*sigh*, I shouldnt do another election update since not a ton has changed since my last one, but I wanna really contrast something here.
At the start of this cycle, I was very cynical about the dems' chances of retaking the senate. This was the baseline map I posted over a year ago in early 2025, showing how hostile the terrain is for democrats:
At the time, this seemed pretty reasonable. And this was basically, the "status quo" map: a map where every seat goes exactly as it currently exists. And I don't find this to be that unreasonable, given this was the 2020 map more or less from when Biden won the election narrowly. So for me, this was truly a relatively neutral map. I mean, we get georgia and michigan, NC and ME go narrowly republican, and from there we're expected to snipe increasingly hard states that in 2024, basically went R+13. So we would need a D+14 shift to swing states like Texas, Iowa, florida, or alaska blue. Even more so, I thought MONTANA would be the easiest nut to crack, given john tester won there in 2018, and we already had a precedent.
Going into 2026, I thought that we at best could maybe win Maine and North Carolina. I thought that we'd get a result similar to like, a D+6 (really, 4-8) shift from 2024. I mean, that's reasonable. 2018 seemed to be the high water mark. But man...this map...this fricking map...it astounds me. This is where the race is TODAY, based on the best polling I could muster:
What...the actual...fudge? okay, so...it looks like we're losing Michigan, that isn't good. Polling there is really off of where I'd expect things to be. And it isn't all just Abdul El Sayed running, McMorrow loses too, and Stevens is like...tied last I looked. So that's abnormal. But then it looks like Cooper will dominate NC to the point it's a very strong likely D. Maine is the same with Graham Platner, ya know, the reddit communist with the totenkopf tattoo. I got Texas going for Talarico, especially with the Trump endorsement all but sealing Paxton as the nominee. Alaska has Peltola who has won house races up there, and AK is a single district state, so...yeah, that's a thing. I looked more into nebraska and the democrat there is a Dan Osborn stan and she only ran to deny the republicans from running a "democrat" of their own from splitting the vote, so I expect an Osborn vs Ricketts matchup there, where Osborn would win by five. Iowa is slightly in favor of dems. Like, wtf is happening? This shouldn't even be possible. Like really, we talked about the blue wall in 2016, the blue leaning states trump flipped were D+2-7 roughly. Lean/Likely D. Again, a lot of these states are R+13, and I'd still expect them to be R+6-10 or so in a relatively neutral environment. And yet democrats are WINNING there? These are literally like party realignment tier numbers.
The generic congressional vote is currently D+7, I'd literally expect something akin to D+12 for this map to be possible, although by then michigan and georgia would be safe states and Ohio would flip too. But keep in mind, my models are simplistic when doing those kinds of flips. They just apply a national uniform shift to the country. That ignores some nuance. But again, my model strategy is to get "close enough", even if not exact in that regard. My models lack the sophistication to pull off more detailed results barring me entering data myself, which I did, to create that map.
To be fair, even if dems are currently favored to run the senate, I don't necessarily trust the data. It's just too good to be true. And honestly, even with these polls, Iowa, Texas, and Alaska go blue narrowly. If the GOP overperforms expectations by say, 2-3, and I'd expect them to do so, they still win the senate.
This here looks a bit more reasonable and in line with expectations, even if disappointing. I mean, I do think Michigan will go bluer than that. I really dunno what's up with michigan. It isnt just el sayed being too far left. All the dems are struggling there. But yeah. I would not be surprised if this looks a bit closer to the results we get though, mainly because the polling numbers look so completely off the wall optimistic for democrats I literally struggle to believe them. I want to believe, but yeah....based on where these states generally perform...I just....don't.
I have had some debates about this before online. One person, for example, also realized that for the senate numbers to be right, we'd need some D+14 outcome relative to 2024 for them to actually be real and had some crazy prediction of like 245 dem seats. I thought that was insane. my model at the time was 235 and that was considered optimistic. Given chatgpt chewing me down, I could have very well expected 230 or even possibly less, like 227-229 or something. But their rationale was that if the senate numbers are indeed right, yeah that's where the house should go, and they weren't entirely wrong there.
With an updated model, I'm currently at 233-202, with a 9.7% shift from 2024. If you upped it about 4 more points, yeah we'd be at like 240 or something. So, it is a possible outcome, I just, once again, think that's too bonkersly optimistic. If anything, I think dems are polling too optimistically, I mean, again, these numbers are just too fricking good. I aint saying they cant happen. I know I balked at the likes of NJ, IL, and NY underperforming and being in technical swing state range in 2024 when I saw Biden's maps...and all of that actually happened. NJ in particular was INSANELY close given it should've been like D+16 in 2024. So....this CAN happen. I mean, my own sense of reality shouldnt dictate discussion, the data should, and most of the time I try to push the data one way or another and give my own take, I feel like the opposite often happens. With that said, maybe dems will do everything the polls say and then go D+2.5 the other way. Which would get us...the same map, just bluer (Ohio needs 2.6 to flip and Michigan needs 3).
Idk, we'll have to see, but something just seems off about this. It does seem too good to be true. We'll see though...
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