2014 Elections Final Predictions:
Well here we are…the final night of the 2014 election cycle. It’s been a heck of a ride, and now after all the analysis, all the prognostication, all the bad punditry, and all the poll watching, we finally get to see the way the chips fall. Only one thing left to do before popping the popcorn, ordering the pizza, and coloring in the giant posterboard maps…and that’s making the final predictions for how the night will transpire.
Looking back at 2012…here’s how I did.
House – Projected D+15, Actual D+8
Senate – Projected D+2, Actual D+2 (got every race right)
Presidential – Obama 303, Romney 235 (missed only Florida)
US SENATE: URL=[IMG]http://i763.photobucket.com/...[/IMG][/URL]
I’ve actually only missed 2 Senate races in the last 3 cycles, 2010 PA-Sen and 2010 CO-Sen. I’m hoping to pull off the perfect map for the 3rd time in 4 tries, but this year is going to be hard. There are many races that are hanging on a knife edge, and you have possible runoffs to consider as well.
34 Dem seats not up for re-election
Safe Dem: MA, RI, NJ, DE, MI, IL, MN, NM, OR, HI
Likely Dem: VA
Likely Rep: AR, KY
Safe Rep: ME, WV, SCx2, TN, AL, MS, TX, OKx2, NE, SD, WY, MT, ID
30 Rep seats not up for re-election
If none of these races shockingly go the opposite way, that leaves Democrats with 45 seats and Republicans with 47 seats. The GOP only needs 4 for an outright majority at that point.
Lean Dem: NC, NH
These are the two races that Democrats have led pretty much all cycle, and to be honest, I’d be very surprised if either Hagan or Shaheen went down tomorrow.
Lean Rep: LA
This race won’t be decided tomorrow, but Cassidy will be favored to win the runoff. The total R vote, I expect will come in around 52-54% and I would expect Cassidy’s mark to be close to that in December.
If you add those to the combined totals, that gives Democrats 47 seats and Republicans 48. That leaves 5 toss up races, and whoever gets a majority of those 5 wins the Senate. How will it turn out?
Toss Up/Tilt D: IA, CO
Toss Up/Tilt I: KS
Toss Up/Tilt R: GA, AK
Yup, it’s a split decision. Ultimately I went with PVI and candidate quality over polling as my tiebreaking criteria. Iowa might be the one I’m most likely to get wrong, but I still think that Ernst has been overrated for most of the cycle. I believe that Braley will carry IA-1 and IA-2 by bigger margins than the polls have been estimating, and that Ernst won’t have a big enough margin in IA-4 to make it up. In Colorado, I feel I got burned in 2010 by bad public polling, and I’m not going to let that happen again. The fact that the governor’s race is close also has me believing that the polls are way underrating both Udall and Hickenlooper, just like they underrated Bennet and Hick in 2010. I say Udall wins by 3%, and Braley wins by 1% to give the Democrats seat 48 and 49.
On the flip side, you have Alaska, which is a race that is looking good for Team Blue in the polls. However, Alaska is the reverse of Colorado, usually overrating democratic performance. I also believe that Sullivan is a stronger candidate than Gardner or Ernst and will pick up more of the undecideds than either of the other two. I predict Sullivan wins by 2%. Then you have Georgia, which would be a very fascinating race were it a one-shot contest. Unfortunately, with neither candidate having a clear lead, this race is surely going to a runoff. Although I recognize that Nunn is a really, really good candidate, I just don’t have confidence in her getting 50% in a runoff election. Therefore, I say that Purdue will come through and beat Nunn in the runoff, thus getting the GOP to 50 seats.
That means that your decisive race of the 2014 cycle is in…Kansas. Did you ever think such a scenario was even remotely possible? I didn’t. Basically here you have an extremely tight contest between Roberts and Orman, but if anything Orman has a miniscule lead. Ordinarily I would say that the undecideds in such a red state would break for the incumbent republican, but there seems to be genuine outrage across Kansas as to how far right republicans have turned in that state. I say that undertow is enough to give Orman a 1% win.
In the end, that means that after election night, the Senate will contain 47 democrats, 2 independents caucusing with democrats, 1 pure independent, and 48 republicans. 2 more republicans will join their caucus via runoffs. The republicans pick up a net of 5 seats, gaining WV, AR, LA, SD, MT, and AK, but lose KS to an independent candidate. Control of the Senate would then come down to whom Greg Orman decides to caucus with. Assuming he decides to caucus with the Democrats, that would give Team Blue 50 seats and the majority via tiebreaker. Whew.
The best case scenario for Team Blue = democrats win 45 safe/likely seats + NC, NH, IA, CO, KS, AK on election night, GA on election night or via runoff, LA via runoff, finish with 53 seats
The best case scenario for Team Red = republicans win 47 safe/likely seats + AK, KS, IA, CO, NH, NC, GA & LA via runoff, finish with 55 seats
GOVERNOR’S RACES: URL=[IMG]http://i763.photobucket.com/...[/IMG][/URL]
The race for the statehouses has been just as intense as the race for the Senate, perhaps even more so as there are more races in the competitive zone here than in the Senate battleground. Democrats need a net of 4 governorships to tie up the contest nationally, and a net of 5 to take a majority of governorships. Can they do it? Here are my calls.
7 Dem seats not up for re-election
Safe Dem – VT, NY, PA, MN, CA
Likely Dem – NH, OR, HI
Likely Rep – AZ,
Safe Rep – OH, SC, TN, AL, IA, SD, NE, OK, TX, NM, WY, ID, NV
7 Rep seats not up for re-election
If those seats fall as expected, that would give the Democrats 15 seats, and the Republicans 21 seats. At that point, you add in the lean seats.
Lean Dem – RI, MD, CT, IL, KS, CO
Lean Rep – MA, GA, AR
I’ve never really bought into the idea of Rhode Island or Maryland being competitive. I think Raimondo and Brown win by much larger margins than polls are calling for. Illinois has been trending strongly in our direction and should be a 5% or so win for Quinn. Kansas I also expect will be a win of about that caliber as Kansans are simply done with Brownback. In Connecticut, Dan Malloy has had an impressive late comeback. I expect he gets a good chunk of the remaining undecideds in such a blue state and wins by 4 or 5%. And Colorado, well, you already know my feelings about Colorado polling. I think Hickenlooper wins by 6 or 7% and we’re left wondering how pollsters missed so badly. On the flip side, I see Nathan Deal coming close to or possibly clearing 50% on election night against Jason Carter. If he doesn’t, he’ll still win the runoff comfortably. The GOP will also pick up Arkansas by about an 8 or 9% margin. And maddeningly, it appears as though liberals in Massachusetts are engaging in a suicide operation to deny Martha Coakley the governorship because they are butt hurt over her losing the Senate race to Scott Brown. That’s despicable. In the end, Baker will be the beneficiary of that, winning by 5 or 6%.
That gives the Democrats 21 governorships to the Republicans 24. We move onto the 5 toss up races.
Toss Up/Tilt D: ME, FL, MI
Toss Up/Tilt R: WI, AK
Maine has been a really close race throughout, but with independent Eliot Cutler’s candidacy falling apart late, I feel that democrat Mike Michaud will pick up more of his defectors than will republican Paul LePage. I say Michaud wins by 3 or 4%. That brings us to Florida, where Charlie Crist and Rick Scott have battled all the way to the wire. Ultimately I think Crist pulls out a majority of the undecideds and wins by about 2%. Alaska, again, I think the polling is understating republican strength, and Sean Parnell will put out a 3 or 4% win.
We then have the two races that IMO are most likely to go to a recount out of the whole country, the governor’s races in Michigan and Wisconsin. Polls are showing a tied race in Michigan, and Wisconsin has the most polarized electorate in the nation. These two are so, so tough to call. I’m going to say that coattails from the Senate race are enough to get Schauer over the finish line to victory by 1% over Snyder, but that the power of incumbency is just enough to get Scott Walker to a victory against Mary Burke by 1%.
That gives the democrats a net of 3 governorships, winning ME, PA, FL, MI, and KS, but dropping MA and AR to the GOP. The GOP would hold onto a 26-24 majority in total governorships.
US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
Ratings Map: URL=[IMG]http://i763.photobucket.com/...[/IMG][/URL]
Outcome Map: URL=[IMG]http://i763.photobucket.com/...[/IMG][/URL]
Coming into the night, the GOP holds 234 seats to the Democrats 201. The general consensus is that the Republicans will gain somewhere between 5 and 10 seats, and I think that’s pretty close to accurate. There are two very big problems with prognosticating the House this cycle. One issue is that there has not been nearly as much individual district polling this year as 2010 or 2012, so there’s less raw data out there to dissect. And secondly, the polling for the generic ballot has been all over the place. In the week before the election, we saw polls showing republicans up by 7 and 8%, but that a majority of polls actually had democrats ahead by a point or two. The aggregate is somewhere between a 1% and 2% republican edge, but most of the polls are not in that range, they are instead usually a few points left or right of that. Since where the GCB falls is massively important to where the House will fall as a whole, that makes my job very difficult.
My calls therefore, are a combination of polling, GCB, and just plain old hunch. Here’s the final board:
Likely Democratic
CT-5
CA-31
MA-9
WA-1
CO-7
IA-2
CA-3
CA-36
NH-2
HI-1
Lean Democratic
NY-18
FL-18
CA-24
NV-4
MN-7
TX-23
AZ-9
Tilt Democratic
IL-12
IA-1
CA-26
IL-10
NY-1
CA-7
Pure Toss Up/Democratic Win
NE-2
NY-24
ME-2
AZ-2
MA-6
GA-12
AR-2
FL-2
Pure Toss Up/Republican Win
IA-3
CO-6
CA-52
UT-4
AZ-1
MN-8
Tilt Republican
NJ-3
VA-10
NY-11
FL-26
NH-1
WV-3
Lean Republican
MI-7
IL-13
MI-1
WV-2
CA-21
KS-3
AR-4
MI-6
ND-1
MI-11
MT-1
AK-1
Likely Republican
NY-23
VA-2
KY-6
NY-21
KS-2
MI-8
PA-6
OH-14
IN-2
PA-8
WI-6
NJ-5
Democratic pickups: FL-2, AR-2, NE-2
Republican pickups: NH-1, NY-21, WV-3, NC-7, FL-26, GA-12, MN-8, UT-4, AZ-1
Total: R+6 – democrats 195, republicans 240
I feel pretty strongly about the 3 democratic pickups. I feel pretty good actually about the next 6 races down the board too, down to MN-8, but I have those 6 going GOP mostly because of the generic ballot and a few individual district polls. On the flip side, I see the last 8 democratic wins being very, very vulnerable. Therefore my true expected range is anywhere from Even to R+14 depending on where the GCB truly lies in this web of mystery.
So that’s my take on it. I wish good luck to all those who look to take my crown of Babka from 2012 in the DKE Prediction Contest. From the East Coast to the West Coast, to down South, to the Plains, the Rockies, and the Great Lakes, I hope all of you perform your civic duty and vote tomorrow if you haven’t voted early, and then you gather round to watch the results, doing whatever you do. Good karma and good luck to us all!