm gonna trust the Bible." Yeah, I've been there. I know that's what they say. So let's dispense with knowing anything with 100% certainty.

Still, we can know a lot. We can know that some states like Tennessee will have such high republican margins that they CANT flip to the democrats. Same with say, Massachusetts on the democratic side. But when races start getting within 8 points, the probabilities can change drastically. 

So sell it to me straight, what are the odds of a democratic senate win?

 76% as per my model.

What state will it all come down to?

If I had to choose, I'd probably say Ohio. However, that is an oversimplification. While I'm not gonna say the odds are high that it will all come down to Michigan or South Carolina or something, the most impactful races that ultimately will decide the control of the senate are Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, and Iowa.

For each side, the "path to the white house" is the following:

Republicans: 40 safe seats -> Arkansas (41) -> Florida (42) -> Mississippi (43) -> Nebraska (44) -> South Carolina (45) -> Louisana (46) -> Iowa (47) -> Alaska (48) -> Texas (49) -> Ohio (50) -> Maine (51)

Democrats: 45 safe seats -> New Hampshire (46) -> Michigan (47) -> Minnesota (48) -> Kansas (49) -> Maine (50) -> Ohio (51)

 Do the states have go in that order?

 No, but the odds are they probably will. Generally speaking, if one side deviates from the polls, we will likely see nationwide trends showing other states doing the same thing. This is why I assume a "wave" model of elections where I tend to assume that the republicans/democrats over/underperform on the national environment. However, it is very possible for these states to not all follow these trends exactly. You might, for example, see the democrats get Texas but republicans get Ohio.

With that said, all in all, to fine tune the most consequential races, I'll say it's typically the light blue ones above, most notably Texas, Ohio, and Maine. I'd also throw Kansas into that category too given 4.1 isnt that much different than 3.6 and I kind of draw the line between lean D and likely D arbitrarily. Those are the ones that will likely decide control of the senate. 

Why does it have to be this complicated?

 Because life is complicated. Once again, we can't assume perfect certainty for much of anything. But yeah, if you want the really dumbed down version to give you more certainty, democrats have a 76% chance of winning the senate, republicans an 18% chance. The remainder is a 6% probability of a 50-50 tie, in which JD Vance, the vice president, will decide the tie breaker vote. 

If you want to know what races to focus on most, I'd say Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Texas are probably the most impactful. Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Alaska also are probably worth watching, although if it comes down to the democrats losing Minnesota and Michigan they're probably having a bad night, and if it comes down to Iowa and Alaska, they're having a good night. The model statistically favors the democrats to have a good night.

What about all those red states?

 If we account for the "wave" model of elections I mentioned above, if democrats start taking the pinker and redder states in my model, they're having a REALLY good night and it's a blowout for the democrats. It can happen. It actually is just as likely for the democrats to take south carolina as it is for the democrats' lock on the senate to actually be contested in a serious way. I'd ignore them. If they actually come into play, you can rest assured it's a democratic landslide. The hairy situation we gotta look out for is the republicans overperforming by a margin of, say, 2-3 points. As I discussed a few weeks ago, that's when election night turns into a chaotic mess where we don't know who wins. 

And if that happens, people will say the polls are "wrong" even though the statistics accounts for it. It has a 1 in 4 chance of happening. 

I still don't understand probability

I cant really help too much with that. I know a lot of Americans dont understand it very well, but imagine this. If I predicted 4 elections and had a 75% certainty level for each of them, I'd probably get 3 right and 1 wrong. Or think of it like gambling, horse racing, etc. A die has 6 sides. The odds of any one side coming up is 1 in 6, a 17% chance. The odds of picking any one card out of a deck is 1 in 52, around 2%. The odds of a roulette wheel hitting any individual number is 1 in 38, give the two 0s exist. It's best to think about it like that. The best I can do is tell you to learn statistics. Maybe take an online course on youtube talking about it. Heck, they probably got tutorials explaining polling better than this would.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a decent rebuttal to the daily show seemingly playing into peoples ignorance about how polls are wrong, how we cant trust them, and how we dont know what races to focus on. My own model attempts to map out the election in a relatively easy format showing the odds, the probabilities of individual states, and even mapping out each side's most likely path to victory (democrats from top down, republicans from bottom up). I'd just go by that. Focus on the bolded stuff if you really dont understand it. Maybe ignore the chart side and focus on the map. That should dumb it down further.

But yeah, to dumb it down as much as possible, democrats probably take the senate. Ohio is probably the deciding state although kansas, maine, and texas are also important to watch here. And yeah. That's the really dumbed down approach to it that ended up way longer than it should be.  

Election Update: 11/2-3/26 FINAL

 So....I think the dust has finally settled on the predictions, I'm not sure, if not, I'll keep amending this post, but at this point, i think the predictions are in where I feel semi safe in posting them. 

Senate

 The odds for the senate went really bonkers for democrats in the past 24-48 hours. It's mental how much things have shifted, but at this point, I have to conclude that YES, the energy is on the side of the democrats. Republicans seem completely demoralized, and democrats are extremely motivated to turn out. This is leading to a blue tsunami and a national environment I haven't seen since my 2006-2008 days as a former republican. They seem completely doomer pilled by this point, and for good reason. What's the reason for this? Well, if we go by the trend chart, I think the answer is clear, the fatal blunder of the republicans was Trump's war in iran and the gas prices. 

 Now, in all fairness, data was sparse before May, but i still had SOME polling data that was significantly more in favor of the republicans, like 4-5 points or so in swing states, but things started swinging for democrats HARD come late april/early may, and the environment remained D favored for the rest of the election cycle. 

As we enter the final day of the election season, with election day itself being tomorrow, the republicans' chances of holding the senate have plummetted to a mere 18%, with the democrats having a 76% chance of taking the chamber. Back in 2025, I outlined a map in which I showed the senate to be a long shot, but the republicans screwed up so hard that not only are the democrats favored to win the senate, but their path to victory is closing. They would need not just everything in their column, but they'd need to keep Alaska, which they very well might, but then they'd face an extremely steep uphill battle to keep Texas, Ohio, and Maine. The odds of them doing this is, again, 18%. It can happen, and I don't think we should be overconfident, but we're past the point where a R+1.5 overperformance, or even a R+2-2.5 one will do it. They'd need to overperform closer to 3 just to keep a tie, and they'd need to overperform closer to 4 to keep the senate outright. I don't think it's happening, even if the republicans overperform. Meanwhile if democrats overperform, they'll take Iowa, and then be digging into states that in a normal election year should NEVER be even close to going blue. We got Louisana, South Carolina, Nebraska, and Mississippi up for grabs, assuming a ceiling of a 4 point overperformance in the democrats' direction. It's nuts. 

Still, I'm going to go with the forecast to the letter here, assuming a 54-46D outcome, with a 76% chance the democrats take the chamber. (Yes Im assuming Iowa goes D). 

House

So...here's the FULL house forecast chart:

See why I tend to abridge it? Here's the TLDR version:

And here's the map to go along with it (note: some coloring might be off, congressional house maps are a nightmare to fill out and I had to make the margins 2/5/10 for a contest when I'd normally make them 1/4/8). 

 

Basically, if you thought the senate was bad for republicans, the GOP is especially screwed on the house. I predict a 98% chance the democrats will take control of the chamber, with the most likely outcome being a 240-195D map. This is apocalyptic for republicans in the current environment. 

If people wonder about the fundamentals only forecast, that one is at 237-198D with a 99.5% chance democrats win. Once again, it's more certain but it has a slightly lower margin of victory. It will be interesting to see which model actually performs better, but the official one is the polling one. 

 Governors

 

Even the governors races have shifted hard left with Georgia and Kansas now in the D column. Overall, it's predicted we'll have 29 governors being democrats and 21 being republicans. And yes, I'm assuming Oregon goes blue here, despite it being a 50-50 tossup on my model. 

Conclusion

All in all, the model predicts a blue wave. However, as we know, these are statistical models that translate polling averages from RCP into actual odds, and as we know, the results are never exact. We could see these models be WAY too bullish for democrats where republicans overperform relative to them. This could lead to a relatively messy election night like 2016, 2020, and 2024. However, given its a midterm, and the republicans are REALLY in the dog house, if anything, I think democrats might overperform even this. I don't know. The only race I feel relatively safe calling contrary to my model is maybe Iowa. At a 49% chance of going democrat, yeah, that could easily flip. It is a tossup. Even then, I'm gonna let the model speak for itself. Same with races like Kansas and Georgia in the governors. They WERE lean R until the last minute. I kinda think RCP changed the averages to reflect what THEY think will happen, as they were around R+1.5 until today. Still, who knows? Again, it's possible everything is so bullish on democrats that it ends up being right. Idk. I'll just let the model do the talking and recognize that these models are fallible and can change. 

But yeah, that's my predictions for 2026. These predictions are FINAL unless RCP changes their averages yet again, but I think they already did all that. I kinda went away for a few hours this evening and let them cook and yeah, this is the result. So I'll go by what they say, but yeah. 

BLUE WAVE, BABY! WOO!!!! 

EDIT: Had to update some charts because RCP made last minute changes to some of their averages. 

Screw Haley Stevens too

 So,.Haley Stevens has officially not just broke from the Abdul El Sayed campaign, but has endorsed his opponent, Mike Rogers. Why? Because he wouldn't outright condemn some anti Israel ad a PAC put out. Critics of the ad called it anti semitic, but honestly? I like it. Here's the ad. Basically, it has an American family in a grocery store putting items back because they can't afford stuff, and talking about how much money we're sending to Israel to kill palestinians. Is the ad biased? Yeah. Is it fair? Also yeah. But again, in the modern era, we can't say ANYTHING about Israel without being criticized as being anti semitic. Even if we are flatly criticizing Israel, and not an entire ethnic group or even an entire religion. It's ridiculous. And it's even more ridiculous when in my view, El Sayed actually did soft condemn the ad. He said he didn't agree with it or endorse it, but that it didnt really matter because other issues are more important. Which was the best thing he could've done IMO. But that wasn't enough for Stevens, who was hounding him since, telling him to outright condemn the ad, and when her public conduct was seen as overly divisive on the eve of the election, he told her to stay away. Stevens took this so poorly, she flat out went and endorsed Rogers.

This...REALLY incenses me. I'm NOT normally a blue no matter who type. But I've been toeing that line since 2024, recognizing the stakes are too high with Trump, and we gotta check and balance him NOW. I voted for Jill Stein in 2016, and Howie Hawkins in 2020. And even if I did endorse Kamala Harris in 2024, i HATED the fact that it came to that. I very clearly was not happy with Harris's campaign in 2024. it was too safe, too moderate, and it kind of was an affront to me on some of my biggest causes (like UBI/anti work stuff). And the way I see it, if I can endorse Harris then, then these centrists screaming about El Sayed can STFU for forever now. I NEVER wanna hear them say "vote blue no matter who" again. They're outright defecting when the race is between fascists and inoffensive social democrats.

And let's be honest, what does Mike Rogers actually offer people? If you wanna go into the racism angle, all he's really offered is Islamophobia. His entire race has been just blasting El Sayed for being a muslim, emphasizing his full muslim name, making weird comments about 9/11, etc. Where is Haley Stevens in condemning THAT crap? You know how much weird misinformation I gotta counter online with people saying that El Sayed supports terrorism and crap? All because they take comments like the one discussed above out of context. The condemnation wasnt quite as scathing as it should be. He didn't condemn hard enough, even though he clearly did condemn. And all this crap is taken out of context. I mean, it's pretty simple, on the one hand, you got the candidate who wants to get money out of politics, pass medicare for all, and put money in your pocket, and who is, occasionally critical of the state of israel, and on the other you got some maga psycho who reminds me of the boogeyman from Rammstein's angst. And Haley Stevens just went and endorsed the boogeyman. 

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, screw Stevens. Just goes to show that this party loyalty crap the centrists push only goes one way and push comes to shove these guys are closer to being diet republicans than actual democrats with actual liberal or progressive values. This isn't Maine. We're not talking Troy Jackson being weak and inoffensive vs Susan Collins, the one republican running this year who actually can distance herself from Trump and come off like a rational moderate. This isn't just a moderate deciding to back another moderate from the other party, although that would be bad enough in this instance. She just flat out endorsed some racist MAGA psycho while acting like Abdul was the racist one. It's ridiculous. Screw Haley Stevens, may she have a future in the post Trump republican party, because I don't want her in the democrats at all any more. I mean you know it's bad when even Jasmine Crockett is condemning Stevens for this. 

Sam Altman can go screw himself (part 2)

 Oh, I missed the guy's whole quote in context. he also had another quote about how the "invisible hand is failing right now", as if it's a market failure that other people can afford RAM and not just him. Once again, no, YOU ARE THE MARKET FAILURE! You're some rich guy abusing the market to buy up the world's manufacturing capacity of a finite resource for your stupid pet project. And you also wonder, gee how can I make this profitable? Here's the reality outside of your bubble. We little people, we "normal people" to use a Yang term, we HATE AI. A lot of people hate it more than me. They hate the very idea of it. Me, I understand it's not the tech, it's the business model, but with that said, no, the invisible hand isn't failing because it isn't making YOU successful. It's up to YOU to sell something that people want and to make it profitable. Right now you're just buying up the world's supply of RAM to build data centers no one wants, to sell a product that most dont want either. And you know what? if the invisible hand actually works as intended, YOU WILL FAIL. And I actually HOPE you fail at this point. because I dont wanna live in your crappy future either. I want to be able to afford computers. It's the one thing I'm into outside of politics, gaming and technology. And I dont want to live in a world where my hobby is unaffordable because some billionaire wants RAM and is willing to pay exorbitant amounts for it. I HOPE Open AI fails. I want it to fail. Because I want this insanity to be punished BY THE MARKET. 

And yeah. I just wanna say, once again, F this guy. He's quite literally a sociopath. And you know what? The problem isn't the market, the problem is him. He just expects the world to revolve around him and his dream, and he doesnt care how much his crap is affecting everyone else. So I say, let him fail. I hope he fails. Success for him doesn't mean a better world for us, quite the opposite. 

But really, the gall on this guy. And everyone has the same reaction. F you Sam Altman. Seriously.