Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 43: DDHQ’s Governors Forecast!

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Episode 43: DDHQ’s Governors Forecast! · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, all the polls have been kind of covering candidates that aren't really in right now.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: And as you can see, we have three Republicans running.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: The candidate quality is pretty subpar to an average Democrat.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: Under the sort of right circumstances and sort of state by state circumstances,
0:16
SPEAKER_02: there can be some notable differences in a particular gubernatorial election between
0:20
SPEAKER_02: a state sort of baseline partisanship and how it tends to vote in most elections
0:24
SPEAKER_02: and how it chooses to vote in the governor's race.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: And as you said, candidates can play a big part in that.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: Back in July,
0:49
SPEAKER_02: Decision Desk released its 2026 election forecast for the US Senate and
0:54
SPEAKER_02: the US House.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: But you know, the midterms aren't just about the race for Congress.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: 36 states will also elect their governors,
1:01
SPEAKER_02: making midterm elections the main venue for deciding who will lead most of
1:05
SPEAKER_02: the 50 states.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: With that in mind,
1:07
SPEAKER_02: we recently added a gubernatorial forecast to the Decision Desk HQ forecast
1:12
SPEAKER_02: on our votes portal at votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: Currently,
1:17
SPEAKER_02: Democrats and Republicans each control 18 of the governorships on the ballot in 2026
1:22
SPEAKER_02: of the 36 overall.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: And in our forecast right now,
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Democrats are currently favored in 19 of those 36,
1:29
SPEAKER_02: which would represent a one seed gain for them.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: But there are a lot of close races, so it could be a little bit more than that.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: Could even be Republican gains.
1:38
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
1:38
SPEAKER_02: at the end of the day,
1:39
SPEAKER_02: parties don't get anything for controlling a majority of governorships like they do
1:42
SPEAKER_02: for controlling a majority of seats in a legislative chamber like the U.S.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Senate or the U.S. House.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: But at present,
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Republicans control 26 of the 50 total governorships,
1:51
SPEAKER_02: meaning that more than a one seat gain for Democrats would actually give them
1:55
SPEAKER_02: a majority of governorships for the first time since before the 2010 election.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: So in today's episode,
2:02
SPEAKER_02: we're going to talk a little bit about the ins and outs of this forecast,
2:05
SPEAKER_02: break down some of the key races,
2:07
SPEAKER_02: some of the most likely flips for either party,
2:10
SPEAKER_02: and some of the more curious and interesting contests that we're watching.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: And to do all this,
2:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited to be joined by two of my Decision Desk HQ colleagues,
2:19
SPEAKER_02: Madison Murrell,
2:20
SPEAKER_02: a data scientist who manages the day-to-day running of our congressional forecasts.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: And Jake Marks,
2:25
SPEAKER_02: a data science intern who took the lead to create
2:28
SPEAKER_02: the gubernatorial forecast using some of the baseline methodologies
2:31
SPEAKER_02: in our congressional forecast.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: So Madison and Jake, welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having us.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, I'm excited to talk about this with you guys a little bit.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh, obviously,
2:47
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:47
SPEAKER_02: the congressional race control of Congress gets,
2:50
SPEAKER_02: gets a lot of attention,
2:51
SPEAKER_02: but I do think, um,
2:53
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:53
SPEAKER_02: obviously governorships are very important for, uh, governing individual States.
2:58
SPEAKER_02: Um, they also could have all kinds of ramifications for,
3:01
SPEAKER_02: uh, things like redistricting, since I don't think those battles are, are over.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so in some states it could be a veto point or they could be,
3:09
SPEAKER_02: you know, Approving a friendly legislature's map.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: If they could change the lines for Congress and state legislature.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: So there's all kinds of ramifications for this in the 2026 election.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: So I thought we should start out just with sort of the overall scene here, the 36 governorships.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: Let me pull that up on screen here for folks watching at home.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: 36 governorships and...
3:40
SPEAKER_02: Again, it's sometimes easier,
3:41
SPEAKER_02: I think,
3:41
SPEAKER_02: to sort of understand with the Senate because you're like,
3:44
SPEAKER_02: oh, net gain of this does this.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: But I was curious if there was anything that,
3:50
SPEAKER_02: obviously the toss-ups in yellow,
3:52
SPEAKER_02: Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio are going to be worth talking about.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: But I was curious, Jake,
3:56
SPEAKER_02: since you've been very deep into this,
3:58
SPEAKER_02: I was curious if there were any races that immediately stuck out to you on this map
4:04
SPEAKER_02: or that you've been kind of keeping an eye on that were fun.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you talked a little bit about the Senate, right?
4:12
SPEAKER_01: For the Senate,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: I feel like everyone knows about the Texas Senate race that's been going on, right?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: And how in our own forecast right now,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Texas Senate,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: we actually have the Democrat, James Talarico,
4:24
SPEAKER_01: like in the lead, we have him, I think it's around 52, 53%.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: The governor forecast is the exact opposite, right?
4:32
SPEAKER_01: We're seeing Greg Abbott at 75% still in that likely R category very narrowly.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's very interesting to see that Texas fundamentally is still a red state, right?
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Who wins the Senate race this November?
4:51
SPEAKER_01: Texas will, for the foreseeable future, always be a red state, right?
4:57
SPEAKER_01: And I think it really shows that,
4:59
SPEAKER_01: at least for the Democratic Party,
5:01
SPEAKER_01: they really need an all-star candidate facing a really bad GOP candidate in a very,
5:08
SPEAKER_01: very favorable Democratic wave environment in order to win Texas.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's what's going on in the Senate.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: For the governor, you're not really seeing that.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: We currently project that Greg Abbott's going to win pretty handedly.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: I would be curious to see if it narrows a little bit closer to November.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: I know that the polls have only shown Abbott with like a three to four percentage point lead.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I would say that's probably one of the more interesting of the races.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Texas definitely,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: you know, always, always sort of the, you know, can Democrats flip Texas?
5:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and obviously that's a big question for the Senate race,
5:45
SPEAKER_02: but it does seem like Greg Abbott at the end of the day, uh, if,
5:49
SPEAKER_02: if he were to lose, you're,
5:50
SPEAKER_02: you're talking about a universe probably where James Talarico is winning by
5:54
SPEAKER_02: a comfortable margin actually in the Senate race.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: By like five or six, I would say.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
5:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: Cause there does seem to be about a six or seven point difference
6:02
SPEAKER_02: in our polling average right now.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: In terms of Talarico being up around three and Abbott being up about three to four,
6:08
SPEAKER_02: as you said, in terms of the difference between those contests.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: Madison,
6:13
SPEAKER_02: I know obviously you spent a lot of time looking at the congressional forecast,
6:16
SPEAKER_02: but I was curious if there were any races for you thinking about the sort of
6:20
SPEAKER_02: the governor's map that stuck out.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and before I get to that, I'm going to add in some extra comments on Texas as well.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, please.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: But I think I was having a very interesting conversation the other day with Jake
6:37
SPEAKER_00: and my’s boss, where somebody had asked her, is Texas purple?
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And I think Jake pretty answered well, like, the answer is no, right?
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Like, the answer is no, Texas is not purple.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: This is just like,
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Texas is red,
6:49
SPEAKER_00: but like,
6:50
SPEAKER_00: this is just a very good,
6:52
SPEAKER_00: good, perfect storm for Democrats to have, like, a shot at the Senate in Texas.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: But, like, clearly the governorship is not even close.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that also kind of carries over to a lot of the differences between
7:06
SPEAKER_00: the Senate and the governor's races,
7:08
SPEAKER_00: where it's, like,
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Jake and I,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: a lot when we were developing this,
7:11
SPEAKER_00: talked about, like,
7:12
SPEAKER_00: do we believe that, like, senator races and governor's races are correlated, right?
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And that was a pretty heavy conversation.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is,
7:21
SPEAKER_00: like, A little bit, but definitely not as much as the House and the Senate, right?
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I think that Texas is a fantastic example of that.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: That could very easily be a very prominent split.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: I think another one,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: and I know Jake's going to want to talk about this one,
7:37
SPEAKER_00: but Alaska is also quite interesting for the governor's races,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: just given their top four system.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that,
7:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:45
SPEAKER_00: all the polls have been kind of favoring candidates or covering candidates
7:48
SPEAKER_00: that don't really aren't really in right now.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And as you can see, we have three Republicans running.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: So and, you know, unfortunately, we don't really do candidate specific probabilities.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, Alaska is super interesting.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: I think Ohio is going to stay red, but it'll be fun to watch.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: That's at 51% right now,
8:11
SPEAKER_00: but we can talk about this later,
8:13
SPEAKER_00: but the polling has definitely been leaning Democrat lately as well.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: Cool.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, obviously,
8:21
SPEAKER_02: each of these races are so fascinating,
8:23
SPEAKER_02: but I'm glad you brought up the fact that one of the things,
8:27
SPEAKER_02: and maybe we can talk a little bit about how you guys did develop this,
8:32
SPEAKER_02: thinking about governor races and Senate races,
8:35
SPEAKER_02: or just federal elections versus state elections.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: There's clearly...
8:40
SPEAKER_02: I would say there's an increasing...
8:42
SPEAKER_02: Correlation over time between these races, they used to be more more clearly sort of separated.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: You know,
8:50
SPEAKER_02: you'd have Democrats winning governorships in some southern states that,
8:55
SPEAKER_02: you know,
8:56
SPEAKER_02: you still get the Andy Beshear every now and then,
8:57
SPEAKER_02: but but, you know, more so while the Senate had gone Republican for them earlier.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: But now, you know, you don't see quite as many split results.
9:08
SPEAKER_02: They still see some.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: And that I think the fact that you still see some like an Andy Beshear in Kentucky,
9:13
SPEAKER_02: Or Phil Scott in Vermont is indicative of a world where,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: or Laura Kelly in Kansas,
9:19
SPEAKER_02: where under the sort of right circumstances and sort of state
9:25
SPEAKER_02: by state circumstances,
9:26
SPEAKER_02: there can be some notable differences in a particular gubernatorial election between
9:30
SPEAKER_02: a state sort of baseline partisanship and how it tends to vote in most elections
9:35
SPEAKER_02: and how it chooses to vote in the governor's race.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: And as you said, candidates can play a big part in that.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: Particularly extreme or scandal-ridden candidate against,
9:46
SPEAKER_02: I think that has a potential bigger,
9:48
SPEAKER_02: a bigger impact in a gubernatorial race where partisanship is not,
9:53
SPEAKER_02: while it's important,
9:54
SPEAKER_02: it is not as heavy a force as you see in the federal elections.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: So I'm glad you mentioned that.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: But looking at the, sort of the, thinking about, so,
10:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
10:05
SPEAKER_02: we talked a lot in our episode,
10:07
SPEAKER_02: Madison,
10:07
SPEAKER_02: with you and Scott [Tranter] about the sort of the congressional forecast,
10:12
SPEAKER_02: but I was curious,
10:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
10:15
SPEAKER_02: how does this work and how does it differ in some ways from
10:19
SPEAKER_02: the congressional forecast?
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I can answer that question.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: One of the main differences between this forecast and the Senate forecast,
10:31
SPEAKER_01: let's say, right, would definitely be prediction markets.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: So for this forecast,
10:38
SPEAKER_01: the prediction markets that are used,
10:40
SPEAKER_01: like the inputs for it,
10:42
SPEAKER_01: are found at a different weight in that Let's say the market in California, right?
10:50
SPEAKER_01: The total market in the prediction markets in California is around $30 million, right?
10:57
SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of money, 30 million.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, the prediction market weight is at the max it could possibly be.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: It's at 25%.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: In California,
11:06
SPEAKER_01: this doesn't really matter as much because everyone really knows
11:09
SPEAKER_01: where California is going to vote.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: They're going to elect a Democrat in November.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: But in other states, this can have a real impact.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: So for states that are on the lesser side of the prediction market spectrum,
11:24
SPEAKER_01: so to say,
11:25
SPEAKER_01: and where people aren't really putting a lot of money down into it,
11:29
SPEAKER_01: the markets are weighted at around 0%, basically.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: So you can see this in,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: let's say, Georgia, and where Georgia is a very competitive race, right?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be one of the closest races, I would say, of this cycle for the governor's races.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: And yet markets are only at 16%,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: whereas for the Senate race,
11:51
SPEAKER_01: almost every single market is at that 25% because our inputs are So between I think
11:56
SPEAKER_01: the minimum ceiling for it for markets to even be included is
12:00
SPEAKER_01: at one hundred thousand dollars,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: whereas the max in order to reach that twenty five percent is at a million dollars.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: So these races with like really low liquidity or Liquidity values that aren't
12:12
SPEAKER_01: as high as we would like them to see in order to use them as like some sort
12:16
SPEAKER_01: of predictor in the forecast, they're being excluded.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: So the model here is relying a lot more on fundamentals,
12:25
SPEAKER_01: which I personally prefer,
12:26
SPEAKER_01: but I think it's also going to be a test as to For which one is more right,
12:31
SPEAKER_01: the Senate or the governor,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: to see what effect markets can be used for forecasting in the future.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: And if we should just be using them a lot more,
12:40
SPEAKER_01: or if maybe we should be scaling back a little bit and using them only in that kind
12:44
SPEAKER_01: of personality predictor and where a market can tell that Graham Platner is
12:50
SPEAKER_01: a bad candidate in Maine, but fundamentals can't.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: No, it's super fascinating in the sense that, yeah,
12:58
SPEAKER_02: as we talked about in our congressional forecast model chat,
13:03
SPEAKER_02: we've added prediction markets in,
13:05
SPEAKER_02: and that's obviously a choice that I think has been much debated and talked about.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Some other outlets are doing that as well.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: Some others are not in terms of trying to use them.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: We think it potentially gives us a little bit more signal And quicker
13:20
SPEAKER_02: because things can happen before you get polling data.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: And that's sort of the,
13:24
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:24
SPEAKER_02: we're essentially testing this out in real time
13:28
SPEAKER_02: to see just how well it ends up working as a tool.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: But we know that there's reason to think, I mean,
13:34
SPEAKER_02: there's like a lot of academic study about prediction markets having,
13:38
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:39
SPEAKER_02: being helpful for predicting outcomes,
13:41
SPEAKER_02: which But as you point out here,
13:44
SPEAKER_02: it's like we've decided in the congressional model to have a max of 25%,
13:49
SPEAKER_02: right, Madison and Jake?
13:51
SPEAKER_02: And so the fact that Georgia,
13:53
SPEAKER_02: which is one of the most prominent races,
13:55
SPEAKER_02: I would say,
13:56
SPEAKER_02: on the gubernatorial map,
13:58
SPEAKER_02: actually,
13:58
SPEAKER_02: for whatever reason,
13:59
SPEAKER_02: does not have as much action on the prediction markets,
14:03
SPEAKER_02: you might say, that's a little surprising to me.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't sure,
14:11
SPEAKER_02: Madison,
14:11
SPEAKER_02: in terms of if there was anything generally about the, like, yeah,
14:15
SPEAKER_02: we obviously talked about this in our previous episode talking about
14:19
SPEAKER_02: the congressional model,
14:19
SPEAKER_02: but, you know, obviously not everybody who's listening to this will listen to that.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: In terms of how the prediction markets do get rolled in,
14:28
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:30
SPEAKER_02: Is there something with the gubernatorial races that,
14:33
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, sticks out to you with how that differs from the Senate?
14:37
SPEAKER_02: Because obviously a lot of the Senate races,
14:38
SPEAKER_02: probably the biggest Senate races, obviously the liquidity is huge.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: Like there's lots of activity,
14:43
SPEAKER_02: but the fact that we could have a race like Georgia's governor's contest
14:46
SPEAKER_02: that is important,
14:49
SPEAKER_02: but doesn't have as much, I mean,
14:51
SPEAKER_02: I guess the system's working as designed in that way,
14:53
SPEAKER_02: but I was curious if,
14:56
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:57
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it says something more about our use
15:00
SPEAKER_02: of prediction markets more generally.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: I think it really kind of boils down to just like the way,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: like broadly that we think about like governor's races versus like Senate
15:10
SPEAKER_00: and especially House races, right?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Where it's like,
15:13
SPEAKER_00: like I was thinking earlier too,
15:14
SPEAKER_00: when you were talking about Abbott and Talarico and Paxton,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: where it's like people have a much more personal relationship with their governor,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: but also are like,
15:26
SPEAKER_00: the governor is a lot more of a front facing figure than the Like,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: you know, the senator or the House, you know, congressman or whatever.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: So like, for example, like I'm from California.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Jake is currently sitting in California.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: What a lovely state.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: And I would argue and I don't think I would be pushed back much on saying that,
15:44
SPEAKER_00: like,
15:44
SPEAKER_00: most people have a much better idea of who Gavin Newsom is versus Alex Padilla.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that that also just goes to show that like these markets are we kind
15:55
SPEAKER_00: of expected the governor markets because they're so front facing
15:59
SPEAKER_00: to just inherently have more volume than like a stupid house race.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And not stupid.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: All the House races are meaningful.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: But like a small House race is inherently going to- One
16:11
SPEAKER_02: out of four in 35.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: We get- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: But like we're expecting there to just be more volume in the governor's races in
16:19
SPEAKER_00: a way that with the way that we were doing it for Senate and House It was just going
16:23
SPEAKER_00: to auto max it out and then there could potentially be like not smart money going
16:28
SPEAKER_00: into these markets.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Because,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: people are people are thinking a lot more about like, oh,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I can make easy cash on Xavier Becerra beating Steve Hilton versus,
16:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:39
SPEAKER_00: You know,
16:40
SPEAKER_00: the math on,
16:41
SPEAKER_00: let's say,
16:41
SPEAKER_00: Maine Senate is a little bit trickier and takes a little bit more people
16:44
SPEAKER_00: that are like in the weeds to kind of want to put their money in.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that is kind of fundamentally where it comes from,
16:51
SPEAKER_00: just like conceptually,
16:53
SPEAKER_00: just kind of,
16:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:54
SPEAKER_00: because governors are always kind of feel,
16:57
SPEAKER_00: even though the national majority of governors doesn't have much of an effect
17:01
SPEAKER_00: on anything.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: These races are like conceptually very different from each other.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: Now, one thing I do think is a commonality across these is you still have the use of
17:15
SPEAKER_02: the generic ballot in terms of just the electoral environment,
17:18
SPEAKER_02: a measure of, you know, where does the electoral environment stand?
17:21
SPEAKER_02: And right now, Democrats lead by a little more than six points in our generic ballot average.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: So That obviously is helping Democrats in some of these races,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: including the Georgia governor's race, which we can talk about.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: But I was curious how you see the role of generic ballot,
17:39
SPEAKER_02: if there's any difference or if it very much is the same in the sense
17:43
SPEAKER_02: of how it's applied,
17:45
SPEAKER_02: thinking about our congressional model and how it's applied here in
17:47
SPEAKER_02: the gubernatorial one.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can start,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: and Jake,
17:51
SPEAKER_00: you can follow me up if you have additional or, you know, caveats to apply.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: But I think, I mean,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: at the end of the day,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: like, I was kind of thinking about this, too, with Abbott and Talarico.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think that the environment that we're in,
18:06
SPEAKER_00: you could very well see,
18:07
SPEAKER_00: like, I'm not saying that this is going to, they're going to come out in swarms.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to, like,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: excite the, like,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: DCCC with like me saying this,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: but like,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I think that you could very well see people like coming out and being like,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to really excitedly vote for Talarico,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to under vote and not vote for Abbott.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like this political environment and the way that gets measured
18:28
SPEAKER_00: by generic ballot could really indicate that we could see a lot of votes
18:33
SPEAKER_00: for Democrats and under votes for Republicans.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So while it's not going to necessarily be like a blue wave in the same way
18:40
SPEAKER_00: that like Congressional seats are kind of inherently correlated
18:44
SPEAKER_00: and Senate seats are kind of inherently correlated and those tend to be correlated
18:47
SPEAKER_00: with each other.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: I think that the correlation between like Senate and governor or governors
18:53
SPEAKER_00: between each other is like far lower.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: But I do think that generic ballot kind of accounts for the fact that,
18:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: this is this is a year and a period where we could be seeing people more turnout
19:05
SPEAKER_00: or more excited turnout that leans one way or the other.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: That's similar to a wave,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: but kind of functions a little bit differently, I guess, if that makes sense.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: It's like a filtered wave of a sort.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: Jake, I didn't know if you had anything else.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything Maddie said.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is always good to hear, right?
19:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes, always good.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: For me,
19:33
SPEAKER_01: another thing that's a little bit different with the governor forecast compared to
19:37
SPEAKER_01: the Senate and the House is within our fundamentals.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: So something that we decided to emphasize more was our wins above replacement score
19:49
SPEAKER_01: as well as our open seat predictor.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: So just to,
19:56
SPEAKER_02: not to interrupt,
19:57
SPEAKER_02: but wins above replacement essentially is a candidate quality measure that we have,
20:01
SPEAKER_02: right?
20:02
SPEAKER_02: For incumbents, I think, generally.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, generally for incumbents.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of candidates that aren't incumbents that we have a score for.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: But you can really see this, like a war score, we say.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: This is adopting a thing out of baseball,
20:20
SPEAKER_02: then split ticket adopted,
20:21
SPEAKER_02: and it's become kind of a,
20:23
SPEAKER_02: A point of conversation,
20:24
SPEAKER_02: trying to understand how,
20:25
SPEAKER_02: what makes a candidate stronger or weaker than you would otherwise expect than
20:29
SPEAKER_02: the generic, essentially a Republican.
20:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: So you can really see this take effect in Oregon, right?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Oregon is a safe blue state on the presidential level on the Senate level.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, what is it like five out of the six of their house races are going to go blue.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, It is like the Democratic state of Democratic states almost.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: And yet we only have their governor's race at around like 83%, right?
21:02
SPEAKER_01: It's in that likely D. It's almost even in lean D.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And that's because the incumbent governor,
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Tina Kotek,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: has such a negative WAR score for this because
21:13
SPEAKER_01: the candidate quality is pretty subpar to an average Democrat.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And Christine Drazan, who ran against each other four years ago, almost won that race.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: And even though 2022 was a much redder year than we expect 2026 to be,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: I think that is a much stronger indicator that we have in the governor's forecast
21:40
SPEAKER_01: and where it's weighted a little bit more.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: We also took out the prior governor's margin in some of the races because we thought
21:51
SPEAKER_01: that with a war score,
21:52
SPEAKER_01: it's kind of doing the same thing almost with these races that have incumbents.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: So that was also another part of the fundamentals that we changed a little bit from
22:05
SPEAKER_01: the Senate and the House.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
22:08
SPEAKER_02: the Oregon rematch is going to be a really interesting test of sort of, I mean,
22:12
SPEAKER_02: you know, at the end of the day, Tina Kotek is certainly favored to win re-election.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: She did not win by much in 2022.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: She has a very poor approval rate,
22:23
SPEAKER_02: or not a very good approval rating,
22:25
SPEAKER_02: has been considered sort of weaker in the grand scheme of things,
22:29
SPEAKER_02: electorally speaking.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: But it will be tough, I think, for Christine Drazan to actually win in this environment.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: But the fact that we're even talking about it does say something
22:39
SPEAKER_02: about Kotek’s potential weaknesses as you've laid out.
22:43
SPEAKER_02: So thank you for bringing it up.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: That's a really good call out.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: And Oregon is certainly one of those races I keep an eye on after a few of the others.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: But speaking of some of the key races in this,
22:57
SPEAKER_02: maybe we could talk a little bit about the seats that are currently
23:01
SPEAKER_02: at least somewhat more likely the flip than not.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: Now, to be clear,
23:05
SPEAKER_02: some of these are in the toss-up category in terms of no candidate has at least
23:12
SPEAKER_02: a 60% chance of winning.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: So we consider them toss-ups.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: They're very competitive.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: I think it's always good to remind people that when you're talking
23:20
SPEAKER_02: about probability,
23:22
SPEAKER_02: if one candidate has like a 55% probability of winning,
23:25
SPEAKER_02: yeah, they're marginally more likely, but you're still pretty close to a coin flip.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And so you shouldn't think about it as like, A huge advantage or something.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's the reason we have these other categories that we think are maybe easier
23:36
SPEAKER_02: for people to sort of swallow to begin with, like toss up and lean and likely.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: But let's start with,
23:43
SPEAKER_02: let's go back to Georgia, because I think Georgia is maybe the biggest race.
23:50
SPEAKER_02: And there are a lot of questions I think about, about,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: is Keisha Lance Bottoms actually able to win the governorship in Georgia,
23:59
SPEAKER_02: Georgia obviously has become kind of a critical swing state.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: She's facing Rick Jackson,
24:03
SPEAKER_02: who won a highly contested Republican primary and primary runoff and has a lot
24:09
SPEAKER_02: of money.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: But right now,
24:15
SPEAKER_02: this is kind of narrowly in our lean D category because Bottoms has a 63% chance
24:18
SPEAKER_02: of winning.
24:23
SPEAKER_02: This seat would have all kinds of ramifications,
24:25
SPEAKER_02: I think, for things like I mentioned redistricting.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: It's like if you get into a situation where Republicans,
24:34
SPEAKER_02: for some reason,
24:34
SPEAKER_02: are not able to redistrict the state,
24:36
SPEAKER_02: which under Brian Kemp,
24:37
SPEAKER_02: the current governor,
24:39
SPEAKER_02: I think it sounds like they're probably going to try to have a special session after
24:41
SPEAKER_02: the election, like in the lame duck period.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, things happen.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're not able to put it all together.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
24:49
SPEAKER_02: Keisha Lance Bottoms could face Republican-controlled legislature,
24:53
SPEAKER_02: because I don't think Democrats are going to be in a position to take back
24:55
SPEAKER_02: the legislature in Georgia, but that creates a veto point, right?
24:59
SPEAKER_02: So if there are things that Republicans want to do in Georgia,
25:02
SPEAKER_02: they suddenly have a Democratic governor to deal with for the first time in,
25:06
SPEAKER_02: what, 24 years was, I think, Sonny Perdue won in 2002 against Roy Barnes.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: So it's been a while.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: So I guess I was curious,
25:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: you talked about it a little bit,
25:17
SPEAKER_02: but it's,
25:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:19
SPEAKER_02: I guess in terms of thinking about some of the components going into this,
25:22
SPEAKER_02: This particular race, like for instance, does money come into this at all?
25:26
SPEAKER_02: Like I know we finance for FEC on the congressional side,
25:30
SPEAKER_02: but maybe that may be a little trickier in the governor's case.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: So for all of the governor's races,
25:37
SPEAKER_01: we actually decided not to use money as a factor to go into it just because one of
25:42
SPEAKER_01: the main reasons why is that the FEC doesn't collect money
25:46
SPEAKER_01: on gubernatorial candidates.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: There's no national, there's no easy national database.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: To collect from.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: So it would be almost like I don't want to say impossible,
25:57
SPEAKER_01: but it would be incredibly difficult on a daily level to scrape 36 state sites
26:04
SPEAKER_01: to find- Some state sites are a lot better than others.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was like one state site,
26:10
SPEAKER_01: I think it's South Dakota's state site that does it very, very well, right?
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And there's other state sites that it's almost impossible to find even the page or
26:19
SPEAKER_01: the data from it is multiple quarters old, right?
26:24
SPEAKER_01: They don't or they don't even have like the most updated data.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: So in that aspect, we decided to leave it out of the governor's race.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: So I guess that's another area and where it differs a little bit from the Senate in the House.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: For Georgia in particular,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: I actually think it's the most consequential governor's race for 2028.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: There's been a lot of talk in the news about Jon Ossoff running for president,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: right, which he's denied.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think that if that's something that he really wants to consider going
26:55
SPEAKER_01: into 2028 and Democrats like primary voters want
26:59
SPEAKER_01: to consider Keisha Lance Bottoms needs to win the governor's race this cycle,
27:04
SPEAKER_01: because if she doesn't and you get Rick Jackson as governor,
27:06
SPEAKER_01: he's going to appoint a Republican if Jon Ossoff decides to run and win or so on
27:12
SPEAKER_01: and so forth.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's immediately I feel like to a lot of Democratic voters disqualifying.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: If that means that you running puts in jeopardy one of these Senate seats, right?
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So in that aspect, I think it's very, very important.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: On the more fundamental side as to why it's in the lean D category
27:31
SPEAKER_01: and maybe not toss up,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: I would say that A,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: it's a very good national environment for Democrats, it looks like, right?
27:39
SPEAKER_01: B, Brian Kemp is term limited and can't run.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Once again, Brian Kemp is a very, very popular governor within Georgia.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: C, while Keisha Lance Bottoms is not the most popular candidate in Georgia,
27:53
SPEAKER_01: according to a lot of,
27:56
SPEAKER_01: I would say more vibes than any sort of polls or Like data backing that.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Jon Ossoff being on the same ticket does carry her to some extent in that area
28:09
SPEAKER_01: of what we were talking about before.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Where the Senate and governor's races,
28:13
SPEAKER_01: while not directly correlated, do have an effect on one another.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: And while Texas,
28:18
SPEAKER_01: you might not see Talarico carry Gina Hinojosa across the line ahead of Abbott,
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Georgia is not Texas, right?
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Georgia is a swing state.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Georgia voted for Joe Biden in 2020, very narrowly voted for Trump in 2024.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Is expected to vote for Jon Ossoff by a likely margin, according to our forecast.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think for that, it really just carries bottoms across the line here.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
28:47
SPEAKER_02: I think to your point about money being potentially consequential in a question mark
28:52
SPEAKER_02: in a race like Georgia, we know Rick Jackson is personally very, very wealthy.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: And he's already spent like $100 million in the primary.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: You are.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: And probably will spend another $100 million on the general election.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: And that's going to be more than what Lance Bottoms can bring to the table.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, you are having all this interact with the electoral environment.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: And to your point, it does look more favorable for Democrats in Georgia.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: Um, Jon Ossoff is in a position where he is,
29:27
SPEAKER_02: you know, clearly favored to, to win.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: In fact, that race is not even in our 10, like most competitive races category anymore.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, on our forecast page, uh, which I, I kept being like, oh yeah, Georgia dropped off.
29:40
SPEAKER_02: Like I always do like a double take where's Georgia.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: And then, oh yeah, it dropped off.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: Cause he's, he's now at like 83, 84%, uh, uh, chance of victory in our, in terms of probability.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know,
29:53
SPEAKER_02: But I do wonder what Georgia,
29:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:55
SPEAKER_02: and this is something that it,
29:56
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:56
SPEAKER_02: this is where,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: the end of the day, Rick Jackson still has a 37% chance of winning.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: And that is definitely not nothing.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know,
30:04
SPEAKER_02: it's one of those things of,
30:05
SPEAKER_02: are you going to have some voters who are willing to vote for Ossoff who
30:09
SPEAKER_02: then are like, well,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: Lance Bottoms had a,
30:12
SPEAKER_02: had kind of left office as mayor of Atlanta with a lot of question marks
30:17
SPEAKER_02: and she wasn't terribly popular.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: Does that have some suburban Atlanta voters who remember that?
30:22
SPEAKER_02: In fact,
30:22
SPEAKER_02: funny enough,
30:23
SPEAKER_02: in the primary,
30:24
SPEAKER_02: her two worst counties were the ones that have the city of Atlanta in it,
30:28
SPEAKER_02: which is a funny thing.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: So you wonder if in the general election,
30:30
SPEAKER_02: there are a few voters who are maybe sort of the Kemp-Warnock voters from 2022
30:38
SPEAKER_02: who still aren't willing to vote for bottoms in the gubernatorial race but vote
30:42
SPEAKER_02: for Ossoff in the Senate race.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's, it's possible.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: I, at the same time,
30:47
SPEAKER_02: Georgia is like a super,
30:48
SPEAKER_02: you know, there's a lot of racial polarization in the state, like the deep South.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: So there,
30:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:53
SPEAKER_02: there are a lot of things that could go into it,
30:55
SPEAKER_02: but I do think this,
30:58
SPEAKER_02: to your point,
30:59
SPEAKER_02: this might be the most important governor's
31:00
SPEAKER_01: race actually on the map in 2026.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, Georgia, obviously big race.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: Um,
31:08
SPEAKER_02: Right now kind of looks like very narrowly the Democrats best shot at a pickup based
31:14
SPEAKER_02: on purely on the probability.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
31:17
SPEAKER_02: the Republicans best chance to pick up is actually a state that is that does tend
31:21
SPEAKER_02: to be red leaning, but is one where Democrats have held the governorship since 2018.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: And that's Kansas, where Democrat Laura Kelly is term limited after two terms.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: And so Republican Ty Masterson is somewhat favored over Democrat Cindy Holscher.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
31:38
SPEAKER_02: In some ways,
31:38
SPEAKER_02: this might be a case of Kansas sort of coming back to its Republican roots a bit.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: But the fact that our probability puts it in the lean R category
31:50
SPEAKER_02: and it's not even more likely,
31:52
SPEAKER_02: I was curious what you think might be going into that.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can definitely answer that.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: So Kansas is one of those races in where there is little to no data, right?
32:04
SPEAKER_01: There's one poll that came out very recently.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: It was a Democratic internal poll.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: So there's really no polls being inputted into this.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: You can see fundamentals is at 100%.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: The markets for Kansas are are not at the levels as to where we would implement them
32:18
SPEAKER_01: into our forecast.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: So markets are at zero percent.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: So this entire state is in terms of things that change is more tied
32:29
SPEAKER_01: to generic ballot until we get those.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: Like polls and markets and data that we would actually use into this model as
32:38
SPEAKER_01: to why it's lean instead of likely or safe.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, as we know, Kansas voted for Trump by like 16 points in 2024.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Why is Kansas lean?
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Kansas did have, as you said, a Democratic governor from 2018 until now.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: And then even before that,
32:58
SPEAKER_01: they had a very,
32:59
SPEAKER_01: very popular Democratic governor in the early 2010s or in the late 2000s.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Kathleen Sebelius.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: She worked in the Obama administration.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: She was very, very popular.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Kansas is one of those states similar to Kentucky in
33:18
SPEAKER_01: where we see very different governor's race results compared to statewide,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: like national results.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: This kind of goes back to how governor races are not Senate races, right?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: There's a very personal connection a lot of people have toward their governor.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: And when people associate the mistakes of one governor beforehand of any party,
33:45
SPEAKER_01: that kind of sticks with them.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And Laura Kelly was very, very popular.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: And her popularity in Kansas is what's bringing Ty Masterson down so much to 73%.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Even though her candidate,
34:00
SPEAKER_01: she endorsed the other Democratic candidate who lost in the primary,
34:03
SPEAKER_01: even though her candidate,
34:04
SPEAKER_01: her preferred candidate didn't win,
34:07
SPEAKER_01: her just having won so recently in the past in a Republican favorable environment
34:14
SPEAKER_01: in 2022 is what really brings us down back into lean.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: And obviously,
34:23
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:23
SPEAKER_02: I think if you think about sort of this is one of those things where
34:28
SPEAKER_02: the forecast is getting it.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: But it's interesting how I mean,
34:33
SPEAKER_02: but how it gets to it is maybe different from just thinking about sort
34:35
SPEAKER_02: of qualitatively when we're thinking about Kansas.
34:37
SPEAKER_02: They talk about sometimes about Kansas being a three party state where you have
34:41
SPEAKER_02: the Democrats and the minority and then you have this split between sort of
34:45
SPEAKER_02: a more moderate and more.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: Anti-establishment, hard right Republican Party.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: Masterson as the state senate president,
34:54
SPEAKER_02: I think is, I mean, he had Trump's endorsement in the primary.
34:57
SPEAKER_02: He might be in a position to sort of balance out those,
35:02
SPEAKER_02: the difficulties of coalescing all those Republicans behind him.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: But at the same time,
35:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:08
SPEAKER_02: in this environment,
35:09
SPEAKER_02: it might be easier for Cindy Holscher to make the case that Masterson is very tied
35:14
SPEAKER_02: in with President Trump, who is not popular even in a state like Kansas.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: He may be treading near 50-50 or even a little below it.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: And so you can see perhaps an environment where you can get some
35:29
SPEAKER_02: The moderate R wing of the Republican Party that did vote for Kelly.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: That's part of how she got elected in the first place in 2018,
35:40
SPEAKER_02: coming around to Holscher in that race.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, every one of these states has got an interesting story to tell.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: So looking at the other flip I wanted to mention,
35:55
SPEAKER_02: the other, well,
35:56
SPEAKER_02: currently in our forecasted flip is Iowa,
36:00
SPEAKER_02: which I think has gotten a ton of attention,
36:01
SPEAKER_02: understandably,
36:02
SPEAKER_02: because I think Rob Sand is viewed as like this very strong Democratic candidate.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: It's still very narrowly in our toss-up category,
36:10
SPEAKER_02: but it's kind of on the border of lean D and toss-up with him,
36:14
SPEAKER_02: with Sand at a 59% Win probability in Zach Lahn,
36:18
SPEAKER_02: not “Laan”, “Lane” with 41% chance of winning.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: And with this one, I know we have some more polling here and Sand has been ahead.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's coming into it a little bit.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: But it is interesting to me that even though Rob Sand's gotten a lot of attention,
36:32
SPEAKER_02: there's also,
36:33
SPEAKER_02: again, we're not sort of at the full weight for markets on this one either.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: in terms of markets,
36:40
SPEAKER_01: there's very few races that I can think of for the governor's races that are at
36:45
SPEAKER_01: that 25%.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: I really think it's only California and maybe Ohio as the two races that are at that 25% mark.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: For Iowa,
36:56
SPEAKER_01: as to why it's so competitive,
36:57
SPEAKER_01: aside from the fact that,
36:59
SPEAKER_01: as we said before,
37:00
SPEAKER_01: a good Democratic environment,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: polls, Rob Sand has led in every single poll conducted.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Which is definitely helping him for sure.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Sand is also one of the two candidates that we have,
37:14
SPEAKER_01: the only candidate for the governor's race,
37:17
SPEAKER_01: who we implemented a war score for despite him not being an incumbent, right?
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Kind of our reasoning behind that is that he has held a statewide office before
37:28
SPEAKER_01: and drastically outperformed Kamala Harris's 2024 margin in Iowa.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: So he was one of the candidates that we thought it would be more accurate of a model
37:38
SPEAKER_01: to have him have one of those war scores.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: So that really helped boost him into being one of the more favored candidates of
37:47
SPEAKER_01: the two between him and Zach Lahn.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: And obviously this is another one of those states we talked about Georgia.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: This is another state that has a Senate race at the same time,
37:56
SPEAKER_02: but unlike in the Georgia case,
37:59
SPEAKER_02: you do have the Republican sort of,
38:01
SPEAKER_02: sort of the reverse probability situation where Ashley Hinson,
38:04
SPEAKER_02: the Republican nominee for Senate being at about 58, 59%.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: So borderline toss up lean R in the Senate race and Josh Turek,
38:13
SPEAKER_02: the Democrat being in sort of Zach Lahn's position.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: And so it kind of brings to mind for me also a little bit Texas,
38:20
SPEAKER_02: thinking about like some small differences in the polls,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: but enough that, I mean,
38:24
SPEAKER_02: the Texas one looks more symmetrical right now with Talarico up three
38:29
SPEAKER_02: and Abbott up three.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: But do you have a situation here where Sand maybe wins by four,
38:34
SPEAKER_02: but Henson wins by two kind of situation?
38:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I could totally see that.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: We have Hinson as the favored candidate for the Senate.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: I believe we have Iowa as the lean R right now.
38:48
SPEAKER_02: I know it's right on the borderline.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's almost the exact same as the governor race,
38:54
SPEAKER_01: where it's right on the borderline of this lean D to toss up category.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: For that, I would say...
39:03
SPEAKER_01: Again,
39:03
SPEAKER_01: Iowa is a lot closer to Texas nationally in terms of the statewide party dynamics
39:11
SPEAKER_01: than it is to Georgia, right?
39:14
SPEAKER_01: And where Iowa,
39:15
SPEAKER_01: while historically has been a swing state,
39:17
SPEAKER_01: in the past three cycles, it really has not been.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Iowa is obviously a much more competitive state than Texas is still,
39:26
SPEAKER_01: with Barack Obama winning it twice and going to Trump,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: I think, by like eight in 2016 and 2020, right?
39:34
SPEAKER_01: But in 2024,
39:35
SPEAKER_01: we saw Iowa go to Trump by almost a very similar margin to how Texas did,
39:42
SPEAKER_01: which I find to be very, very interesting.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's in states like those that voted for Trump by 12, 13, 14,
39:50
SPEAKER_01: 15 percent that we're going to be seeing a lot more like split tickets, I would say.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: So looking at the map sort of from here,
40:03
SPEAKER_02: we've got There are a number of,
40:07
SPEAKER_02: I want to get to Alaska and talk about that for a little bit.
40:09
SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to quickly run over these.
40:10
SPEAKER_02: So we've got Katie Hobbs in Arizona, incumbent, lean Democratic.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: Wisconsin, open seat, but David Crowley, slightly favored over Tom Tiffany, lean Democratic.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: Michigan, another open seat.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: Jocelyn Benson, the Democrat, slightly favored over John James, the Republican.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: And then sort of the other lean ones,
40:31
SPEAKER_02: we got Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, his favorite over Cinde Warmington.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: They just had their primary on Tuesday.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: We're recording this, I should mention, on Wednesday, September 9th.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: And Ayotte and Warmington will meet there.
40:45
SPEAKER_02: And then before we get to Alaska, though, I should mention Nevada.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: Because Nevada and Ohio, I guess we should go over the two toss-ups.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm skipping ahead here.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: I got excited thinking about Alaska.
40:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: But in terms of Nevada, Nevada's got an incumbent, Joe Lombardo.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: I assume that he probably has a decent war score and perhaps that's helping him as well.
41:08
SPEAKER_02: Also, I think he has led generally in a lot of the polls against Aaron Ford,
41:13
SPEAKER_02: his Democratic opponent, the state attorney general there.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, it,
41:19
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Nevada is going to be close and it's a situation where,
41:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:22
SPEAKER_02: there's a Lombardo win and then Democrats won a lot of the other statewide offices.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: It's a, you know,
41:29
SPEAKER_02: it's a situation where I think you could see enough,
41:31
SPEAKER_02: you could actually see a little bit of split ticket voting and that impact.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: And there's no Senate race in Nevada,
41:37
SPEAKER_02: which they've had a bunch of really close Senate races in the last couple cycles,
41:41
SPEAKER_02: but, but nothing this time.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for Nevada, Lombardo actually doesn't have a war score.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: So while being a broadly popular governor now,
41:55
SPEAKER_01: he actually didn't really overperform Trump's margin at all in 2024.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: They won by very similar margins, like around three to four percentage points.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: So the reason why Lombardo is the favorite in
42:10
SPEAKER_01: a Nevada traditional toss-up swing state, right,
42:14
SPEAKER_01: where you're seeing a lot of in these other states that the states
42:16
SPEAKER_01: that are typically considered as toss-ups are trending more Democratic, right?
42:21
SPEAKER_01: I would say the polls Lombardo is leading in I think every single poll
42:26
SPEAKER_01: that has been conducted,
42:27
SPEAKER_01: polls traditionally tend to favor,
42:29
SPEAKER_01: at least in my opinion, Democratic candidates, at least very narrowly.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: I think that's in itself that Lombardo is winning in all of these polls
42:36
SPEAKER_01: and not trailing by one or tied.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: That really shows that he is the favorite in this race.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Another part of it is also,
42:46
SPEAKER_01: there's this statistic that I always look at when I think of governor races,
42:50
SPEAKER_01: and that's in the last,
42:51
SPEAKER_01: I think it was six years,
42:53
SPEAKER_01: there's only been one incumbent governor to lose
42:57
SPEAKER_01: and that was the guy Joe Lombardo upset and unseated.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Steve Sisolak!
43:02
SPEAKER_01: In 2022.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: So in all these governor races, I think even since 2018,
43:09
SPEAKER_01: the only incumbent governor to lose is the guy Joe Lombardo defeated.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think that says a lot to the candidate quality that Joe Lombardo has.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: And he's one of those candidates who isn't who is,
43:21
SPEAKER_01: as you said,
43:21
SPEAKER_01: with Kansas before,
43:23
SPEAKER_01: is able to really like toe the line on being more palatable towards the right wing,
43:32
SPEAKER_01: more MAGA,
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Trump-loving part of the Republican base,
43:37
SPEAKER_01: and the more traditional,
43:38
SPEAKER_01: former establishment, moderate Republicans who are still there in Nevada.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: And so then the other one,
43:47
SPEAKER_02: and I think,
43:48
SPEAKER_02: Madison, you may have wanted to talk about this one a little bit, but Ohio...
43:55
SPEAKER_02: Is the other toss up on our map and along with Iowa and Nevada.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
44:03
SPEAKER_02: it's right now basically a coin flip between Vivek Ramaswamy,
44:08
SPEAKER_02: the Republican nominee, and Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: People will remember Ramaswamy from his 2024 presidential bid.
44:17
SPEAKER_02: We have a lot of polls in this race,
44:19
SPEAKER_02: and maybe that makes it a little,
44:20
SPEAKER_02: and you can see that in terms of the forecast components,
44:23
SPEAKER_02: that polling is really a big part of what's happening in this race.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: But in those polls right now,
44:29
SPEAKER_02: they're more or less tied at 47%,
44:32
SPEAKER_02: just about acting as a very small lead,
44:35
SPEAKER_02: but you know, A nominal lead of four tenths of a percentage point.
44:41
SPEAKER_02: But 43% of the forecast is coming from the polls,
44:45
SPEAKER_02: but there is a lot of market activity here too.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: And this one might be one of the most, I guess, to Jake's point.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: And I will say I'm no Ohio expert.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: This one is just interesting, especially because it's
45:01
SPEAKER_00: As of right now, it actually does diverge from our Ohio Senate forecast.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Currently, our Senate forecast favors Brown, I think, ever so slightly.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: And that is hotly debated internally about whether or not that's actually going to happen.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: I think Ohio is,
45:20
SPEAKER_00: it's just,
45:21
SPEAKER_00: it's interesting,
45:22
SPEAKER_00: especially because like Vivek Ramaswamy,
45:24
SPEAKER_00: like you said, like he has, he has a lot of like national, like name ID, right.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: Which like not many, not many of these governor candidates have.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And so that's definitely, you know, carrying him.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: And so that and Ohio,
45:35
SPEAKER_00: which has in the past,
45:36
SPEAKER_00: you know, a couple of cycles positioned itself as a more and more red state.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: The fact that,
45:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:42
SPEAKER_00: Amy Acton can,
45:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:44
SPEAKER_00: stand a fighting chance and kind of give him a run
45:46
SPEAKER_00: for his money is particularly interesting.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Jake, I don't know if you had any thoughts on the Ohio race.
45:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean,
45:57
SPEAKER_01: it definitely is.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: It's one of those races that is truly going to be 50-50 going into November.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: We said before that Georgia, we think, is going to be the most consequential race.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: I think Ohio is going to be the closest of these races.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: With Ohio,
46:13
SPEAKER_01: as Maddie had said before,
46:15
SPEAKER_01: I agree in that I do think it is impressive that Amy Acton is able to hold or stand
46:20
SPEAKER_01: a fighting chance in a state that has been getting ever more Republican, right?
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Where four years ago, Mike DeWine won like 66 to 33%, right?
46:31
SPEAKER_01: Where he had like an almost, I think it was a 30 point lead at the end of the day.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: And to go four years later and where it'd be essentially tied Really shows that that
46:43
SPEAKER_01: the Democrats are gaining ground in these states that I feel like people had began
46:48
SPEAKER_01: to question if they were ever going to go blue again in the in the near future.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: As you said before,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: with markets,
46:56
SPEAKER_01: this is definitely like aside from California,
46:58
SPEAKER_01: the The only race that is really nearing that 25%.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's because the public agrees in that this is going to be
47:06
SPEAKER_01: a very close race and that it is tied 50-50.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: I think the markets favor Amy Acton a little bit.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: But it's going up and down, right?
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Like it was it was just favoring Ramaswamy before and now it's favoring Acton.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: And I expect it to swap again if a new poll comes out or something similar.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: So this is definitely going to be the race.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: This might even be the closest race of governor and Senate, in my opinion.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well,
47:34
SPEAKER_02: as you mentioned,
47:34
SPEAKER_02: Sherrod Brown,
47:36
SPEAKER_02: the Democratic nominee in Ohio,
47:39
SPEAKER_02: is up by about
47:40
SPEAKER_00: six points,
47:40
SPEAKER_00: I believe,
47:40
SPEAKER_00: right now
47:41
SPEAKER_02: in our polling average against appointed Republican Senator Jon Husted.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: And obviously this race more or less tied in the polls.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: And then you have the questions when you think about fundamentals.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Ohio's had a red lean.
47:54
SPEAKER_02: Is that going to come to bear?
47:57
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
47:58
SPEAKER_02: Will that end up making the state not quite as Democratic leaning as
48:02
SPEAKER_02: the polls might suggest right now, at least in the Senate race?
48:05
SPEAKER_02: We'll have to see.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, both are in the toss up zone for a reason.
48:10
SPEAKER_02: So those are the toss ups.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: And then I wanted to,
48:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
48:14
SPEAKER_02: because I don't want to keep you guys forever,
48:15
SPEAKER_02: but I thought we should talk a little bit about.
48:18
SPEAKER_02: The Alaska situation as sort of just showing,
48:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
48:25
SPEAKER_02: some of these races are not easy to sort of deal with because Alaska has
48:31
SPEAKER_02: a unique system, or at least right now a unique system.
48:34
SPEAKER_02: I know other states have talked about implementing something like it,
48:37
SPEAKER_02: but they have their top four.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time,
48:40
SPEAKER_02: you also have the parties organizing to sort of try to take full advance,
48:45
SPEAKER_02: you know, Maximize our chances of winning.
48:47
SPEAKER_02: And right now it seems like the thought is, okay,
48:50
SPEAKER_02: if we can get our list of candidates down to one instead
48:53
SPEAKER_02: of having multiple candidates from the same party,
48:55
SPEAKER_02: that actually helps us in the ranked choice voting part of this
48:59
SPEAKER_02: because we'll have fewer people dropping off by not ranking a second choice.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: You'd like to think that if the system remains in place for a while,
49:07
SPEAKER_02: that You'd see smaller and smaller shares of voters dropping off when it comes
49:13
SPEAKER_02: to ranking multiple candidates, and this would become less of a problem.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: But at the very least right now, it is certainly a strategic consideration.
49:22
SPEAKER_02: And so we've actually had Tom Begich.
49:24
SPEAKER_02: You had two Democrats finish first and second in the top four primary,
49:27
SPEAKER_02: Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich, both former legislators.
49:32
SPEAKER_02: Begich dropped out, though.
49:33
SPEAKER_02: And then on the Republican side,
49:34
SPEAKER_02: you've got Dave Bronson,
49:36
SPEAKER_02: the former Anchorage mayor,
49:38
SPEAKER_02: Bernadette Wilson,
49:39
SPEAKER_02: a businesswoman who actually finished first among the Republicans in the top four.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: And then because baggage dropped out, they replaced him with another candidate.
49:52
SPEAKER_02: And so next down the list was Treg Taylor,
49:55
SPEAKER_02: the former attorney general of the state, another Republican.
49:59
SPEAKER_02: But there was actually a little bit of a mess, I think, with his, like, financial forms.
50:03
SPEAKER_02: And for a minute,
50:03
SPEAKER_02: Nancy Dahlstrom,
50:04
SPEAKER_02: Lieutenant Governor, like disqualified him and it was going to be like a mess.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: But now he's back on the ballot.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: But I guess, you know, the main thing here is we've got a four way race.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know,
50:16
SPEAKER_02: I talk a little bit about,
50:18
SPEAKER_02: you know, Republicans are slightly favored right now in our forecast model here.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: But sort of what is going into that?
50:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I can tell you first what's not going into that.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: So what's not going into this model is what you said before,
50:33
SPEAKER_01: and that is the drop off effect that having three Republicans has on this race.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: So that definitely favors Republicans more.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Then the Democrat in this race.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Another thing that favors them is there's no polling going into this.
50:50
SPEAKER_01: There's been zero polls conducted with these four specific candidates.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: There was a couple of polls.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: There was about four before the primary happens that included Begich that had him as
51:00
SPEAKER_01: the front runner that predicted inaccurately that he was going to be
51:06
SPEAKER_01: the leading Democratic nominee in this race.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: And now he's dropped out, as you said.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: And then market-wise, I think it's only at 12%.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: So all the stuff that is usually included that helps make this more live
51:22
SPEAKER_01: and move is really taken out.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: This is more of a state like Kansas and where we need to get more data.
51:30
SPEAKER_01: We need to see what's going on with Taylor to see if he is even really going
51:34
SPEAKER_01: to still be on the ballot, right?
51:38
SPEAKER_01: And I think something that we've internally been trying to find a way for is to how
51:45
SPEAKER_01: to include that drop off feature.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's possible from a statistical perspective to include something like that.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you would measure that,
51:54
SPEAKER_01: but that's definitely going to affect who wins this race in November.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and like to that point too,
52:04
SPEAKER_00: and kind of like to the similar effect,
52:06
SPEAKER_00: I think we talked about something similar last time,
52:09
SPEAKER_00: Geoff as well,
52:10
SPEAKER_00: but the forecast is like, like, quote unquote, like candidate blind, right?
52:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, obviously, we have war scores, we have incumbency, we have all that good stuff.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: But like,
52:18
SPEAKER_00: as you can see here, like,
52:20
SPEAKER_00: there's no meaningful mathematical way
52:23
SPEAKER_00: to distinguish how well Wilson will perform versus Taylor because they're going
52:28
SPEAKER_00: to use the same party baselines.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: And even though they're fundamentally different people and have,
52:33
SPEAKER_00: I would hope,
52:34
SPEAKER_00: distinct platforms,
52:35
SPEAKER_00: there's no really good, easy way to tie that up nicely and feed it off into a model.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Same issue with the FEC data,
52:45
SPEAKER_00: fundraising data for governors, where it's scrappy and hard to play with.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: We'd rather have
52:58
SPEAKER_00: less good data than add in some potentially iffy data.
53:02
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that'll be interesting too.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at the markets right now and the markets pretty,
53:09
SPEAKER_00: not clearly, but 60% are favoring Kreiss-Tomkins.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's because the markets have a better understanding
53:17
SPEAKER_00: of this drop-off effect and the fact that showing,
53:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:22
SPEAKER_00: having three Republicans on the same ticket is more than likely going
53:27
SPEAKER_00: to harm them in the long run.
53:29
SPEAKER_00: But there's just really no great way to quantify that for at
53:34
SPEAKER_00: the very least our purposes and at the very least not before November 3rd.
53:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
53:40
SPEAKER_02: I guess the hope would be that the prediction markets would would add in some of
53:44
SPEAKER_02: that that that.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: Local flavor, if you will.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: And sort of understanding that impact.
53:52
SPEAKER_02: But obviously the Alaska governor's race,
53:55
SPEAKER_02: if we're struggling to have enough liquidity in a lot of these prediction markets,
54:00
SPEAKER_02: the Alaska governor's race is probably not gonna be one of the high ranking ones
54:03
SPEAKER_02: in terms of prediction market activity.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: And so it's no wonder that the markets are at 12%.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: In fact, it strikes me that they're even that high.
54:19
SPEAKER_02: It puts a limit on the effect that the prediction markets can bring to the table
54:26
SPEAKER_02: for understanding that element that's harder to model.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for Alaska as well,
54:34
SPEAKER_01: we're seeing like a very competitive Senate race,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: a less competitive but still relatively in the realm of possibility House race
54:41
SPEAKER_01: and all of these races for Alaska are statewide, including the House race.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: So I fully expect there to be more polls as well.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: And I expect those polls.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
54:53
SPEAKER_01: I expect them to have the Democrat like slightly favored considering what we've seen
54:58
SPEAKER_01: so far.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: But if they don't,
55:00
SPEAKER_01: then I don't want to say even better,
55:03
SPEAKER_01: but that just proves that the Republicans do have the lead in this race.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: So I expect that the model will not become more accurate,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: but become more fleshed out,
55:13
SPEAKER_01: I should say, in Alaska once we get more of these polls coming in.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think too, if,
55:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:19
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
55:20
SPEAKER_00: or like we were talking about earlier,
55:21
SPEAKER_00: like if,
55:22
SPEAKER_00: if some Republicans drop off, like,
55:23
SPEAKER_00: I think like Jake and I's dream right now is like for two of these Republicans
55:27
SPEAKER_00: to drop out from a mathematical perspective, that's like best case scenario.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: That would make,
55:32
SPEAKER_00: that would make both of our lives so much easier and so much nicer than,
55:37
SPEAKER_00: than Especially because Senate is funny too
55:41
SPEAKER_00: because right now it reads Sullivan slash Sullivan Jr.
55:44
SPEAKER_00: and it stares at me every morning.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: Yes, Alaska is complicating everyone's lives and
55:56
SPEAKER_02: it certainly is fascinating.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: The fact that it could decide to control the Senate might keep me up at night
56:03
SPEAKER_02: a little bit because
56:10
SPEAKER_02: yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: But hey, Madison, Jake, this has been a really great convo.
56:17
SPEAKER_02: People, again, can check out the forecast for the governors.
56:22
SPEAKER_02: It is on our VOTES portal, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
56:28
SPEAKER_02: Click forecast at the top.
56:30
SPEAKER_02: It's free to join.
56:31
SPEAKER_02: You can check that out.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: And you can also check out our new VOTES Pro features
56:36
SPEAKER_02: They're really great for election night, will be really great for the general election.
56:39
SPEAKER_02: There's a deal right now for that.
56:42
SPEAKER_02: If you want to check that out, you can find more on the website about that.
56:47
SPEAKER_02: But Madison, Jake, again, really appreciate you coming on and talking to me about this.
56:53
SPEAKER_02: It's important to,
56:53
SPEAKER_02: you know,
56:54
SPEAKER_02: the control of Congress is obviously such a big national conversation
56:58
SPEAKER_02: and may reflect why a lot of those prediction markets have more liquidity
57:01
SPEAKER_02: because people are just more focused on the Senate races in particular.
57:05
SPEAKER_02: But these gubernatorial races will have all sorts of ramifications for governing of states.
57:10
SPEAKER_02: We'll have ramifications for national questions like things on redistricting of that nature.
57:15
SPEAKER_02: So I'm really glad that we have this now as a part of the conversation
57:21
SPEAKER_02: to move forward with because it'll help with our understanding of what's happening
57:26
SPEAKER_02: in these contests.
57:28
SPEAKER_02: So again, thanks so much.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: I also want to thank Stephen Stover and Eric Cunningham for their help with this episode.
57:34
SPEAKER_02: And we'll be back next week with lots more about what's happening in the battle for Congress.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: And now that primary season is pretty much over,
57:44
SPEAKER_02: we're really going to be even more focused on the general election campaign.
57:49
SPEAKER_02: So again, Maddie and Jake, thank you so much for coming on.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you for having us.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: It was a great time.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks again.