Election Update 9/18/26

 Okay, so I decided to start doing these weekly as I'm able. Not sure about next week, might be a bit late, but we're getting to that point in the election season where we're getting CONSTANT data coming in, and the forecasts are changing rapidly. I don't have much to say beyond that, but I do wanna post the stats at least.

Senate 

I don't have a ton to say here other than republicans are screwed. While we still have october, we're getting pretty close to this cycle's end game and it seems to be going even harder blue. We'll see if dems keep the momentum up. if one recalls in 2024, I thought Harris would win at this point in the cycle, but her numbers fell apart going into October. And let's be honest, the senate isn't really like, locked down for democrats. If republicans overperform by say, 3 points, they'll still win the senate. So we don't have a ton ton of certainty here, as blue as this map appears. It's basically a 2/3 chance democrats win the chamber, but there's still about a 1/3 chance republicans overperform enough to hold onto it. Here's an example of what this kind of scenario could look like.

 So yeah, let's not get OVERconfident here. Republicans can still overperform and win, let's not count our chickens before they hatch here.

House

 

On the flip side, I WILL get confident about the house. For me, it's not a matter of whether the democrats win the chamber, it's how much they win it by. And while I am running a rather experimental model this election season that seems to contradict the polling data I occasionally see on individual districts, given how the GOP barely won the chamber when the results were about 11 points redder, the democrats probably WILL sweep, it's really a matter of how much. My model might be a bit overconfident on that fact, I admit that, but yeah. Democratic control? Pretty confident of it. It really is a matter of the margins. Conservatively maybe it'll only be 225 rather than 232 or whatever, but hey, it's still control of the chamber. 

Governors

Map is what it is, I don't think this one changed a whole lot in practice. I know Texas is getting a bit pinker, but still, eh. The dems seem to mostly do good up in the rust belt here, and struggle a bit more down south. Kinda typical for dems in a normal cycle I'd say, and shows a bit of a split between federal and state level politics. People seem to want to send a strong message to trump, but they seem fine with republicans on a local level, where the extremeness of the results is a bit muted. Could indicate that the current blue wave we see in the senate is driven by an undercurrent of being anti trump specifically, rather than anti GOP. 

Conclusion

So yeah, a lot has changed, but a lot has also remained the same. This map got very blue, but we could see it get a bit redder going into October if the trends we saw in 2024 happen again. We'll see. I fully expect the energy to be on the democrats' side, but the current results are SO optimistic for dems I can't help but temper expectations. Maybe polls are overshooting them a bit. Keep in mind it won't take much for the GOP to maintain control of the senate. Just a 2-3% difference could flip the entire chamber the other way in the current environment. The house is stronger for democrats but keep in mind I'm running off of a highly fundamentals based model that's experimental in nature given my severe lack of polling there. I'm just interpolating 2024 results with uniform shifts based on GCV there. Actual results may vary. Governors, well, yeah, look at the map.

Anyway, that's this week's result. Next week might be a little late maybe, I'm not sure. I expect to get it out next friday but if not it'll come out over the weekend some time. That's why I do them on Friday in the first place. Most polls come out during the week, with far fewer polls releasing on weekends. I can post a post and expect it to not be obsolete within a couple hours or a day or two. Best way to do it in the current environment. Anyway, that's this week's, see you next week.