So what does the 2022 election forecast looking like?

 I know it's early, but I feel like I should be running some electoral scenarios for November. We should be mostly past primaries at this point, and I can get some baseline for what's going on this election cycle.

Senate

Realclearpolitics has 7 senate races in play, with the "leans" races effectively being +8 or more in my experience, meaning they are pretty safe in my estimation. I only really look at races with less than an 8 point difference generally, as swings larger than that are well outside of the margin of error and in my methodology have a <2% chance of flipping. 

This gives us the following 7 races:

Arizona- Kelly (D) is defending his seat from the GOP (candidate to be decided)

Georgia- Raphael Warnock (D), who won the pivotal special election in 2020, has to defend his seat from  Hershal Walker (R)

New Hampshire- Hassan (D) has to defend his seat from the GOP (candidate to be decided)

North Carolina- Open seat being contested between Ted Budd (R) and Cheri Beasley (D)

Nevada- Catherine Masto (D) is defending her seat vs Adam Laxalt (R)

Pennsylvania- The race I'm following closely because I live here: John Fetterman (D) takes on Dr. Oz for the seat Pat Toomey (R) is retiring from

Wisconsin- Ron Johnson (R) defends his seat from the dems (candidate to be decided)

Generally speaking, the republicans hold 47 seats, while the democrats hold 46. Each side needs to win 4 races to control the senate. The GOP needs 51 votes, while the dems need 50. 

So, here's the predictions based on RCP's polling data. For reference, I will be assuming the presumed primary winner takes on the other candidate in cases where that is unclear, so I will only count those polls.

States	Winner/Margin	Z score	% D Win	% R Win	Seats D win	Seats R win
Arizona	Kelly +9.0%	-2.25	98.8%	1.2%	47	54
Pennsylvania	Fetterman +9.0%	-2.25	98.8%	1.2%	48	53
New Hampshire	Hassan + 4.0%	-1.00	84.1%	15.9%	49	52
Wisconsin	Barnes +2.0%	-0.50	69.2%	30.8%	50	51
Georgia	Warnock +1.6%	-0.40	65.5%	34.5%	51	50
Nevada	Cortez Masto +0.7%	-0.14	55.6%	44.6%	52	49
North Carolina	Budd +4.0%	+1.00	15.9%	84.1%	53	48

I'm going to be honest, this actually is surprising me. I admit, the polling here is kind of thin. RCP seems to be doing a poor job keeping track of the polls, and I did check 538 for comparison's sake and they seem to include more polls. They also seem to have their own forecast that is a lot more negative toward the democrats. My own prediction based on the above data, essentially breaks it down to a 69% chance for dems to win, and a 31% chance of the GOP. Whereas 538 says 55% chance GOP, 45% Dems. 

I will admit, the dems were doing terrible in the polls until recently, but they seem to be getting a bump due to the abortion stuff, and also possibly January 6th. the GOP is shooting itself in the foot and creating a backlash effect. What did I say about letting dems play defensive on social issues and let the GOP do stupid crap that pisses people off? They hit the beehive with shooting down Roe V. Wade and just like that, the dems suddenly come out ahead.

I don't expect this bump to last all the way into November given the American public has the memory of a goldfish, but it does give me some hope that maybe, the dems can win. Looking at the polls a lot recently leading up to this gave me a much more negative outlook for them, where it looked like a red wave would sweep them away. Now, I'm not so sure. Still, I do expect this to be a red favored year, so we'll have to see. I trust polling over trends though.

Still, polls can be wrong. While 2018 seemed pretty close, 2016 and 2020 showed major red waves that defied predictions. Say we shifted the results by, say, 3 points. Well, suddenly, we're looking at Wisconsin, Nevada, and Georgia all going red, and the GOP will control the senate with 51 votes. So this isn't a landslide for the dems. If anything, it's too early to really know what will happen. These current numbers are comforting, but admittedly there isnt much data to go by here. We will have to see what things look like in october or so. But right now, the most likely outcome is a 52-48 senate in favor of the dems. 

The house

The house looks like a completely different story. I don't have much data to go on here, but it looks like on RCP that the GOP winning the house is a foregone conclusion. When the "leans republican" bar is where the pivoting seats are, that means, by my methodology, they effectively have a 98%+ chance of winning. I mean, pack it up, we are done by that point. For reference, 538 has a 87% chance in favor of the GOP, and that might be more reliable. Again, most of those races dont have polls and there's too many races to really account for, so it's hard to say with any certainty what the outcome will be, but I would just say, the dems look done in november for the house.

Governors

RCP has 9 key races to look at here. I'm just gonna post the data.

States	Winner/Margin	Z score	% D Win	% R Win
Michigan	Whitmer +25.5%	-6.38	100%	0%
Pennsylvania	Shapiro +4.0%	-1.00	84.1%	15.9%
Wisconsin	Evers +4.0%	-1.00	84.1%	15.9%
Maine	Mills +3.5%	-0.88	81.1%	18.9%
Minnesota	Walz +3.5%	-0.88	81.1%	18.9%
Nevada	Sisolak +3.5%	-0.88	81.1%	18.9%
New Mexico	Lujan Grisham+3.5%	-0.88	81.1%	18.9%
Arizona	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Georgia	Kemp +4.8%	+1.20	11.5%	88.5%

Much like the senate, this doesn't look like a massive blowout for the GOP. If anything dems are holding relatively small but consistent leads. This could change easily between now and november, but seriously, the dems seem to be winning most races. It seems like the GOP is pushing extremists no one really likes, while the dems are occasionally pushing decent candidates.

I know in PA, we have Mastriano vs Shapiro, and while Shapiro is a fairly lukewarm moderate, Mastriano is apparently a Trumper who was actually at the January 6th insurrection. Yikes. And in our senate race, Dr. Oz is a weak candidate that doesn't really resonate. Politically the dude is a RINO and he isn't even from PA, so yeah he's doing bad. meanwhile fetterman is the template of "Bernie with an attitude", being a working class guy who dresses down, and has tattoos and a beard. 

Not sure if other states translate the same way, but it seems like most races in play are in favor of the dems. 

Also, I'm not even sure what's going on with Arizona. Both of their parties still have primaries and there's zero general election data yet. I'm also baffled why Michigan was included given Whitmer's insane margin. I mean, Kansas looks like a far more interesting race, where a dem is expected to lose to a republican. Why is this even included?

Conclusion

Honestly, 2022 isn't really shaping up to be that bad of a red wave after all. To be fair I could just be looking right after the dems get a huge boost from January 6th hearings and the GOP hitting the beehive with abortion rights, but in the senate the dems stand to hold their ground or even gain it. Governorships are going the same way. Makes me wonder what's going so badly in the house where it looks like a red wave is going to destroy their majority. Are the models just spitting out red victories because of bad data? I mean models are often input in output out. You put in certain variables and it spits out results based on those variables. Given the conventional knowledge that we're looking at a red tsunami this november, the models might just be outputting based on that. Makes me wonder what's really going on in individual races. But it's kind of hard to tell since so few races have data.We'll see.

Either way I'm doing this in literally June, so, probably not very reliable. Remember how I did 2016 in June too and concluded Donald Trump was screwed? How well did that work out?

Still, I wanted a baseline to go by, so this is what I got.