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DDHQ's Geoffrey Skelley Reveals Their 2026 Forecast! · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is exciting.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: We are breaking a little bit of news because the man you see
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: before you is Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch our primary night live streams,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: he will be very familiar to you because he, Chuck, and I do these things together.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't watch our primary night live streams, what are you doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We do them on primary nights.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: there'll be more primary nights than we thought because of Maine and South Carolina.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we'll get to that later.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, Geoffrey is the Chief Elections Analyst at Decision Desk HQ.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: DDHQ just today released its first 2026 election forecast.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Skelley and I are going to go through...
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of what it found.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do top line first, Geoffrey.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Tell people, give them a minute on how you do it, and then let's talk about what it says.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the methodology to this is not necessarily,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: just like a 30,000 foot level is not necessarily all that different from what a lot
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: of other forecasters are doing in the sense that you're taking a bunch
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: of baseline partisan data about a district or state.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're adding in polling when it's available and running many,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: many thousands, in fact, a million simulations.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the number of times something happens is the probability that it happens based
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: on the forecast.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: We are, I will say we are,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: there are a few doing this, but we are also adding in prediction markets.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say prediction markets are part of yours, which I think is cool.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me, let's quickly talk about how you decided why you guys do that.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the reasoning was partly sort of experimental in that this is a new tool that we have.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is actually a fair amount of academic data about the usefulness of prediction markets.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: As I tell people,
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: they are not a replacement for polls, but they may be pulling in other information.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And do remember that polls tend to be,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: they're not lagging necessarily,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: but it does take time to put a poll in the field and get information.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas You know,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: prediction markets can respond quicker to sort of ongoing events,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know, like Grand Plattener imploding in Maine or something.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like we knew that before a poll told us,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: or, you know, we knew what was happening and we didn't need a poll to confirm it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's another data set, right?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's another data set.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not definitive.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't only depend on it, but it's another data set.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to be clear,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: we've maxed it out at,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's 25% of sort of the potential weight on whatever the outcome is from it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so essentially the forecast is attempting to balance these different data points we have.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of DDHQ's 2026 election forecast.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It will not be the last.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: They will update this, obviously, throughout between now and November 3rd.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But go ahead, Geoffrey, take it away.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we are, if I can get it up here on screen.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We are...
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we'll be updating this basically daily as we get new information in.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So right now the House,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: which is the one more national election since all 435 seats are up,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: we give Democrats basically a hair better than a 3-in-5 chance,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: so 61% to be more exact.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I like to use the numbers from my time at 538 because sometimes...
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they do.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: You would hope after the 2016 election that people would have gotten sort of wise
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: to this, but it is a challenge.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to sort of put it in terms that people can understand.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: So like Republicans have a 39% chance.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's essentially the same as if you rolled two dice.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so you could get between two and 12, like two standard six-sided dice.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's the odds of you rolling a six or lower.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So like very plausible that Republicans actually- It happens.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But they are underdogs.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in this case, it's worth noting, seven is the most common role in that case.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe the fact that that's on Democrats' side is helpful.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, Democrats are favored there in the House.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk a little bit more about that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: But a big part of this is that they do lead in the generic ballot,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: which is a big input into our forecast model.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: The lead's not as big as it was.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: As you can actually see,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: if you look On our Decision Desk HQ votes portal,
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: which people can sign up for for free.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you should.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and tinker around with it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's votes.decisiondeskhu.com or just search DDHQ votes and you will find it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is a great resource.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You should absolutely sign up for it.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is remarkable.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you can see as I scroll over this,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: like it was higher back in June when Democrats were getting like a six or so
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And even occasionally seven-point lead on the generic ballot, they were above 70%.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's ticked down a little bit because the generic ballot has gotten a bit closer.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I want to talk more about generic ballot in a minute.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the Senate forecast.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for people tuning in,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Geoff, Reese Skelley, and I are talking about the DDHQ election forecast.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: This obviously will continue to change, but they debuted it today.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey is the chief elections analyst at DDHQ.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk House, Senate.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you have questions about individual races or broader questions, let us know.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Put it in the live chat,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: and I will ask some of Geoffrey, and we will do our best to answer them.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So put it in the chat.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you have questions, go ahead, Geoffrey.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, in the Senate, kind of the reverse of what we saw in the House.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans are narrowly favored.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Slightly less probable to win the Senate versus where Democrats are in the House,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: but it's not exceedingly different at this point.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: A little less than a three and five shot that Republicans hold onto the Senate.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: So Democrats a little, just a hair better than two and five shots that they can flip the Senate.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for For a story at home,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: what we have is essentially two pretty competitive chambers with one party
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: that is favored, but far from overwhelmingly so.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I will note that our average outcome,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think people will find this, we also have seat count.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: So this is an average of all the million simulations.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is unbelievable.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're mentioning this.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: 50-50.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, 50-50, which would be a three-seat gain.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: The most common average outcome is 50 Democratic seats, 50 Republican seats.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: But as you're noting here, go ahead.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's, it's like a bell curve.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of outcomes in between.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: so I mean,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: there are different choices you make methodologically on sort of the shape
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: of these things, but sort of understanding how election modeling tends to work.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the most common outcomes are going to be these ones in the middle.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, it is shaped very much like a bell curve.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: at the end of the day,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: the average outcome, and right now, actually, the most common outcome is 50-50.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Occasionally,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: we've seen In some previous runs,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: actually,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: the Republicans being at 51 seats has actually been the most common one
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: about 10%.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: But that wasn't the average.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of little particularities to this.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's also really good for folks to understand is,
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: so this may sound a little paradoxical.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are slight favorites to flip the House.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans are slight favorites to hold on to the Senate.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: But actually,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: the most likely outcomes in our model,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: our forecast, are that either Democrats or Republicans gain full control of both.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have that chart that you put in?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, folks,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: here's another thing that's free that you should sign up for,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: the Decision Desk HQ subsect that Geoffrey writes,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: which he put out a big thing on the forecasting if you need more details on it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But he's got a great chart in there that shows just this.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so, uh, for, for, I, I,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: in fact,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: let me just bring up a version of it that I,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: that I used for that,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: um, if I can just
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: click correctly, uh, watching the sausage be made.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, um,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: right now,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: you're talking about, uh,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: this is,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was at basically about midnight last night,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: uh, a 40% chance the Democrats get both the House and Senate.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, they are more likely to get the House.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, four in ten shot that they get both.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: GOP a little less than that,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: slightly more than a third, more than one in three shot that they get both.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or so keep both in this case.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then about a one in four shot that they do indeed split control.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And most of the time,
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: that's a Democratic House and a Republican Senate,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is sort of the conventional wisdom.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what this speaks to is that, look, These elections are not happening in a vacuum.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is happening in one place is going to be potentially
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: at least somewhat indicative of what's happening in another
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: and often very indicative.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: For instance,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: if we think about some election results early in the night in November,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: we'll be watching some of the key House races where polls close at 7 or 7.30 or some
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: of the Senate races where they close at 7, 7.30 or 8 because
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Things are going better than expected for one of the parties across most of those races.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: That could be indicative of a larger swing in their direction across the country,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: not just in those initial states where we have results.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not a guarantee, but the results are usually fairly correlated.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're getting a swing to the left or a swing to the right,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to show up in a lot of places.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm surprised.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: The number that surprised me of all your numbers was the GOP both number.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like most people,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: if you say to people who are following this,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: and I know that's not the average person,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: but most of the people who are following this,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: you say, what do you think is going to happen?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them will say,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: In either one or two order,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats will win the House and the Senate or Democrats will win the House
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: and Republicans will narrowly control the Senate.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Man, the number of people who have said to me,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: well, I think there's a decent shot Republicans keep control of both chambers.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So can you walk through,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: because you did a good job of this,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: particularly in the House,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: and we can talk generic ballot if you want to,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey, in this, but how does that scenario play out?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because again,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: it's the second most likely scenario here out of these simulations you've run,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: and it's almost equally as likely as Democrats winning both.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we get there?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I will say for what it's worth,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: if you're sort of looking at this and thinking about governing control,
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: like full divided government or complete control of the federal government,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats win one chamber almost two out of three times.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: At least one chamber.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So divided government is the most likely outcome.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right that you you do have an I would say also a little larger
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: than expected share of instances where Republicans hold on to full control.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a major contributor to that,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: at least in part, is the generic ballot getting a bit narrower.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats right now, actually in our average now, it's about three points, which is the lowest.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's been in quite a while.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And explain to people who don't know,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Skelley, what the generic ballot question is and why we use it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: so the generic ballot is what we call the question that pollsters ask when they say,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: because pollsters are not going to ask specifically who you're planning to vote for
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: in all four and 35 houses.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not in a national poll.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's also, yeah, not in a national poll.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also not, It does matter.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are obviously district to district differences,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: but this has been historically a pretty decent indicator of sort of national mood
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: and where things are shifting.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you ask,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: you pull a thousand people and you ask the,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: you ask,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: you weight it in everything you're supposed to do,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: but you ask them,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you plan to vote to the Democrat or the Republican in your local house district?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: there will be a handful of seats where there's not a Democrat running,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Republican running, and there'll be exceptions.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: But for the most part,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: because this is the only really national election happening in the midterm,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: because all 435 seats are up,
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: and in the Senate, only a third of the seats roughly are up every two years.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that means actually at the end of the day,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: like 13 states don't usually,
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: 13, 14 states, The states don't have a Senate race every year.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, the House is the easier thing to interpret on a national scale.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you ask this question,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: and you look at the average, and I'm trying to, as I sit here and- Take your time.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to pull up the... That's fine.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: People know this is live.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You got to make the computer work.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's 100% fine.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Take your time.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I will just say, basically, so generic ballot is, would you vote for a Democrat?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it's called generic.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: A Democratic candidate or a Republican candidate.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: No names attached, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to Geoffrey's point,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: it has traditionally been a pretty good barometer of how,
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: what direction the wind is blowing and how hard the wind is blowing.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Geoffrey.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, this is actually about the highest Republicans have been in quite a bit.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats overall, they lead by about three points, about 46% to 43%.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And to be clear,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: our average,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: there are a couple of tenths, but this version for presentation is rounded.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is, it had been before this, it had been four or five points for a few weeks.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And before that, it had been as high as seven back in May, for instance, for Democrats.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of this is that The numbers bounce around some.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Generic ballot average, it's partly going to depend on who is releasing polling and when.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Different pollsters tend to have different leans.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But our methodology in terms of how it works, this is where we're at right now.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so what will be interesting,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: and I think the really big question,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Looking ahead with
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: the generic congressional ballot is once more pollsters have moved over
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: to likely voter results,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: and at this point only some have done that, what are they finding?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we have seen,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: what we saw in the 2025 elections,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: what we've seen in some special elections and whatnot,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: and what we've even seen in some polling asking people how likely they are to vote,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats tend to be more enthusiastic, more affirmative about being likely to vote.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're the party out of power.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Traditionally what we see,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: the party out of power is more engaged, passionate, urgent about voting.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So when you go from all voters to only the likeliest of voters,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: the minority party who is out of power tends to benefit more in a midterm.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's basically a concept called differential turnout in midterm elections
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: where Everything else being equal,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: if you find out somebody identifies more with the party that is out of power,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: they are more likely to vote.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, it's because they're not happy with the status quo.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in a lower turnout election,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: and midterms have lower turnout in presidential races,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: that can have more of an impact than in a higher turnout presidential race.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Not the turnout isn't important there too, but it's just...
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can end up with some more notable swings in midterms because of these effects.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: But the long and short of it is the really big question,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: the many, many,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: many millions of dollars,
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: billion dollar question,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: who knows how much one seat spent in this cycle,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: but is whether or not once more pollsters meet to likely voter setups that
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: the Democrats lead,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: does it expand in a notable way or does it actually remain relatively narrow?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it is more like where it is right now, And so,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: That speaks to a more competitive environment than what we sometimes have seen
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: in recent midterms.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: if the Democrats' lead expands and is more like six-ish points or seven points,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: maybe they're getting closer to a scenario where they have a shot at being favored
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: in the Senate or you get a true coin flip and maybe the House is a little bit more,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's not safer, but is more likely and more firmly sort of leaning their way.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a lot of time, obviously, until November for some of those things to shake out.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: can you,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: just to reset for people,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: we are talking to Geoffrey Skelley, Chief Elections Analyst at DDHQ.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: DDHQ, Decision Desk HQ, is out with its first 2026 election forecast.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right now,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats 61% chance of winning the House,
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans 57% chance of holding the Senate.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's your top line.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: can you explain to people If you have it in me,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably in that first graphic that you were showing originally.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: But can you explain to people how if what the generic ballot movement means for it?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does it factor into the model that you're using?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then how does it if it's one point for Democrats versus seven points for Democrats?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can you you don't have to adjust it on the fly, but just what what would that change?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, actually.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a chart and people want to go check it out.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And sort of part one,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to, for Mondays, our
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: regular weekly newsletter comes out on Mondays.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I did a special edition for obviously the launch today and talked about sort of
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: the overall situation and delved into the house a little bit.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I was going to talk more at length more about the Senate
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: because I think it's easier for people to follow the Senate because it's state
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: and state rather than 435 districts.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: You got 35 center races and only about eight to 10 of them are going to matter.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so, so it's a little, it's a little easier to, to, to wrap your head around.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you look at sort of understanding the importance of the generic ballot,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: if I
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: can successfully, uh,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: find my screen share here, um, Oh, where are you?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this chart.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love this chart.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, essentially like Democrats had recently.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So see this blue blob here.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: They've recently been leading by about three and a half to five and a half points.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, it's down to about three today.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the lowest it's been.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: But basically yesterday when I was putting all this together,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: that this has essentially been the recent range of the Democrats lead.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that if you look at the probabilities on here, This is the Senate.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Republicans,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: they got a better shot at holding the Senate sort of regardless of where
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: the generic ballot is.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I should note the generic ballot Democratic lead is here at the bottom.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's 10, 8, 6, 4, 2.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are very likely to lead in generic ballots.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: They don't really need to go into the universe where Republicans actually lead it
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: because also that would...
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: That would change.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans would be favored to keep the House and the Senate if they lead on the generic.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, easily.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at sort of the probability of a Republican hold in the House,
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: so that's what this line going up here is.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right in here, they're underdogs.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're not huge underdogs, but they're underdogs.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that is with a generic lead between three and a half and five and a half for Democrats.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: if you have to get back more to that six,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: seven range,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: you're getting more into a bit more certainty about Democrats taking the House.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So again,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: where the generic ballot goes from here is very important because if it goes in
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: the other direction, things get a little tighter.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: You actually get to a 50-50 race in our forecast model if Democrats are
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: a plus 2.5 lead in jury ballot.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what that speaks to is a couple things.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: One is that the House map, even before...
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: The recent conflict over redistricting did have a very slight Republican lean to it
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: and that the median seat was just the hair to the right of the country.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that wasn't dramatically so, to be clear.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was very similar, actually.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was the Arizona first.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: David Schweikert's open seat was the median seat.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just a little bit to the right of the country in 2024.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: But now after redistricting,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: that's moved a bit more to the right because Democrats were able to make
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans, you mean?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans gained out of redistricting.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, did I say Democrats?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, don't worry.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I do it literally all the time.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That is not what I meant.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans made gains out of redistricting.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so actually, if I shared this one with folks, this is based on our forecast right now.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, 10 states redrew their maps to at least some extent.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans redrew more of them than Democrats did.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the Kalei decision by the Supreme Court was a part of that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: But Republicans are essentially positioned to gain,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: at this point, about five seats from reissue.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll note, folks, Virginia's not in there due to the state Supreme Court ruling.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been a plus...
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Three plus four for these?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Probably plus four.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would be plus four.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it would have been basically neutral.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Geoffrey.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to know.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that decision was huge.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so to be clear, like, you know, Republicans actually could gain more than this.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: For instance,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: like right now in our forecast,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Marcy Captor in Ohio's ninth district,
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: which Republicans made a little redder in Ohio and redistricting there.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: She's a Democratic incumbent, longtime Democratic incumbent.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: She's actually slightly favored to hold on.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so she she does.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats might actually avoid any net losses in Ohio.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if capital were to lose, that's another potential gain for Republicans.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not I don't want people to think that that's number five.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is like in concrete.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It could be a little bit more.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: It could be a little less.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll just have to see where it goes.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the general point here is that we're operating off of a baseline where In 2024,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans won the House 220 to 215.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you know,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: you could take Kevin Kiley and move him into the independent column,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: but I think for just simplicity's sake, think about the House as being 220 to 215.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you might even just shift that to 225 to 10,
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: but based on sort of what we're seeing here at the forecast and just thinking about
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit what Republicans have gained
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: from this mid-cycle redistricting conflict.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that means that instead of needing a net gain of three seats to take
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: a simple majority,
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: the barest of majorities, 218, 217, Democrats
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: have seen eight
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: seats.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, historically, that's not a lot.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the out party usually gains more than that in a midterm.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly with an unpopular president, et cetera, et cetera.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: But we did just see Republicans only gain nine in 2022.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now, obviously, the Dobbs decision came down.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: There were a lot of things going on there that attributed to that.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to say that it's a perfect apples to apples,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm saying that we have seen recent midterm circumstances where there wasn't
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: as much movement.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so in our highly polarized,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: very competitive political situation,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think the 2022 example looms as an example of what can happen and why the idea
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: that Democrats might only gain 11 or 12 seats.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Which is sort of where our forecast is showing right now in the House on average.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I should actually, I could bring that back up.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: The average change in, yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll note here,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Brett in the comments says,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: no matter who wins the House,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have a feeling the majority will be five members or under.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is sort of a scenario, as Geoffrey was outlining.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The closer that generic ballot gets to D plus two,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: D plus two and a half, You well could be right there, Brett.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: an 11-seat gain for Democrats,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: a net 11, right,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: is not, you know, I mean, that does not, what does that put him at, 226, Skelley?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's 226.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it is in effect,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: as I was saying, with the redistricting changes, it might be more like, Right.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: What would that be?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: 13 seats.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do Republicans essentially hold serve?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the middle chunk of this.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you put it up over here where Democrats go from, they get 18 seats or they get 20.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: These are very possible,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: but also Republicans end up gaining a couple seats because they're 220 right now.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they get four.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So they managed to hold off Democrats in a lot of swing seats.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they pick up a few seats thanks to redistricting,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: and there you go.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's, I think, an important wrinkle.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: That and the narrowing of the generic ballot plus redistricting have made
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: the House less of a sure thing for Democrats.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about your forecasting of specific Senate races,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: but before we do that,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: before we do that,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I see Lynn Gardner and a few other people ask me this too,
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: and you said this at the top, but I just want to be clear.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Lynn says,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: how does your analysis differ from what Larry Sabato and his crystal ball does at
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: the University of Virginia?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: For people who don't know,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: no one knows more about Virginia, by the way, than Geoffrey Skelley, literally.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: The man knows.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are a Virginia native, correct?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Born and raised.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you know how.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll throw in what Nate Silver is doing, what the Times will do.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're all similar, correct?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you tell me.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there are quantitative forecasts, which is to say you take.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: A set of various variables,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: different data points that you believe because
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: of various research evidence are useful indicators of what's going on.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're predictive.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Things like, oh, this seat is 60% Kamala Harris.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably safe Democratic.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a D. Probably going to, yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, that's a simple, you know, really simple example.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, that sort of thing is very helpful.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: What Nate Silver will do with the Silver Bulletin will be somewhat similar.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: He'll take a bunch of inputs.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: He puts them into a forecast model where he runs many thousands,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: hundreds of thousands even, simulations.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And based on using those variables and having sort of different variants around those variables.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's the historical range of these things?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: How can they vary from election to election?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: When people,
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: just to be clear,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: when people are saying like,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: what is, okay,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: you ran a million simulations,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: what they're doing essentially is slightly adjusting the weight,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: literally, that each of the inputs that are going in matter, right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: They set that in the in this one to Geoffrey's point,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: he talked about political markets being used in that they can only set it at 20.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: It can't go any higher than 25 percent.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: If they set political markets to matter 25 percent,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to change the outcome if they measured it 2 percent.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we're at.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Republican presidential year turnout versus typical midterm.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you adjust the inputs, you're going to get different outcomes.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know broadly what the inputs are,
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: but we don't know what specific measure they're going to be,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: and that's why you see this range.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is that fair, Geoffrey?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's absolutely it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: we develop those ranges of where those variables could fall based
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: on Historical election data going back a few cycles, particularly in the Trump era.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's really been the main focus of our forecast.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And now different forecasts will use different sets of training data essentially
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: to set up how the forecast model reads the inputs from this election.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of them are quantitative in that way.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Ours is what Nate Silver will be doing, Silver Bolton is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: A number of other ones are...
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: What a lot of the ratings outlets are doing,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: and they are sometimes an input,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: they're not an input in our forecast model,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: but I know Nate has used them in the past in his forecast,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: or Elliot Morris has used them as well at times, is they essentially apply a rating.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's a qualitative rating.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is certainly based in part on quantitative data.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: I used to work for Savas,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: first of all, that's how I got my start in all this, when I was a wee lad.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And here I am all these years later, but
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: we're still doing it.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're still doing it.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: 15 years ago that I started working there at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is a qualitative analysis where you
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: would not say that Essentially,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: you're not using a forecast model to produce a number that is giving you
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: a probability for the outcome.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: What you're instead doing is you're using...
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: So categories of ratings.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times we end up,
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: and we use these actually to help people understand,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: interpret the probabilities you're spitting out,
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: calling them a toss-up, lean D,
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: likely D, safe D,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: and the flip side for R.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because people are more familiar with that lingo,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: and I think it's easier to interpret.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: So what ratings outlets are doing is essentially taking in Various quantitative data.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're also talking to experts and people who are on the ground in various states.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're talking to people on those campaigns.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're sometimes getting access to private polling that does not become public.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: In some cases, they interview candidates.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: They do a whole bunch of different things where it's a mix of sort of qualitative
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: and quantitative to say, okay, this is a toss-up race based on what we're seeing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or this is a lean R race based on what we're seeing.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the difference.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's...
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's so it's not explicitly quantitative, but quantitative does go into it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I can assure you that Kyle Condick is the manager.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: You get it.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then there is my first job in Washington, the Cook Political Report.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they do.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's in the qualitative ratings based on some numbers.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, lots of historical data, but also other inputs that that's less purely scientific.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's Sabatoe.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Cook Political Court, Nathan Gonzalez, and Rubashkin over at Inside Elections.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're all in that space.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they talk to each other, but they're not the same thing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, Geoffrey, I've got like five Senate races I just want to go through.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can we start with...
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not the closest one, but can we start with Texas?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like that's the one that people are the most focused on.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, and again, this is the same thing as the national level stuff, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Simulations run based on the inputs and it produces this.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Go on.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that, Geoffrey.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: So right now, uh,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: maybe it's actually easier initially, but to start out with just our Senate map.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: People will know this shape.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, very, uh,
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Texas is,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: and this is again where we use some of the ratings categories
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: to just help people interpret.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: So our forecast toss-up range is if no candidate has greater than a 60% chance of winning.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: So basically 40 to 60 for both candidates is a toss-up.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And just to be clear here, folks, I just want to make this point.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey made it about rolling dice.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: 57-43, you look at that and you think, oh, he's up 14 points.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: no, we're talking about probability.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: If Ken Paxton was walking around across the street and closed his eyes, right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say, I always say this to people, would you get on a plane?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting form of plane.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not going to go there.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do this one.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do this one.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll take Ken Paxton out of it.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you are getting on a plane and the pilot says, hey, thank you for joining us.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a 57% chance the plane will land.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: You would be like, no effing way.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting off the plane.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to be clear, I think airplanes have like a 99.99999%.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is my point, people,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: you see the number,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: we're talking about probability here,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: people, and that's why anything under 60 DDHP was saying is a toss-up.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Pulling marbles out of,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: rolling dice, pick your different ways of, I think, more easily understanding it.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: the difference,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I will say the one different thing about like,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: talking about like, oh,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to roll dice,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: is that each time you roll like a pair of dice,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're not interrelated.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if your hands are real sweaty or something or they get sweatier,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: maybe you can make some argument.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Generally speaking, they're independent of each other.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because if things are swinging a bit more to the left or right,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: in terms of the range of outcomes,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: That probably is happening in other places too, largely in the same direction.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: If James Tallarico wins in Texas,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: the chances of whoever Democrats pick in Maine beating Susan Collins is much higher
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: than if Ken Paxton wins by eight points.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Texas and Maine are obviously not the same,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: but it suggests what the shape of the electorate is looking like.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you just go through the yellow, go through the toss-ups and the odds.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's worth reminding people the Senate 53, 47 right now for Republicans.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: The math is Democrats have to, it's for power to change hands.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats have to get a net gain of four.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they have to, essentially they need to hold everything they have.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not a given, particularly Michigan is the big question mark there.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: What do you have North Carolina as, Geoffrey?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to see 72.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's lean, but it's a little, it's a little more secure.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's been bouncing between lean and likely.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Georgia is, It's also likely, and New Hampshire likely.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, not a guarantee,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: but you're close to a three and four,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: four and five chance of winning these states if you're Democrats.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: So more likely than not, they will win those seats.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so let's say they get North Carolina.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's one.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just say for argument's sake that they do manage to hold Michigan,
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: which is kind of necessary.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: We ran the numbers.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: If Republicans split Michigan, they have an 86%.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we know no other results.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: If we knew no other results and just gave them Michigan,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans, they'd have an 86, they win the Senate 86% of the time.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the Senate, if
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats blow it in Michigan, you might say.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And by failing to hold on to a seat that they already controlled in a swing state,
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: then it would probably be catastrophic.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just say Democrats get North Carolina.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a sure thing.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want people to think of it as a sure thing.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: But they manage to get that.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: They hold on to Georgia and Michigan, the two Trump ones.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And New Hampshire.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they manage to hold on to New Hampshire, which is a very competitive state and an open seat.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they're at one.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they need to find three more.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the next one up is,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: and we move into the toss-up category from North Carolina,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: is Maine, where obviously Grant Platner's out.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now Democrats have to pick a replacement.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, it's basically a 50-50 race
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: based on our forecast model.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, earlier,
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: before Platner completely self-destructed,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats were doing a little bit better here.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: It appeared that was down to Platinum World's polling better than Collins.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: At one point in late May, he was up by five in our polling average on Collins.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Between that and prediction markets,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: and knowing that this is a state that Kamala Harris won by seven points,
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: and you can look at polling and see that Susan Collins is slightly underwater
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: among Maine voters in that recent New York Times poll, for instance.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: There are reasons to think that she could lose,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: but obviously,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: given what has been going on in Maine,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: she finds herself in sort of a coin flip race.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is another seat, though.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: If Democrats lose this,
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: they essentially lose the Senate like 80% of the time if they don't win Maine.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: So this is another sort of must-have.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that comes down to the fact that this is the only seat held by
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: a Republican senator in a state that Kamala Harris won.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to flip this if you're done, basically.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jeffrey,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask,
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: this gives me a great opportunity because of the weirdness of Plattner dropping out
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: and they're not being a nominee.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: The anti- Data,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: anti-political sabermetrics people will say, how the hell could you forecast it?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even know who the hell the Democratic nominee is yet.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: How much does...
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Candidate quality is by its nature a qualitative assessment.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: But how much will that like how do you arrive at that given that we won't know
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: until,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: the end of this month or 10 days,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we'll know who is going to be that Democratic nominee,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: how you arrive at that projection,
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: because that's the only state that's competitive where we currently have that issue.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, we do have it in Michigan, I guess, because they're primary.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't know the nominee in Michigan.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: But, well, we know Mike Rogers is almost certainly the nominee on the Republican side.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: But we know Collins is the nominee on the Republican side, too.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So explain to people how you do that when we haven't had a primary yet,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: or we've had a primary, and in the Plattner case, it's gone to pine.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's null and void.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially what goes into the forecast model is sort of three different pieces.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's this sort of universe of fundamentals is what we call the fundamentals,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: which is the partisan baseline of the state,
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: its recent voting patterns,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: if there is an incumbent,
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: because incumbents,
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: especially on the Senate side, do tend to get a little bit of a boost at least.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: And basically...
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have this rating for how well they've sort of performed.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So Collins has a history of performing much better.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Extremely well.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: So she is a particularly strong incumbent.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if an incumbent was an underperformer,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: that actually would hurt them a little bit in the way our model is set up.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So right now what's going on is that polling is no longer part of the picture in Maine.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Until we get polling testing Collins against whomever the Democrats nominate,
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is not being put in.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: So right now,
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: what is producing this number in Maine from our simulations is based on
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: the political makeup of Maine,
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: its historical makeup,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: the national environment,
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: the generic ballot,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: it's democratic-leaning to some extent,
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: and it's already a democratic-leaning state, and then the prediction market data.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's mostly the fundamentals in the generic ballot right now.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's mostly what's driving this as a 50-50 race
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: and Collins' intimacy.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big thing because of her history of overperforming,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: which made her stronger to begin with than a generic Republican in a state
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: that Paris won by seven would be normal.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that, you know, even as Joe Biden was winning the state in 2020 by.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: The only split ticket state
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: in 2020.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Only Susan Collins was winning reelection in 2020 against the person
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: in Sarah Gideon, statehouse speaker, who Democrats insisted.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was going to be the one, Susan Collins won by, what, she won by like eight, Skelley?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was about eight.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a 15% difference, right?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Biden wins the state by seven-ish, Collins wins by eight.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a remarkable performance.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a big difference.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's also in the same state that has elected Jared Golden multiple times in
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: the second district.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Maine is maybe the most split ticket happy state in the country.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So Collins does have things going for her.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I do think this is the first time she's ever run in a bad midterm voter party.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is, to me, the really big question about her ability to survive.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: the other thing that's come up is who Democrats are going to actually run
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: against her, which has become again.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we still don't know.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we've done Texas.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've done Maine.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do let's just go east to west.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: So do Ohio, then Iowa, then Alaska.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: So Ohio,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sherrod Brown,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: familiar face,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: former Democrat senator who lost re-election in 2024,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: running here against appointed Republican Senator John Husted.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is a race that is very much on the borderline of
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: that toss up lean Republican zone, as I said earlier.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: A toss-up in our forecast is we call that anything where a node candidate hits 60% or more.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: So right now, no one's at 60%, but Husted is just shy of 60%.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: So Republicans have a very slight edge here in Ohio, but obviously Democrats at 41% for Brown.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: They do win it in a fair number of simulations.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: But basically with Ohio,
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: it is the least red of the red states that Democrats have to compete in.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: That we're about to
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: talk about.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Texas, Iowa, Alaska and Ohio.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the least Republican of those.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a state that President Trump won by about 11 points in 2024.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still pretty remarkable.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Republican, to your point just there.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: So quite Republican, yeah.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a big factor, and that's helping Houston.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the polling there right now is pretty close.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Brown has a slight lead in our polling average,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: but it's one of those things, it's the mix of components.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: But a toss-up feels about right,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: given what we're seeing with polling,
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: but knowing the fundamentals of the state are...
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: we can even, I don't know if I have a lot more brilliant things to add about Ohio.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: There hasn't been a drama there.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's in Maine, but you switch from there to Iowa and it's a somewhat similar.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Very similar.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, you have a completely open seat.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Qstead is an appointed incumbent in Ohio,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: so it is functionally a bit like an open seat, but not entirely.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it is an open seat in our model,
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Ohio, I should mention, because Qstead does not have—he's never won an election.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's not gotten elected to that seat.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it is functionally an open seat.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Iowa is a completely open seat because Joni Ernst is retiring.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Joni Ernst,
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what her rating might have been,
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't know if she would have come up— Ashley Henson.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: The Republican nominee at 58% chance of winning, Turf,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Josh Cherick, a state representative, he's the Democratic nominee at 42% chance.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Again, for folks, it's probability, not the actual vote share.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I can click on this and I can tell you what our average projected vote share is.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: A lot closer, 51.49 for Henson.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: So again, vote share versus the probability of winning.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: The number of times when you roll those dice that you get,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or you pick a red marble or a blue marble blindly out of the jar.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I will say this.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: If Democrats were to win both Ohio and Iowa,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: the two sort of Midwest battlegrounds,
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: They'd have an 80% chance of winning the Senate, not knowing any other results.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: If Dems win Ohio and Iowa, they have an 80% chance of winning.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: The Senate majority.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: In 80% of those scenarios, they're on their way to a majority.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy to understand.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: In those scenarios, they're probably winning North Carolina.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're probably winning Maine.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they're picking up some other stuff, too, while they're at it.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of the other stuff, we can talk about Alaska.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, in Alaska, right now, Yes.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, it is a toss-up again.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's do the same thing we've been doing with the other toss-ups.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: No one's at 60% or higher.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not leaning one way or the other.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we call it a toss-up in terms of our rating.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's very narrowly favoring Mary Peltola.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Democrats.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Functionally,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to be Mary Peltola.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Explain to people why in Alaska it says Republican versus Democrat right now.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of rank choice, but feel free to...
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Alaska's primary is in August,
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: but they don't have a standard party nomination process.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: They have what's known as the top four primary.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're the only state with a top four primary.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: You may have heard of the top two primary in California, Washington.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: In Alaska, all primary voters will go to the polls and they'll cast one vote.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the top four candidates,
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: vote-getters from that group, they advance to the general election.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in the general election,
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: you could have more than one Democrat,
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: you could have more than one Republican advance.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: They use ranked-choice voting to determine the outcome if no candidate has
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: a majority of first-choice votes.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in all likelihood,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mary Peltola,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic nominee,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: and incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan will have the vast majority of votes.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: And first choice votes in the general,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: because of the system,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: it is quite possible that neither will have a majority outright in November
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: and will have to go through the ranked choice voting process to see who won.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say for folks scoring at home, thinking about, we want to think about time zones.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know they just passed, the House just passed the thing about D.L.S.A.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Cotton has said he's going to block it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently we're not getting a...
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really blame him.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think the whole thing is kind of silly.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be 9.05 a.m. before the sun comes up in Indiana.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: But yes.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Vermont, so this actually is.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: As well.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm okay if it doesn't happen.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: My one-year-old will probably function a little bit better in that case.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need like three hours of darkness before light when he's up.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Jeffrey, can you click on that one?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: What I have to say with Alaska is,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the last reporting states to report because of the time zone.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's, what, six hours behind the East Coast?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or, well, the Aleutians, I think, are seven.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the states, six hours behind the East Coast.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: And because it is such a big state,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: roughly a fifth the size of the lower 48,
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: big state,
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: lots of far-flung communities that are pretty remote,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: mail balloting, mail ballots can be accepted, I think, up to about a week.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: After election day.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like California.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are a lot of people sending in mail ballots because again,
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: far flung, take a lot of count.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a, the last time I had this run was a couple of days ago.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the updated one,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: but there was a 6% chance that the majority came down to Alaska.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's not like, but it could be a week's long thing if that's the case.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so, because you could have a situation where it's 50 democratic seats.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: 49 Republican seats.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we're waiting to see if Dan Sullivan won re-election in Alaska.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's 50-50 and Vice President Vance breaks ties for the GOP.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's Peltola, they have a 51-49.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: if it's 50-50,
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: speaking of Alaska,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: the pressure on Lisa Murkowski to switch parties or caucus with Democrats
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: and vice versa,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: the pressure on John Fetterman potentially to caucus with Republicans will be high.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's use just a couple minutes.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take too much of your time here, Geoffrey.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Delaina Escott says, what will happen with Vindman in Florida?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about a few of the kind of longer shots here.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Alex Vindman is running
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: against another appointed senator taking Marco Rubio's seat named Ashley Moody.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is in your likely category.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Explain that one.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: So here,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: this is right on the border of the lean and likely R.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the lean category is 60 to 75%.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is a Republicans at 76.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it's an open seat.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Moody is an appointed senator.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have the nominees listed here yet, but it's very, very likely.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I don't think Vindman has a primary vote.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: But Moody and Vindman,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Ashley Moody,
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: the Republican incumbent appointed,
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: will face Democrat Alex Vindman in the general election.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Florida is a state that has a very similar partisan makeup,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: at least in presidential elections recently,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: to some of these other states we talked about, Texas, Alaska, Iowa.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Florida also went for Trump by about 13 points, which was the case in Iowa.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was the case in Alaska.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: Texas was about 14.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Ohio was about 11.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you could group Florida in there.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Florida, though,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: in 2022,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: in the last midterm,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: it swung real hard right,
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: and it sort of stayed there in the general election,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: or for the presidential election,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: in a way that I think made people – Makes it a little redder as its baseline
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: in terms of the partisan
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: makeup
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: than what we're seeing in some
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: of these other states.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that there is certainly a world where Florida is
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: a lot more competitive in this environment.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: for folks watching at home on election night,
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Florida is going to be one of the places we first have election data from.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very fast voting state.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, polls close at seven in most of the state,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: except, you know, the panhandle is at eight, but our 8 p.m. Eastern, sorry.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: We call that Chuck Toddville, the panhandle.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Chuck Toddville, yes.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's Chuck Todd's, that's Chuck Todd's country there, yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Chuck Todd country.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he should start,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: he should,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: he should get a show on like, I don't know, HGTV or something or, you know.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, explaining the panhandle.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love it.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, perfect.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'll, we'll pitch that to him next, on the next, uh, live stream.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Live stream.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is a world, though,
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: where Florida actually does look more like what's going on in some
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: of these other states.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: Vindman will have
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: money, right?
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Vindman has raised money.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: The record of appointed senators of both parties winning a real term is not super high.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: A couple others just before we go, Geoffrey, and you can do these lightning round.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can you do Nebraska next?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's kind of a weird one because Osborne is not a Democrat, but...
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably not going to—I don't know if the Democratic one in
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: the primary has dropped out yet.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just explain that one.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: She is not officially withdrawn, but the expectation is that she will.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: And because she essentially said she's supporting Osborne,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: so the expectation is she will drop out.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it will be essentially Ricketts versus Osborne one-on-one.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Osborne—it's interesting.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Osborne way outperformed Kamala Harris— In 2024.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Deb Fischer in the Senate race there.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: He lost by seven.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you could imagine an environment where maybe the generic ballot is closer to six
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: or seven by the time we get to November.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're thinking about swings from 2024, well,
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: maybe that's enough to put Nebraska on the board as a potential pseudo
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: or quasi-Democratic pickup.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, at least, we do view Pete Ricketts incumbent there as a favorite.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some of that comes down to Nebraska's pretty red.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't really captured by the forecast model as much,
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: but forecast models generally underrated Osborne in 2024.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that was down to the fact that Nebraska is a very red state.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Kamala Harris lost about 21 points to President Trump.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a state where Democrats really have no business winning, even in a really good year.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Osborne is obviously not an out-and-out Democrat,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: but it does seem like Ricketts is taking it a lot more seriously from the get-go
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: than Fisher.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, granted, he's got a test case showing him why he should take it.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that I think is maybe a way of thinking about this as like it could happen.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that Nebraska is going to decide the majority, for instance.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's in a world where Osborne is winning,
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats probably have the majority from other states.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want to end on this one because we've talked about a few of the longer-ish shots
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: on the Democratic side.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just talk about Minnesota where Michelle Tafoya is the Republican nominee
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: and Democrats have a primary?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is it August 4th?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Eleven, so a week after Michigan.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about that one because that's an open seat.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tafoya, for people who don't know,
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: former NFL sideline reporter, got kind of a different profile.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while when I talk to a Republican source of mine,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: they're like, just keep an eye on it.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a great year for us, but maybe if it was, or the year got less bad.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about that one?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Minnesota is a light blue state.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is not.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: It is not.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: It has a long record of voting Democratic and presidential election.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: The last time it didn't was 1972.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times that margin has been pretty close.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, President Trump only lost it by a couple of points in 2016, for instance.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: I forget what it was.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Off the top of my head, I think it was about four or five last time.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: it's not a super blue state,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: but it does have the Minneapolis-St.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Paul metro area doing a lot of work for Democrats and making it tougher
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: for Republicans to win there, even in a good year for the GOP.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a good year for the GOP.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's helping the Democrats out at a fundamentals level.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it is possible, and it will be interesting to see.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I will note that DeFoy is not guaranteed to win that primary.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting one.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Minnesota in general,
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: you did just see in the governor's race that President Trump endorsed Mike Lindell,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: the MyPillow guy.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: MyPillow guy.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: In the governor's race.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, he's not running for Senate,
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: but nonetheless,
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: there are Could be a sort of line of Republican voters who decide to not go for
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: the candidate who,
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: even though she is certainly a conservative,
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: maybe has a little tinge of, oh, D.C. would really like her to be.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we've seen that,
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats are doing that a little bit, too.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: on the Democratic side,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: you have Peggy Flanagan, the governor, running against Congresswoman Angie Craig.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very competitive primary.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Flanagan has a narrow lead in our polling average, but it's a very close race.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Craig has more money.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: She's sort of seen as the establishment candidate, the more center-left moderate candidate.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Flanagan has positioned herself as more progressive.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: She does have issues because she is connected to Tim Walls and
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: the ongoing Medicaid fraud going on in Minnesota.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there are potential issues for both candidates.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what you were saying there is it's sort of the wrong year.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in a Republican-leaning year, this, I think, gets more interesting.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like 2022,
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: she would have had a chance.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't be talking about it more.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a guarantee she would win, but she would have had a real chance, I think.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: To your point, if she's the nominee.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now- Amy Klobuchar aside,
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, I do think in an environment like 2022, it would have been more interesting.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it is worth noting Al Franken won re-election very easily in 2014,
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: but that was kind of unexpected.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: That was like a weird, that was weird.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Weird election.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Good national election for Republican, but Franken won.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much more.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey, give people...
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: Say the
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: least.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I already wrote down, can we do this regularly on a post-it note?
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll be reaching out to you.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: But for now,
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: give people where they can access the votes stuff on and the forecasting stuff
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: on DDHQ first.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: Votes, D-O-T-E-S, dot decisiondeskhq.com.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you go there and you will see a link to the forecast.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's free to sign up and you can get all kinds of fun alerts.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can look at election results from this year.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of benefits.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really wonderful, like it's an awesome tool.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Valuable tool.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you are on this chat, trust me, you will enjoy it.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing I want people to do is in Substack,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: Geoffrey writes the Decision Desk HQ Substack newsletter.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: There is one.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's normally on Mondays.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: There is an extra issue today, Wednesday, laying out a lot of what we've talked about here.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I would urge people, if you have not already signed up, sign up.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Skelley, how do people follow you on social media?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm at Geoffreyvs, V as in Victor, S as in Sam.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Geoffrey with a G, I should note that.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y-B-S.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: V as in Victor, yes.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you should do this.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is a smart, smart man.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can find me on...
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Blue Sky occasionally posts on there, but mainly X and Substack these days.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can't kick our X habit.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: None of us can.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been used to it.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing it too long.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I was there when Twitter blew up.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a poor part of my political coverage.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: Same for me.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the thing I check the most other than my email.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who joined us.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Old habits die hard.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they do.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who joined us, over 200 people, took some time out of your day.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Go watch the Argentina-England game that is starting right now, semifinals of the World Cup.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had to end by three because I'm not missing that.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching it live, thank you.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not, if you're not, thank you for checking the replay out.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: I will put a bunch of links to everything we just talked about in here so
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: that you can check it out.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: But, Geoffrey, thank you for taking the time.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, thanks for having me.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, man, you got it.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have a good one.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everyone.