So, I decided to do another election update since I wanted to discuss the current senate map again.
Senate
Woo! Michigan is now blue! The change comes after that newest poll that had Mallory McMorrow at 6% in the primary had El Sayed up by 5 in the general, and Stevens down by 4. So that basically neutralized Haley's advantage, giving both roughly the same odds in the general. Other than that, the map hasnt changed a whole lot. And personally? I would be kind of skeptical. I know it looks too good to be true, but when the dems only have a 60% chance of flipping the senate, and the republicans still have a 40% chance of retaining it, yeah, don't count the GOP out. That's barely better than a coin flip and it's functionally a toss up. A stiff political wind causing mild GOP overperformance and the republicans still win, like so:
So again, don't count the GOP out, they can still win, and if anything I'd think this second map is probably more realistic than what my model is spitting out. We really need more polling to know for sure, and then even then, there's always gonna be some systemic over/under performance that ends up happening in practice. So if the error favors the GOP, like it did in, say, 2024, we could very well be seeing this second map here or some variation of it. Of course error CAN go the other way as well, although given where the the map is, the democrats don't have much more to gain other than Ohio as Florida represents another steep unscalable cliff outside of the margin of error denoting what the absolute floor for the GOP actually is.
Either way, yeah, while existing polling i have still favors the democrats, minor fluctuations in public opinion could flip the whole thing one way or the other. This brings me to the house.
House
So, the generic congressional vote has cratered in the past few weeks, going from the dems having a nearly 10-11 point advantage over their 2024 numbers to being back down around 7-8. Now, don't get me wrong, for the house, this likely won't make much of a difference. Keep in mind in 2020 the GOP BARELY won it as the error fluctuated in their favor (kind of like I just showed with a favorable republican leaning scenario in the senate). Even now, I think a 94-95% shot at dems taking the house is reasonable. It's not a question of what the margins will be. If democrats underperform by 1.5 like predicted above, we could be looking at 227-208, for example. And that's not even considering nuance that might be happening in individual house races that my model doesn't account for. Realistically (assuming an R+4 scenario), we could be looking as low as 222-213. Alternatively, if we go with a D+4 scenario, we could be seeing results as high as 234-201. So I'd say my prediction is probably gonna be around 230 +/-4 seats assuming a moderate over/underperformance. MOE would put it anywhere between 212-223 REP (R+8) and 242-192 DEM (D+8).
Governors
Not much has changed as far as governor races go. The only difference is I'm swapping out Mandela Barne's data for Francesca Hong's in Wisconsin. Why does Hong do so much worse than Barnes? Well, because she's a Bernie style progressive and it doesn't seem to be landing super well there. However, I recently revisited primary polling there and she's ahead, although it's hard to know exactly wtf is going on there. Also, can we talk about how stupid August primaries are? Jesus Christ, get your crap wrapped up by the end of June so we can get on with the general already. Why are so many states waiting until the last fricking minute? It's ridiculous. Primaries after June 30 shouldn't be a thing.
Conclusion
While I still think democrats are ahead, their margins are sagging in some situations. Their grip on a senate win is tenuous. It exists on paper, but in practice I do think it's very possible for the GOP to retain control. In all fairness it's kind of a miracle the dems are doing as good as they are there, but yeah dont get your hopes up TOO much. The house advantage is sagging a bit but dems are so far ahead there that they have a lot of room for error. Not so much with the senate. And of course the governor's races haven't changed at all basically, although swapping out the moderate candidate for the progressive one causes us to lose Wisconsin.
So yeah, that's where we're at.
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