Election Update 10/10/26

 So, I delay it a day and then only one poll comes out on Saturday, figures. The last two saturdays had TONS of polls come out, but i switch it up to account for that and I shift Texas by 0.2. Bleh. Anyway. Here's this week's update.

Senate

All in all, some mild change, mostly in favor of the democrats. Nebraska is dead heat with no clear leader. Kansas, FREAKING KANSAS is only R+0.2. Iowa remains a tossup, and Maine remains one.

Reflecting more on Maine, and having watched part of the debate, I think I figured out what's going on there. Susan Collins is a normie moderate republican who can successfully distance herself from the Trump administration, and Troy Jackson has the charisma of a wet blanket. The debate was SO BORING. I tried to watch it but it just couldnt keep my attention. Both these guys are like watching grass grow. For Susan Collins it feels like a welcome change of pace given the flair and pizazz of the Trump administration, but with Jackson it just...doesn't work. 

Anyway, those are the tossups. Alaska is lean D with a relatively weak margin. Minnesota is...idk wtf is going on there, should be D+6, not D+2. Texas, Ohio, and Michigan are all D+3ish. And yeah, the senate is looking pretty good for democrats. On the republican side South Carolina is R+2.4. That's kinda crazy. Florida is D+7, and then Montana is D+14, with Bodnar being held back by Bankhead refusing to drop out and allow the candidate with a chance a chance. 

House

 

So I added Alaska's district to the list of districts I auto flip. Unlike the others, it's not gerrymandering that does it, it's polling. The fact is, according to my model, the outcome is supposed to be D+9, so basically soft safe D. According to polling, it's supposed to be R+9 so soft safe R. Given my model and polling are 100% at odds with each other, I flipped this district, recognizing the flaws in my own model. Honestly, there are other districts where my model and polling disagree, but not like that. Most other disagreements are within the margin of error, or have polling within the margin of error. Like WA-03, my model predicts D+14, whereas the polling predicts R+1. A massive difference, sure, but R+1 still means 40% chance of democratic win, so I figured to just let that one ride. Another one is VA-01. My model predicts R+2, polling predicts D+4. These two numbers are within the margin of error of each other so I won't auto flip them. 

There isn't really enough polling to really justify making a full polling only model. Like seriously, we only have like 5 districts of 435 polled right now. And only around 75 or so are in play so to speak. So yeah, do the math, not worth my time. Polling that goes against the cook ratings also often ends up being wrong. Again, the Alaska polling is the exception. Not only are the differences massive, but cook still has it as likely R, the polling tells me likely-safe R depending on how lenient you are with ratings (5 point MOE and it's "likely" instead of safe). And only my model has it has like, safe D. So my model is very obviously wrong there. 

Anyway, this leads me to giving a R+3 correction to my model, where dems have 234 seats and republicans have 201, with the democrats still having a 99% chance of taking the house. Idk how reliable that is given my other system, but to be fair I dont trust that other system either. I'll go with this one for now as I seem apt at detecting errors and flipping outcomes that are out of line. 

Governors

 

Map is what it is. I have little to say on this one. Wtf at Oregon though. 

Conclusion

Anyway, that's this week's update. The senate is largely holding steady, we lost a tiny amount of ground in the house that is of little statistical significance, things are gonna fluctuate I guess, and the governors are where they are. I'll update weekly through election day, I'll probably make a couple predictions before election day itself like on Monday with me constantly editing it, and you'll have the final one by Tuesday afternoon before polls closed. 

Btw, I just voted today so....yeah. This crap is already going on. Love mail in ballots.  

GPU prices are getting worse

 Just when you thought it couldn't get worse....it gets worse.

Okay, so you know how it is, Im gonna use PCpartpicker and list the prices of the most recommended GPUs by price, focusing primarily on more budget segments I'm more sympathetic toward.  

GT 1030- $105 

Okay so this came back down, for a while this was up to $125, which is insane given it's basically my old HD 5850 from 2010 except with 2 GB VRAM. Seriously, this card launched for $80 10 years ago. The 1050 which was priced at $110 at the time cost as much as this. The 1050 ti was $140. And again, this was 10 whole years ago. Imagine wanting $100 for like an 8600 GT in 2017. I mean...to be fair, that's not far off from the GT 710 being $96, or the 9500 GT for $120, so yeah, the market really IS that crap...

Maxsun RX 580- $140 (chinese) (4x 1030)

This one doesn't show up on PC part picker, but times are so desperate I'd actually legit consider this one. Sure there are cheaper ones at $120, but they're even sketchier chinese brands and mostly refurbs and old mining cards of questionable quality. Maxsun is actually new and while the brand is chinese, and from what I can tell they're basically selling 570s with a bios upgrade, uh....have you seen the market lately? Yeah, if I had to buy a cheap GPU, I'd seriously be considering this. Buyer beware, there is some level of sketch here, it's really the fact that the market is so awful that I'm including this one.

Arc A380- $160 (3x 1030)

Yeah, even the Arc cards are going up now. The 570/580 IS a little faster than this, and AMD has better drivers, but again...the 580 I recommended above is kinda sketchy. You could get this instead and it would be more reputable. Arc cards are iffy on drivers and their compatibility is iffy on the kinds of older systems that would use budget cards like this. Still, again, it's basically the best that's available. That's how bad the market is.

Arc A750- $210 (7x 1030)

 A much stronger card for $50 more. That's...what happens at the bottom of the market. You spend a little more you get far more value than if you spent less. Kinda "the more you buy the more you save" but for real. Again, it's intel. So....unreliable drivers, not the best for older systems, but hey, it's a relatively decent card on paper for not a ton of money. Again, I surfed through ewaste to find these, there isnt anything better. I did see R9 290xs and GTX 1050 tis at this price point though, but that's basically Arc 380/RX 580 tier performance. 

 RTX 3050 6 GB- $245 (4x 1030)

 "What happened to the 3050 8 GB?" It's like $350 now, that's what. Which is...awful. Absolutely awful. Still, the 6 GB exists. And that's bad because it lacks the 8 GB VRAM needed for modern titles, but this card still will do in a pinch I guess. Just be aware it might not run ALL games. The A750 is actually better, but again...intel just has those issues where I cant just say "buy an intel." It sucks.

RTX 2060 6 GB- $274 (6x 1030)

Better than the 3050 by a rather significant margin. Another upsell. Getting closer to A750 performance, but again, 6 GB VRAM is a limitation. I would consider all these GPUs up to this point below the minimum specs for modern games. 

Well, ok, the A750 technically hits them, but then the drivers suck on older ones. Especially on old systems that dont have rebar. Bleh.

 Arc B570- $290 (8x 1030)

Not much stronger than the A750, but should be included regardless. Has 10 GB VRAM and is a newer series. Still, doesnt bring much to the table honestly. Still Arc. Still flawed. 

 Arc B580- $330 (9x 1030)

 Another marginal increase, but this one has 12 GB VRAM

 RX 7600- $340 (8x 1030)

 So, this is my official go to recommendation. You want something that is, IMO: 1) new enough to have RT and modern features, 2) AMD or intel, 3) 8 GB VRAM, and 4) At least 6x GT 1030 if you want a comfortable gaming experience. The 3050 8 GB kinda squeaks by, only running below the 6x the 1030 mark, but it's not by much and you can basically make it work, you know? But this is the first one that actually meets ALL specifications. If you wanna put up with Arc, that A750 is a good bet, and you can probably make do with like the 2060 if you're willing to risk issues on some VRAM intensive games. But yeah, as far as something that I say actually clears ALL the bars, having good compatibility with almost every game out there, this is your card. And this is about where my own RX 6650 XT is performance wise too. It's solid. Feeling a little dated, but more akin to using a RX 580 or GTX 1060 in 2020-2021 or something. Like, it works, it gets the job done, but it's not great. Such a card should NEVER be worth $340. Maybe $125-150ish if I were being honest, but yeah, again, this is how insane the modern market is. 

RTX 5050- $390 (9x 1030)

Not really worth it over the 7600 for $50 more. But hey, yeah, that's where this is at. Pathetic, isn't it?

RTX 5060- $430 (11x 1030)

I mean, worth it over the 5050 at least if you're gonna spend this much... 

9070 GRE- $550 (15x 1030)

So, I skipped over some choices. You have the 9060 XT 8 GB for $460, the 5060 ti 8 GB for $500, and the 9060 XT for 16 GB, but you should probably skip all 3 of those and just grab this. Sure, it only has 12 GB VRAM, but is probably far more worth it in terms of power than say, the 16 GB 9060 XT. Seriously, Im offering too many choices here.

Anyway, I dont even consider above $300 "budget" any more, let alone $500-600, so let's simplify the recommendations here.

Arc A750- $210

It's a solid card that tends to offer far more performance than a lot of cards above and below it. in terms of value. Seriously, its like the lower end card exist to upsell you to this. it's only real flaw is being intel which means spotty driver compatibility with old games, and old systems. It's okay, but yeah, it's cheap for a reason.

RX 7600- $340

The first real "no compromise" modern gaming experience card. Way overpriced for what it's worth, for the record I bought a 6650 XT 4 years ago that's comparable for this, and it is showing its age, but this is kinda the minimum experience if you want something that both runs new games and has broad compatibility with older games and equipment.

RX 9070 GRE- $550

While the 9060 XT 16 GB is kinda the new "minimum card" for a FUTUREPROOF experience, I'd still rather buy this despite the lower VRAM because it's only $30 more.

And of course:

RX 9070 XT- $815

If you're rich but not like "I wanna throw money away" kind of rich, buy this one.  

And yeah, that's the market. I never planned on writing these regularly, but the market is what it is, and the prices are changing so much that articles I should be writing once a year or once every two years are suddenly requiring constant updates and revision because these things are going up constantly. I cant wait for this AI bubble to pop.  

Election updates will take place on Saturday now

 So, I decided to put off my election update until Saturday, and to keep that pattern for the rest of the election cycle. The reason is simple. I chose to do it Friday because most polls come out on Monday-Friday, with fewer polls over the weekend. However, the past two Saturdays, we've had TONS of polls. TONS of them. However, Sunday is still relatively light. As such, I will do the weekly updates on Saturday afternoon/night rather than Friday. Thank you for your attention on this matter! (Yes, i know I sound like DJT). 

Tell me how this is not cruel and unusual punishment

 So, Christina Pike is awake, and YIKES, her condition is what I would describe as "death would potentially be preferable to this." She's apparently paralyzed on both arms. She can't eat. She has pneumonia. 

Look, even if you believe in the death penalty, and I don't, but let's say we did. This is NOT a humane way to do it. This woman is F-ed up from this ordeal. I honestly think at this point she would have been better dead. But now she's alive, in this messed up compromised state, and uh...yeah. Really makes you think "is this it, dawg?" Even if we're gonna be pro DP here, we can probably agree some other method of execution would've been a lot cleaner than this. Hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas. All preferable to this, assuming they all worked. Even then, all of those have some risk of going wrong. One just has to watch the green mile to see how the electric chair can go wrong. Hanging can go wrong in grotesque ways. Bullets can miss. The asphyxiation from gas can lead to torturous effects. So yeah, I still lean toward "how about NOT killing people?" I mean, if we cant get lethal injection right, maybe we shouldn't do anything, but yeah. Honestly, I'm just left with a bad taste in my mouth like...yeah this is barbaric, can we NOT do this? 

I know not everyone's gonna agree. A lot of comments i see with social media are like "she should have suffered MORE!", but we already know what kinds of people are saying that kinda stuff. Really showing that "Christian love", guys! Jesus totally would have approved! (He totally would not have approved). But yeah. Anyway. Idk, I look at this and think that this practice of ours is messed up and should be abolished. No one should go through this, and I don't particularly care if they were a murderer either. Two wrongs don't make a right.  

Responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders' new anti welfare ad

 So...Sarah Huckabee Sanders is attempting to channel resentment politics in her new ad against welfare. Basically, she portrays a guy stay home, playing video games, and being even lazier than I could ever be. Ya know, using grabber tools to pick up chips, which is highly inefficient. That's actually more work than picking them up with your hands. i know it LOOKS lazier, but it actually isn't. But I digress. The point of the ad is clear, you work hard. This guy doesn't. You're paying for welfare so this guy can not work, that's not fair to you, and the answer is to add work requirements to force this guy to work. And then we're all stuck working! Yay....

Ugh...I know this ad is very effective among parts of the population, but the answer is, should it be? Should this be how we think about the subject? Obviously not. So...as the gamer who doesn't work and does play video games (and write anti work political philosophy) all day, let's have a grounded discussion on this.

On work requirements

First of all, work requirements already exist, they've always existed. There arent many NEETs who just live off of welfare. You could argue that the medicaid expansion gave them some healthcare access (the horror, nonproductive people getting the healthcare that they need), but for the most part, these welfare programs have had requirements for decades. The fact is, most NEETs just live with their parents or maybe in rare cases, a spouse. The state aint paying for their stuff, and the state is already draconian enough in trying to force people to work. So these guys are just drumming up resentment over a phenomenon that doesn't exist, and is poorly understood. 

If anything, these work requirements often make it harder for those who need help and who do work to get the help they need. Because the system errs on punishing those who don't work, they'd rather have situations where they punish those who do, but fail to meet requirements for arbitrary reasons. The fact is, these programs just hurt the poor more than anything. ANd I guess if your whole mentality in life is around ensuring that that one person you dont like is miserable that you'd rather punish several in collateral damage to get that way, all the power to you, but your morality is pretty crappy in my view, not that such people care what I think in the first place (I don't care what they think either, they're lost causes).

On "paying for welfare" so NEETs can play video games

Even if you did somehow pay for a NEET to play video games all day, let's think about this broadly. I'm a basic income supporter. I've looked at basic income from a mathematical perspective, and here's the reality. Basic income as I structured it would benefit 70% of workers directly. 70% of people who earn a wage, would get back more in basic income than they'd pay out. This is because if we had a $16,000 basic income, with a 20% tax rate, you'd need to earn $80,000 to pay $16,000 in additional taxes. Anyone under that is basically getting free money too. So your typical middle class income earner of $50,000 a year (roughly the median individual income) would get $6,000 (pay $10,000, get $16,000 back) under my plan. That scales even better for households. If you have a second adult like a spouse, they get UBI too so we'd be talking needing to earn $160,000 in basic income to pay back $32,000. And because I'd give every child $5,500, that's an additional $27,500 to that threshold per child. So your typical household of 2 adults, 1 kid, would basically need to earn $187,500 to pay back the $37,500 in basic income that they'd recieve. For reference, that's 80% of households in the US.

The same presumably applies with universal healthcare too. The net payers of such programs are often the top 20% of income earners, the bottom 80% generally benefit from them. How can this be? Income inequality, my dude, income inequality. We have this "K shaped economy" thats been forming over the past 40 years and currently most of the income and wealth pools among the top 20% while everyone else is struggling to get by. This is presumably why you feel like you work so hard and you struggle to get by. Because you do. And it's not right. But rather than blame some dude sitting on his couch literally not doing anything, you should probably be blaming the system that makes you miserable in the first place.

On who the real enemy is

 What this ad is intended to do is similar to that "look out, that immigrant wants to take your cookie" analogy. The system wants the overall "working class" (which in my own belief system includes the not working) to be at each others' throats. Immigrants are on welfare stealing your tax dollars. NEETs are on welfare stealing your tax dollars. There's always an enemy. And it's always trying to go to you saying, look, you work hard, so why don't they work hard, is that fair to you? And your natural response is, of course, GRRRR WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WORK SO HARD IF THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORK SO HARD. So you basically want to make the person not as miserable as you....as miserable as you....to make it fair to you.

But that just makes us ALL miserable. The real, more productive question to ask is "why are we all working like this to begin with?" I mean, that's the question I asked, and the rabbit hole I went down, and at the end of the day, it's to make rich people rich. The economy has always been a scam to ensure that the wealthy people remain wealthy. It attempts to use the logic of "hard work" and meritocracy to give itself legitimacy, claiming that those who earn lots of money work hard, and that lazy people should get nothing. And then it always uses the resentment politics within the welfare system, as well as artificial divides like race politics, fear of immigrants, etc, in order to drum up resentment from the working class. This stops people from figuring out that the source of their misery is the system itself, and instead forces them to take it out on poor disadvantaged people who didn't do anything.

I mean, here's my viewpoint. You hate work. I mean, if you buy into resentment politics, Im guessing you dont like working. You don't think it's "fair" if someone doesn't work as hard as you. It threatens the legitimacy of the system in your mind. But because you buy into those values, your solution is "force this person to work to justify my suffering." But here's the thing. Your suffering shouldnt be justified. No one should have to go through what you go through. And that's MY point. I want a system where work is voluntary and we don't have to work. I want YOU to have the ability to sit on the couch and play video games too if you want to. And if you don't, fine, just leave me out of your twisted ideals for society if you actually LIKE your job. Because ironically, I get that a lot when I talk about eliminating work. "But I like working, there's dignity in work!". Cool. Then work. But dont try to force me to do it too. And if the system requires me to be coerced and miserable to justify your own acceptance of the system, then you should probably rethink your acceptance of the system. 

The fact is, in my view, we shouldnt have to work. We could have chosen to pursue a different path as a society, instead of going down the path of neverending growth and obsession with employing every person possible to ensure that we max out GDP, we could have chosen to work less all along. We could choose a lot of possible paths to do this. We could have eliminated poverty and made work voluntary with a basic income. We could reduce the work week, take longer vacations, lowered the retirement age, etc. Instead, we have a society that enforces unnecessary and artificial scarcity on people to force them to take jobs they dont want, and that they're criminally underpaid for, so some rich guy can make profits at the end of the day.

And that's really what it's about. The reason we went down this path was because businesses feared that if people didn't work, that they wouldnt be able to make money. So instead we created this system that imposes misery on everyone in order to keep the profits up and the rich people happy. And then they have the gall to say some dude who plays video games all day is the problem. They're not. The system is. 

Conclusion

 With all of that said, I'd advise anyone who seriously buys into this ad to reconsider their life. Odds are, you're not in that top 20% making all of the money. if you are, well...yeah, I wanna tax you so the rest of us can be free from having to work. You might not like that but tough, the majority should be on my side, fi they thought rationally and acted in their best interests about it.

But if you're not in that top 20%....well....actually, no, you're not paying for someone to sit on the couch. If you got a UBI, you'd be getting more than you'd be paying it. If you had universal healthcare, you'd probably be SAVING money on healthcare. With that said, reconsider your political priorities here. The fact is, you're closer to the homeless guy on the street or that NEET on the couch in terms of your class interests than you are to the wealthy whose system you're defending here. I advise you to think about what's best for you, and to actually support MORE welfarism, not less.

Or you can just take off your clothes or go back to the pile south park style because that's basically what you're doing if you buy into this stuff. Just a giant hugbox of misery and people voting against their interests.  

The Christina Pike situation disgusts me

 So....they tried to put this 50 year old woman to death in Tennessee for a murder they committed when they were 18. It was a controversial case, I remember reading some articles before it happened, some wanted to call it off and appeal it, given she went through some sexual assault trauma that might have affected our mental state, but our illustrious conservative supreme court was like "nah, go ahead." So they went ahead with it. 

Well...it ended....badly. Very badly. Lethal injection has been debated a lot in recent years. In theory it's humane. You stick a needle in their arm, they go to sleep and...die. But then other countries who manufactured the drugs used in it were like "we don't want our stuff being used to kill people", so the US has been forced to shift to less reliable drugs to kill people. And sometimes, it doesn't work. And this was one of those times. They couldnt' find a vein, then the drug didn't work. Apparently she was whimpering in pain and noted her arm felt like it was gonna explode, which was a sign that they botched the whole thing. And then after an hour of basically torturing this woman, they  took her to the hospital, and now apparently she's unconscious and on a ventilator. 

And that's it. They took her to the hospital...after trying to kill her. And she's unconscious, and on a respirator, if they took the respirator out, she would die, but they're apparently trying to take care of her..for what, so they can kill her again? Death penalty is weird. I get it, the doctors have an oath to do no harm and to care for people, but the whole point of this was to kill her. And it failed...kinda, although if they let nature take its course, it would be a success. A messy success but a success nonetheless. But yeah, now she's in the hospital taking care of her...so they can presumably kill her again at a later date. 

Honestly, we should just let her live. Even if I were pro death penalty, I'd be tempted to be like, nah, you survive the attempt and can walk away, you deserve to get your sentence commuted. But let's face it, I'm NOT pro death penalty. This never should have happened. The death penalty is outdated and barbaric. Maybe it made sense in an era in which not killing people meant that they would continue to be a menace to society, but prisons are rather secure these days, and the death penalty is, if anything, less convenient. Because we dont support cruel and unusual punishment, so if we ARE doing to do it, we need to find the least painful ways possible. This was supposed to be that way, but apparently it doesnt work half the time. And then considering the legal procedures to make it just, it ends up costing more in legal appeals to kill someone than to keep them alive. So it just doesn't make sense. 

I've actually always been against the death penalty, it's been an issue I've been most consistent on in my life. As a christian, I didnt think it was up to us to take a life, and that it was up to God. As a secularist, I still largely view it as inhumane, supporting life in prison instead for those who should never be part of society again. Ironically, as a secularist, I'm more sympathetic toward it than I was as a christian. As a christian I was dogmatically against it on principle, and refused to even consider it. But I do kind of get the desire for revenge that people have, and I even have the base urges where in SOME circumstances, I honestly think that what someone did is F-ed up enough where I can see why people would WANT it. But...at the same time, my higher principles still say no, we should let them live. And honestly, given our legal framework and the issues with it, yeah, I'm largely opposed to it.  And in a case like this, I'm definitely against this. First of all, it seems like yeah, she had issues going on that should have lessened the sentence, and second of all, we're doing this THIRTY YEARS later. like, she's almost 3x the age of what she was when the crime was committed. And again keep in mind what I said earlier. I kinda get the fiery passion for revenge, but this isn't it. This is this cold and clinical thing where this woman spent 60% of her life waiting to die for a crime she committed when she was young. it's like, okay, the fire and passion is kinda out of it by this point. I mean, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me. And in terms of her being a future threat to society, she isn't, she just comes off as some lady. Not saying she should ever be allowed in public again, but again, life in prison seems...fine here. No need to drag it out or make it worse than it is. 

Honestly, if we ARE going to have the death penalty, the people involved should have committed really egregious stomach churning crimes. Not just like a simple murder, but like, ya know, the worst of the worst. Think war criminals, people who participated in the holocaust and were true believers in it, that sorta thing. They should be a threat to society. And we should have as close to 100% certainty that they committed the crime as possible. Im not talking "reasonable doubt" here, like ALL doubt. Innocence project ended up finding a lot of people on death row didn't even belong there, and we've certainly executed innocent people before. 

Even then, I wouldn't be for it, because I still hold those higher principles against it. Again, life in prison is fine to me. I try to keep passion out of it and think rationally and principled.

As for HOW to do it...that's another problem. What IS the best method. lethal injection SHOULD be simple, but it isn't and it fails A LOT with situations like this. Gas can torture people too. The green mile shows what happens when the electric chair goes wrong. Hanging can either be instant or it can fail and be messed up. Same with the guillotine. Firing squad can be messy too. The fact is, there isn't really a simple, fool proof way to kill someone without the possibility of it being botched and torturing them instead. And maybe we just shouldn't have the death penalty.

Again, my ultimate opinion is the death penalty in and of itself violates cruel and unusual punishment. Killing someone is, by definition, cruel and unusual unless they are suffering and desire it. I dont think there's a good way to do it. I dont generally agree with the process of it. I mean, we sentence someone to death and then like 30 years later we finally kill them when the appeals process runs out? By then the whole fiery revenge instinct is just...dead in my view. And that in itself is cruel. The waiting is cruel. The fighting for life legally is cruel. Just give them life in prison without a chance of parole and move on already. This whole process is F-ed up. Most countries already banned the practice. We should too. But conservative be conservatives, and conservatives have a messed up moral compass so they're like LET'S KEEP THIS. Again, I just can't be for this in practice. And honestly, this woman's sentence should be commuted to life in prison if she ever actually does wake up again (still wild we're keeping her alive on a ventilator when the whole point of the thing that put her there was to kill her). And yeah, F the death penalty. Abolish it.  

Election Update 10/2/26

 Okay, so it's that time of week again, and we got some pretty big news. Isn't necessarily good news, but it's news.

Senate

 

So, as we start to enter the final stretch going into October, things are tightening up, and it seems like democrats are losing margin in a lot of these swing states. Maine is the most significant one for the senate, with Troy jackson now down to a 0.1% lead. What's driving that? Well, for his case, again, I think the problem is that the public isn't really trusting the democrats to make things better, this is primarily an anti Trump vote, and Susan Collins is the one republican senator who can say she's not Trump. She still voted with him 95% of the time, but that other 5% gives her cover to say she's a "moderate" republican. And given Jackson doesn't seem to be anywhere near as charismatic as Platner was, and doesnt seem to be drawing in as much support, he's floundering a bit. The average actually did go into Collins territory briefly this week, but for the official update, Jackson is still ahead by the slightest of margins. 

Osborn, well, yeah, I flipped Nebraska, but that's because RCP is finally posting Nebraska data, meaning I'm changing my source over to them, and they have Ricketts ahead by 0.5% on average. Still far more competitive than Nebraska has any right being, still, it is a flip. States like Minnesota, Alaska, and Texas are all narrowing as well. I know last week I was dooming over the public not wanting progressives in particular, but observing this further, I think that democrats are just floundering a bit going into the final stretch. They're still ahead, but the races seem to be narrowing. Right now El Sayed is in a rather strong position, but we should honestly expect Michigan to be like D+8 in this environment. Minnesota being narrow is just wtf. I really have to wonder what's going on here. Some of it is spending, but IMO democrat spending priorities seem pretty....decent, they're just being outspent since rich people prefer republicans obviously. 

Either way, before we get too pessimistic, let's think about where we started. Back in early 2025, I considered flipping the senate impossible. We're STILL favored to win there, despite these set backs. Quite frankly, it reminds me of my gambling luck in AC last week. I started with $5. yes, just $5, I'm not a compulsive gambler, I kinda understand you're likely to just throw the money away, but somehow, by dumb luck, I hit $60. Now, imagine being forced to gamble more, and you're dropping to like $45. That's where we are. WE'RE STILL WINNING, THIS MAP IS STILL OUTSIDE OF THE REALM OF WHAT I EXPECTED. But yeah, we are kinda losing at the margins, and given we HAVE TO keep spinning for the next month, and we cant just cash in and walk away with the winnings, yeah, its possible this is where "the house" gets back some of its advantage. We'll see where things end up on election day. Things still look good for us...just...not as good as they did.  

House

 

The house still looks as robust as ever, but to be fair there isn't a ton of elasticity with my official forecast.

Also, I AM getting polling data now for some individual districts, although not enough to build a model. Still, i would like to analyze how my model compares to the polling data. I only got 4 districts, but here's how the models compare:

NY-17

Polling- D+2

Model: D+4.6

 VA-01

Polling- D+4

Model: R+1.8

 VA-05

 Polling: R+6

Model: Safe R; not counted (R+4)

 WA-03

 Polling: R+1

Model:  D+14

So yeah, overall, that last one really pushes things toward my model being D biased, but the othere are close, only off by about 2-3 points from the polling. VA-05 wasnt counted since I only count states considered not safe by Cook PVI and last time I consulted them, VA-05 was still safe, it no longer is. If I applied it to my model, it would be R+4, given it went R+15 in 2024. So its is somewhat close.

Why is WA03 so off? It could be just some weird poll coming out of the pacific northwest that isnt accurate (see governor forecast), or it could be the specific candidate matchups, or district, idk. All I know is it went D+3 in 2024 so it should be like safe D this time, but maybe not all districts are. You can have weird moderate republicans running in blue areas who can distance themselves from trump crazy. Idk. 

But yeah. All in all, should I use this model going into the general? Well unless I get A LOT more polling data, I'm gonna have to. House districts are fundamentally underpolled and the polling in them is often horrendously inaccurate, so who the heck knows? Either way, I'm gonna be focusing more on getting the number of seats right than the specific outcomes of each seat.

EDIT: Added new districts up for grabs, model remains unchanged, other than reverting to a D+2 bias due to one of the added districts being a solid D district gerrymandering into a red district in texas. Still 235-200. 

Governors

Speaking of weird polling in the pacific northwest, wtf is with oregon? Looking at 2020 it was D+3.4, with a third party candidate taking 8.6% of the vote, so maybe it IS that close, but i normally consider that a blue state. Nebraska as the republican only up by 5, which is crazy. VT flips red, although not too crazy given that guy is a moderate and popular there. Similar phenomenon as NH apparently. New England seems to love democrats to some degree but also will vote for moderate republicans. And of course, now Georgia is flipping red. So not a lot of good news on the governor front. Not all of this is due to shifts, some of it is due to new data giving me more insight on races i wasn't aware of, but yeah, it's a bit less rosy for democrats.

Conclusion

With all of that said, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but stats are stats. And this blue wave might be...busting. idk. We'll see how things continue over the course of this month, but I'm not particularly confident in dem wins like I was. Of course, I always said to beware that this could happen, even a few points could mean the difference between a blue wave and a blue trickle, but yeah, as we go into october, things are....trickling a bit more than waving. I mean, they're still waving compared to the baseline but...republicans are still holding their own given the circumstances. This isn't a done deal for democrats at all, and we cant be complacent. Keep in mind, republicans overperform by around 3 points and we dont win the senate. If we account for my OTHER house model, we might struggle to flip the house. And keep in mind this is the best we can muster when we got an absolute moron for commander in chief who is governing on a level of stupidity few people thought possible. And a lot of them still are okay with it. I swear, this country might be cooked. The republicans seem to be winning the war on information and voters are too ignorant to know better. It's baffling how badly the dems have messed up since 2016. Even with all that's going on, a lot of people aren't sold on them enough to even vote against the republican. Scary. Makes you wonder what the future of our country is. 

But yeah, that's the update for the week. Same time next week give or take?