So....take any election update before say, August with a grain of salt. I'd say July, but for some reason some states have their primary schedules going well into August and certain questions will never be settled before then, like who will be the Michigan democratic candidate? Who will be the Texas republican candidate? We don't know, and this makes it hard to predict general elections.
normally, i wouldnt bother this early. I'd just make like one prediction leading up to the final one in November and sit on that. But...that was when each prediction took hours of painstaking work to put together, I've automated said predictions somewhat through the use of spreadsheets, and thus, have an election model I can input data into to get rudimentary results. And this map...well, this is weird. I'll just show it.
So yeah. As I said. Weird map. The thing is, I normally use realclearpolitics/realclearpolling for data, but sometimes they just dont cover some data for some reason. And apparently, polls were coming out in places like Iowa and Alaska that were kinda spicy in the sense that democrats were somehow winning. Now, it's possible these pollsters just arent good enough for RCP to cover, or maybe they just arent following states. but given the lack of data on RCP, i decided to add these to the model. And it's leading to a weird tie.
The democrats have an uphill battle, dont get me wrong. not only do they need to hold every senate seat they currently have (including Michigan, where McMorrow and El Sayed are both tied and both are behind), but they need to flip at least four new ones. North Carolina is looking like a shoe in. Assuming Platner wins the primary in Maine, he's also at a quite comfortable 7+ point lead. Some say Maine's polling is funky and can be off, but I think my own probability calculations would hold here. A 7.6% lead is nothing to sneeze at, and theres only a statistically 3% chance to overturn that result. Not saying it cant happen, but yeah. 8+ is my two tailed 95% confidence interval, and only afford each candidate a 2.3% chance to defy the odds in a one tailed environment. But from there, it gets tricky. Recalculating Texas, given Paxton and Cornyn are equally probable outcomes, we get a 1.5% Republican edge. That's a 65% shot that they win. Michigan is somehow worse. McMorrow and El Sayed are tied in the primary. McMorrow is down 1.5%, El Sayed 3%. The average being 2.3%. So thats around a 72% chance the republicans flip that one. That means we'd need THREE seats to effectively flip the senate. And Ohio, another one I've pointed out, is in the direction of 2.6% lead for the republicans, leading to a 74% chance they retain the seat. So...not good odds for democrats.
But then...but then...we got 270 to win with these weird polls coming out of Alaska and Iowa. So let's discuss these. Both states are states I previously had ZERO data on, and I assumed would be heavily republican. Iowa is in the same category as Texas, Ohio, and Florida by this point. And I estimated a R+6 or so lead. But, the polls have them ahead by 2%? What gives? Did Ann Selzer try their luck at polling again? This polls looks as off as THAT was. And for all we know this one is. Well, this one comes from Echelon Insights, which is a republican pollster, but has a history of being relatively credible. Anyway, they released a poll showing the dems ahead. It is what it is I guess. Throw it on the pile, and given I have no other data, well....I'll settle for it. It would be crazy if this flipped out of nowhere.
What's worth talking about especially here is Alaska. Mary Peltola is the presumed democratic candidate there. She's quite popular there despite being a democrat. She actually did win a few house races up there, despite it being a republican state. She lost in 2024, but is now running for the senate. And...let's be honest. Alaska is a one house district state so if you can win the house, you can definitely win the senate. it's the same constituency. So...is this in error? Does she have a chance? Again, if she could win house races there, she can win a senate race. The whole state is a single house district, so running for the senate, you get the same exact voters. And given she was winning prior to 2024, the republican high water mark, I honestly think she CAN pull it off.
It's weird, normally, I'd consider alaska a R+10-12 state and not even consider it in play BUT....it's looking quite "in play" right now. Some individuals are charismatic and can defy how their state normally votes. Maine is very democratic but susan collins is still a senator there (although I expect her to lose to platner this year). Ohio has candidates like Sherrod Brown where despite it being all but lost for the presidential elections, Brown still holds a special place for that state's constituency, and tends to overperform there. He just got screwed by 2024 as well. And of course, north carolina shouldnt be as locked up for dems as it is, but Roy Cooper seems popular there. So individual candidates can overcome the odds of their states normal predispositions.
So...yeah. At this point, we take North Carolina, Maine, and Alaska, we're up to 49. We keep Michigan, we're up to 50. We get Iowa, we get 51. We get Texas and Ohio, we could see 52-53. So the senate is looking increasingly winnable for democrats. Even though the odds are against them, there's just so many possible paths opening up for them and a system wide overperformance could cause those republican advantages to disappear.
Still, probabilistically, as my prediction points out, the dems have a 35% chance, the republicans a 31% chance, and there's a 34% chance of a tie. That's near 50-50 on paper, although in the event of a tie it depends who the vice president is, and that's JD Vance, so a tie is still functional republican control. So 35% chance for democrats, 65% for republicans in practice. yeah....
Still, a lot better than i thought. And given the "multiple paths" thing, I would like to run 100 simulations right now and report the results.
So, out of 100 simulations, we got:
Dems: 29
Reps: 38
Ties: 33
Pretty even, but slightly favoring republicans. Considering ties, the republicans have a net 71-29 advantage, but yeah, this is getting interesting. Keep in mind, my simulation is rudimentary and doesnt really track red/blue waves well. Each state is simulated separately, with no relation to the others. In reality, we have wave elections where overperformance is one state means overperformance in most. Either way, when the map gets THIS competitive, even the simulator has problems picking a solid winner. I mean, we can see it's slightly GOP favored ignoring the ties, but yeah. That COULD just be random statistical noise for all I know. I'd need to run a second hundred to see, but I won't bother. Point is, senate map is increasingly competitive, and there are increasing opportunities for surprise upsets to happen. Now, do I trust this new data coming out of Alaska and Iowa? Eh....I'd like to see MORE before coming to a conclusion. Alaska I can believe, Iowa, I'm skeptical of.
I mean think of it this way. Some of these states are states that in 2024 went around R+13 or so. Now they're at risk of flipping democrat?! Even in a D+7 environment relative to 2024, we're still talking R+6 here. And if I had to guess, my brain wants to say, yeah, these polls are wrong, these are R+6 states.
However, remember what happened in Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. None of those had any business being so close in 2024. And I discounted a lot of that data too as polling artifacts from not having enough of it. But...those polls Biden had that showed dems underperforming there were dead on. So many these states ARE in play. Only time will tell.
Anyway, I aint gonna be posting these super often until like...August or so. Mainly because some of these states literally dont have their primary cycles until then. So, yeah. Anything I post now should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, this is shaping up to be interesting. By all accounts, this should be a map democrats have virtually no shot at flipping. But it's actually opening up for them. Really crazy crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens I guess.
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