Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Forecast Update: Democrats have more than 50% chance of flipping both Senate & House

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Forecast Update: Democrats have more than 50% chance of flipping both Senate & House · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right, we are live.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey Skelly and I are debating how to pronounce the last name of
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: the Vermont candidate for governor on the Democratic side,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: which we think is Amanda Janu.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's Jeffrey Skelly,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: the chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: and that is Madison Murrell,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: a data scientist at DDHQ who is primarily in charge of maintaining
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: the Making sure everything works on the DDHQ forecast, their model of the election.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I am always thrilled at the opportunity to talk to you guys
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: because we're now 27 days away, 27 days away.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: in Madison, why don't, okay, let's do for people, we've done this now three times.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: We did it about, Six weeks ago, we did it two weeks ago, and we're doing it today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Let's briefly talk to people who are joining now about what this tells us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: What is the model?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: What goes into it?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: How do we get out what we get out?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then let's talk about how we get out what we get out.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the forecast model is essentially our way of saying,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: OK, we know all this stuff about elections that have happened in the past.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know all this stuff about the elections that are happening currently.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: How can we combine those to make our best guess at who is going to win the House and
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: the Senate and individual seats and governorships?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what really goes into it is we have a lot of historical data in there,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: so like 2024 historical results.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've got incumbency going into there.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We also use,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: especially at this point in the season when there are quite a lot of polls,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: polls are a much more prevalent part of the forecast.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go on any individual race pages, you'll see that those numbers have kind of ticked up.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And prediction markets and all of those get kind of nicely blended together
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: a handful of notebooks.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they get created to make this,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: where we estimate currently that the odds for Democrats taking the House is at 76%.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: For the Senate, we have increasingly lean Democrat, I think, especially since we last talked.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we're now at 57 percent.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the odds for both jointly is at 54 percent.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we've definitely leaned Democrat since we've last talk, last spoken about this.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about, Jeffrey, explain both.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is it solely,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Madison was talking about what goes into this and it's,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: it's historical data,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: obviously it's polling, it's the prediction markets, calcium and poly market.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is it solely the difference between when we talked two weeks ago and we talked now?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is it just there's the model is now a more reliant on polling
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: because there is more polling and be the polling broadly is good for Democrats?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that to explain how you guys have gotten to where you are with
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: a 54 percent chance of a of a of
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: a sweep?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that broadly sums it up.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's essentially the generic ballot, which I can also bring up here, has continued to creep.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at this point,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are up by 8.4 percentage points, which is kind of close to their high.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that they're getting close to 50 and only about 90,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: not quite 90 percent of Democrats People in polls on average are giving a response
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: for the two parties is,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think indicative of a clearly a Democrat leaning environment,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: political environment, which is
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: if you sort of look at the individual races,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: you also see that, say,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: if you're looking at like a key race,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: like, I don't know, Texas Senate, I can't imagine we'll get a
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: question about that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, no one's talking about that one.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: No one's really talking about that one.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Real in the weeds pull there.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Tallarico is narrowly favored and it's,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know, ticked up a little bit in his direction.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, over the last couple of months.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: if you look at the polling average,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: he's still,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: he's been leading consistently in a way that Beto O'Rourke never did in 2018.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Against Ted Cruz, right.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's still, so,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Ken Paxton may well still win this race,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: but it's,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Tallarico is certainly polling better than any Democrat in a statewide election
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: in Texas in recent, in the last, like, few decades.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, Skelly, can you go back to the forecast?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, can you explain again?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is a little bit of like, we've done this before, but I want for people who are tuning in.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've got new people.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: People are tuning in.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think people are going to say,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: why does it say James Tallarico is narrowly favored if it's 58-42?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Explain the difference in the modeling in probability versus polling
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: and how you guys decide, toss up, narrowly favored, likely, et cetera.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that 58% basically just means that when we,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: kind of run this,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: especially with the chamber level, but,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: you look at the predicted margins and you blend in all the necessary numbers,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: saying that 58% of the time in,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know, X scenarios or whatever, James Tallarico wins.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that still means that there's a very large 42%.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not looking at 99 in one, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's still a very...
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Real number and very real chance that Ken Paxton pulled that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think, Jeff,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: you were talking a few weeks ago on a different call about how,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: like, in 2016 it was, like, Hillary was pulling at, like, 70% and still lost, like.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Probability.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Probability.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Probability.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and then the difference there is.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's probability.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then polls kind of take in like favorability and kind of like
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: of X people asked how many people prefer this person.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's more of like a share than a probability.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they're both in percent.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they both get to go in together.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But as we can see with the vote shares here, they're tight.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's really tight.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And these also don't take into account markets.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're seeing a vote share derived purely from historical data and polling.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you also can,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: there's some mental math that you can do there about what we think it's going to be.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But just, I mean,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I guess to sum up,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: like Ken Paxton has a very,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: very, very real chance, especially if you just consider Texas's history as a state.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was just going to say that we broadly categorize this still as a toss-up
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: because neither candidate has a 60% or more chance of winning.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: to that point,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: it's like if Tallarico wins 58 out of every 100 simulations that we run,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: he's winning them by various margins in terms of his actual vote share.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: He might win by four.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: He might win by two.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Paxton might win by one.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: The actual vote share in the projected, as we were pointing out, is really close here.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's the average across all of our forecast runs is that Tallarica wins very narrowly.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that speaks to just how close the race is.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want people rounding up 58 to 100, rounding down 42 to 0.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because, yeah,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: this race is,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: broadly speaking,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Still a toss-up,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: even if it has been,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think the trend, though, is important, which has been trending toward Tallarico.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing this, you know, in a number of these key races.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: How often at this point are you guys rerunning,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: sorry, knocking my microphone, rerunning the model and the forecast?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Are you doing it daily?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been running daily on weekdays since July.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It continues to get to run daily.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we're still running it daily.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that'll increase closer to Election Day, knock on wood.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, luckily, it's a 15 minute thing.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like it's taking, you know, years off of my life.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a question for both of you because I get this question a lot.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I want people to understand,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: first of all,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: before I ask the question, polling and modeling are not the same thing.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Modeling includes polling, but it is not exclusive to polling.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: As Madison said,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: there's polling,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: there's historical data, there's prediction markets in their model, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: And they move those around based
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: on what they think What percentage they think will matter the most
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: or what they have, what's reliable, etc.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what data is available
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: is a big part of it too.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, right,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: as Jeffrey's pointing out,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: like you can see here, it's 30%
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: fundamentals, 45% polls, 25% market.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how the model works.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to...
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: I get, you know,
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: there's so much,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, as you point out, there's so much polling out now, right, at this period.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And every time I post something,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: just literally like retweeting a poll,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: people will be like, I guess you still believe polls.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: So obviously the forecast is not entirely dependent on polling.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: But polling,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: like in Michigan,
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: as Skelly is showing here,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: 45% of your sort of prediction,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: polling is the majority, not the majority, the plurality of it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: What if the polls are wrong?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you do you take every poll?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have the polling ranked based on past reliability?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you guys treat that?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: if we and we saw this during our live streams on election nights during the primary,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: there are times like in Wisconsin,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Wisconsin governor,
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: everybody thought Francesca Hong was going to win by a ton because
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: the polling suggested she would.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she lost.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone thought El Syed was going to win by a bunch because the polling mostly said he would.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: He won.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: But he won quite narrowly in the primary.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: How do you guys account for that?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: If both of you want to take it or one of you want to take it, go.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I get it so often I want to address it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take it.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is good.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of thoughts and opinions.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So currently we do not rank or prioritize any pollster or any poll in any particular way.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say they will never do that, but that definitely isn't going to happen this cycle.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So currently a lot of like our confidence in polls is very much in the law
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: of large numbers and just hoping and kind of trusting mathematically that the sum
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: of everything will come together to approach the truth.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think like a good example of that is people be like,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: oh, this one poll came out that has like, let's call it El Syed up 12.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: OK, there's there's just like no universe,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: no universe,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: but it's highly unlikely that he's going to win this thing by 12 points.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But when you put them all together, you get something closer to 3 percent.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: That seems a little bit more plausible to me.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And even so.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you get a lot of polls.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And especially right now, the numbers are kind of they're all pouring in.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so they become a little bit more accurate as you get more of them.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say that they're all accurate and that they're all leading in the same direction.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I personally think that we've talked about this a bit in past experiences, but.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I personally think that things are leaning a little bit more democratic
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: than actual right now.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that has to do with response bias and
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: who is feeling particularly excited to respond.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think a lot of that happened in the primaries too,
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: where you probably have a lot of people that are more excited about Francesca Hong
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: and El Syed than they are about like Haley Stevens.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, And so you get a lot of that in the primaries.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: My hope and my belief is that you get less of that in the general elections
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: because people can more cleanly distinguish a Democrat from a Republican than
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: a DSA candidate from a moderate Democrat.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of sums it up.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, at least my belief is that the polling is roughly accurate.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: The fun thing with generic ballot is we can see Okay.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey, let me reset for a second.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with Jeffrey Skelly,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: the chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: and Madison Morrell,
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: who is a data scientist at Decision Desk HQ,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: who manages and maintains DDHQ's forecasting model.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Here's something I should have mentioned at the top that I didn't.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: You can look at this whenever you like.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: you want to explain to people how they can get the screen that you're looking
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: at right now and also how they can become pro members?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is our votes portal,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: votes, V-O-T-E-S, appropriately, because we have lots of votes in here.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially, you can access that by going to votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's free to sign up,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: but there's definitely a special deal right now as you head toward
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: the election campaign.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of an election package where you can become a Votes Pro member for
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: a heavily discounted rate.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially it gives you access to a number of really cool tools.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like on election night, you don't have to have like 12 tabs open.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could just have...
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: You could just have, you know, four different races or something.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this was like my August 4th decision.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Michigan Senate.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Michigan Senate, Missouri House, you know, some Michigan congressional races, Michigan governor.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so there was just, you know.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can put all this in one screen.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can change how many panels you want.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, these are some of the cool tools we have.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then on polling, if you're a Votes Pro member, you can look at crosstab data that we have.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: What is Donald Trump's approval among independents?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or one of my favorite stats I've been watching is a generic ballot among independents.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you see Democrats up by 19 among independents.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in 2018 and 2014...
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: The winning party,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats in 18,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans in 14, carried independents by 12, according to the exit poll.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: exit polls are another survey of a type,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: so there is error margin in that, margin of error.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the point being,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: if Democrats were winning independents by this kind of margin,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: it would be quite a friendly environment for them.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I cannot urge people more votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's a look, there's a ton of free stuff on there.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would urge you if you're on this Substack Live,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: trust me,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: you will want to become a votes pro member because you're probably a junkie.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of information on
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: there you can build to Jeffrey's point,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: you can build your own like election dashboard to watch the election.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: That is as advanced as anything anyone in the country will use, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's what we will use on election night.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: It is what lots of news organizations are going to use.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Just to give it one more plug,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: just to,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: as an example,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: as I struggle here to just look up Michigan president,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: just we have all these historical results going back to 2000 and you can just,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: you can dig around in all kinds of races.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes from as significant,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: as notable as president to, you Uh, go look up your local city council race.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it is all certainly in here because we have all of it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so, you know, yes, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Trust me, you, you will want to bookmark it and become a pro member.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: I should have, I should have started with that.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: All right,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: folks in the chat,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: if you have,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to do about 10, 10,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: maybe 15 minutes more,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: because as you might guess, Jeffrey and Madison are quite busy at this time of year.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, If you have a race that you want us to address, put it in the chat.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I've got a few and you guys can either tag team, do whatever.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Can we look at Kansas Senate?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because I feel like that's the kind of.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, let's look at Kansas of late.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of a sudden the report went from likely Republican to lean Republican
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: to toss up yesterday.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: So where are we in that?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: In our forecast,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: it is now,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: essentially,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: we categorize it as lean Republican in a broad sense,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: with Roger Marshall,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: the incumbent, there having a A 67% chance of winning, so two and three.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee, having a one and three shot.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: This, you know,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: one of the things that happened with this race,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: that it was already trending toward more competitive.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen evidence of that outside of like polling or other things.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: You just saw what the Senate Leadership Fund announced they're going to be spending money.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Five million bucks.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, five million.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Fourteen million.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking of South Carolina.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Fourteen million.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I started to say 14.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I think it was 14 million.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: 14 million in Kansas
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: because right now I believe Hamilton's actually been outspending Marshall on
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: the air.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: He has.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, look, Kansas is a state that President Trump carried by 16 percentage points in 2024.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: It would be pretty remarkable if it flipped.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I have a fun stat about this that I had.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I hope you ask about this.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it comes up.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, the longest droughts for parties and Senate seats.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yes,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: the last time Democrats won a Senate seat in Kansas in 1932,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: and the next closest set of droughts are in 1970 for Hawaii for Republicans
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: and Democrats in Utah and Wyoming.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to go way back to find a Democratic win, the Great Depression.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but here's the thing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Look, at the end of the day, Is Kansas going to go Democratic?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact is,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: it is now entered into the realm of possibility to a higher degree,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: where if we end up with one of the stronger Democratic knights in the realm
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: of possibility, then it is a seat that could flip.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see, again, this is beyond polling, you can see reasons why that would be.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the hardest hit areas of the country because of tariffs,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: because of the cost of diesel?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like a lot of the Great Plains,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: the Midwest,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: more agricultural heavy states where these are maybe being felt a little bit more.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you can imagine...
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the grand scheme of things,
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: you're not going to see a 20-point swing in Kansas and
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: a 5-point swing everywhere else.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's unlikely.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Could you see an 8-point swing,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: kind of like the generic ballot in much of the country,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: but see an 11, 12-point swing in Kansas?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: That might not be enough for Hamilton to win,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: but if it's bigger than that nationally for Democrats,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: you can just start to see scenarios.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Also, Marshall's had some issues where he's had this vulnerability.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, he's a physician, and they've been attacking him.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats have been attacking him.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: He sued a lot of his past patients and some of his past patients who owed $50 were arrested.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now, some of them who owed $4,000 were arrested too, but yes, big New York Times piece on it.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so this has not been good for Marshall.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some candidate issues.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's some national issues.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's some local challenges that may be particularly acute there.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe a perfect storm is developing.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's appropriate in Tornado Alley.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's still a two and
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: three shot for Marshall, which I think people seem more likely to win.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I see, I'm going to run through and we can do these lightning round if you'd like.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to run through a bunch.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Here's Razorback AJ.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do Democrats actually have a shot in South Carolina?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: So they are,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats are spend,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: excuse me,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Republicans,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: the Senate Leadership Fund,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: the big Republican super PAC is now spending $5 million for Darlene Graham
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: against Annie Andrews.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Where is that one?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I assume that one is probably,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: okay, so you've got it pulled up.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the same range as the Kansas race, basically.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're very similar now where They lean Republican.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're most likely going to go Republican.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about states that have a clear Republican baseline.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do think Kansas is a swingier state in terms of the potential in the electorate.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: South Carolina, like a lot of states in the Deep South, tends to...
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Polarization and voting habits by race,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: black voters being heavily Democratic,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: white voters far more Republican,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: has tended to make, we would call it more inelastic.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't move quite as much.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: There are fewer voters who are likely to swing or open to swinging.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe, again, the national environment, Darlene Graham may be just a weaker candidate.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: The evidence would seem to be pointing to that.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And given how she sort of got into this position,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: there are clearly people who criticize the fact that the sister of
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: the late Lindsey Graham was appointed to it and is now the Republican nominee.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe Democrats do a bit better in some of the metros.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Charleston area,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's brought up the most,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: where there is also what looks like a competitive U.S. House race.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe all this stew comes together just enough that Democrats' Annie Andrews has a shot.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you see Republicans are spinning there trying to remind people,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: hey, Annie Andrews is a Democrat.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys really want to elect a Democrat?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's partisanship versus candidate and national trends.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Annie Andrews,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: if you told Annie Andrews, hey,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: a month out from the election, you're going to have a three in 10 chance of winning.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: She would totally take that.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: I get this one a lot.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I see Trey Baldwin in the chat asking about Arkansas Senate.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: there's been some polling out there that has Tom Cotton
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: and Haley Schaffner competitive.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Explain to folks,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I tend to think Tom Cotton is,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: for Tom Cotton to lose,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: if Tom Cotton loses, he's going to be like the 58th Democratic seat.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Can you explain to people why it's 96-4 on your guys' chart?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Look, there is polling of, I would say, somewhat not amazing vintage that has it close.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it is one I get asked about a lot.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, look, I think there was like a talk business poll that had that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's one survey.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Generally speaking, Arkansas is way too red of a state to imagine it flipping.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is where fundamentals are doing a lot of work.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if we go down here, I mean, look, Arkansas, 96%.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, honestly, it might be like, let's see, how many Republican states are below it?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: One, two, three, four, five, six.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Six are below it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So actually...
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: It would be like the 17th Democratic pickup.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats would be like winning, if they were winning all the states above it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: It'd be in the 60s.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: It would be, I mean, yeah, they would be, wow.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Look at the states above it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: People talk a little bit about that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Alabama.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Mississippi's getting a little more chatter.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Kentucky.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think people realize how red Arkansas is.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the issue.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, I saw a great stat that Cotton is outspending Haley Schaffner 65-1.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that doesn't guarantee victory, but you'd rather be on the 65 than the one side of this.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: All right, let me just keep going.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Florida governor.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you guys do governor odds?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: You do, right?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I just want to make sure.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Byron Donalds has an edge in Florida, but not a huge one.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Open seat, Rod DeSantis is term limited, so he's leaving office.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: This race looks competitive.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: It looks a little bit more competitive based on our probabilities than
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Senate race,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: where Republican Ashley Moody is basically a three and four favorite to win.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the special election for Marco Rubio's seat against Democrat Angie Nixon.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Here, Donald's against David Jolly, former congressman, former Republican.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Jolly is polling a little bit better.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at sort of the polling in this race,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's like a three, four point race and margin.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I mean, at the end of the day, this is one where Republicans have the upper hand.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think But not overwhelmingly so.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what's interesting about a race like Florida is that,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: we're seeing just,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: just to go back to like the national map here,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: you see all these other states,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's easiest to see on the Senate map that voted for President Trump by 11
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: to 14 points that are in the mix in the Senate race.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you got Ohio, you got Iowa, you got Texas, you got Alaska down there.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Not geographically accurate, but you got to fit it in.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't go up over here somewhere,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: but those all were states,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Trump won Ohio by 11, Iowa and Alaska by about 13, Texas by 14.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he won Florida by 13,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: and yet Florida is looking more Republican-leaning in both the Senate and
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: the gubernatorial races than these other contests are for their state.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Senate and Governor,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats have a very real chance of winning some of the governorships
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: in these states as well as the Senate races.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know, down to things about Florida's electorate to make it a little different.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now we talk about like Latino voters and maybe we'll get we'll be interested
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: in seeing what some Latino voters in parts of Central and South Florida are doing
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: at 7 p.m.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: when their polls close and we get start getting vote totals at 720
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: because Florida is so fast and counting.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that isn't necessarily going to be a perfect indication of what might happen in,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: say, Texas, because the makeup of the Latino population in Florida is different.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: You have Cuban Americans who are the most Republican-leaning Hispanic constituency within it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Latinos are not a monolith.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're thinking about sort of what makes Florida different From some
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: of these other states, you know, it might be something like that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go to Texas because we did talk about Tallarico,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: but let's Paxson, which is, you know, basically a 58 percent chance for Tallarico.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Can we look at the governor's race there?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because that is, you know, I still think Paxson, excuse me, Abbott is a better chance.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: OK, so 69 percent chance of winning.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: So slightly better for Republicans in Florida, at least right now.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, kind of in a similar range.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the polling here, Gina Inohosa has closed the gap.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: She's only down by about a point now on our average.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what's going on here?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think fundamentals are playing a big role in this and the fact that Abbott Has won
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: in the past as an incumbent,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: whereas in the Senate race you don't have incumbency because John Cornyn lost
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: to Ken Paxton.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the factors that are playing into it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the thing is,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: just like in that example you gave earlier of Annie Andrews having a 3-10 shot
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: and she would take it, Gina Hossa is taking a 3-10 shot of winning 100%.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: As is David Jolly having a 1-3 chance, basically, of being the governor of Florida.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you said on the day he announced, hey,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: a month out,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: you'll have much more than a puncher's chance,
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: a 33% chance of winning, he'd be like, that sounds amazing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: they see ratings being moved around,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: by people like the Cook Report,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: and they see all this polling, and I think they Yeah, exactly.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose it's 1932 or something, you know, right.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's bigger than 94 if that happens.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like I think people get a little out of whack when they see one or the other.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I did see someone and I do not think you guys do probability projections down
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: to this level, but I know people.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody asked about the Texas Railroad Commissioner, which is Beau French.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: You guys do not go all the way down there.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: We do not have no objections down to there.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, we if we have any polling for that, we would have it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So let me pull the general quick.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think there we have.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're almost at.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're at three.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: You have three polls of a race.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Most statewide down ballot races would have zero poll.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Polling is too expensive to conduct.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Texas General has a weird amount of polls.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: They do have races going on there, so you can tack on the question with the Senate Gov races.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, it's still really nice to have some information here.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, this is a race.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mean to go to the Texas page.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you can go to the Texas page and see all the races happening in Texas.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Look, at the end of the day, Democrats haven't won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Richard's.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she lost re-election.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, she lost in 94.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I forgot that was George W.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: A few others, a few other.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she lost to George W. Bush.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: A few other statewide officeholders who were Democrats held on in that election and
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: then either retired or lost in 98.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been a long time since Democrats have had any statewide success in Texas, obviously.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if James Tallarico were to win the Senate race,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I think a universe where he's winning the Senate race is probably like by
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: a point or two points or something.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: There might be some other Democratic winners.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Greg Abbott holds on in the governor's race by three or four points or something.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe John Rosenthal is beating Beau French Railroad Commissioner because of all
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: the controversy surrounding French.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's one of those things where there will be some differences up and down the ballot.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Yeah, just to put a point on that, I think—
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: I could see James Tallarico winning and Gina Hinojosa losing.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: I struggle to see Gina Hinojosa winning and James Tallarico losing, basically.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's extremely unlikely.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think for Hinojosa to win,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Tallarico must win and ideally win by, you know, more than the one point.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like four or five.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like four or something,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: five, and then the votes run closer together than they have previously.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: The thing with Greg Abbott,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is that if you look back at like 2018,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: so like that's,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the canonical example of, of, uh, uh, you know, Texas being close.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, well,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Bader O'Rourke was losing by like two and a half,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: 2.7 percentage points in the Senate race.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Greg Abbott, meanwhile, was winning by, I think it was like, uh, What was it in the end?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: So like three points.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Ted Cruz wins by three.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Abbott wins the governor's race by 13.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it was about like a 10, 10, 10-ish point difference.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: But right now on our polling average,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: the difference between those races is like four points on margin.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's some undecideds in there.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: But if those races are running closer together,
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: maybe that gives Hinojosa a better shot at the end of the day.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because maybe Abbott's just not able to separate himself out as much individually
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: as he has been in the past.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to take any more of their time because we're going to ask
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: for their time probably every week between now and the election.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: But here's that,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Madison,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: go through the top lines, Democrats, House, Democrats, Senate, and then sweep.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Go through where the numbers are on those two.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats are at 76% chance of winning the House.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: They are at a 58% chance of winning the Senate.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And to take both, we're at 54.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we finally crossed the over 50% threshold for any party taking any scenario.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, by the corollary, Republicans are at, I want to say it's a 22% chance of vote.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: 22%.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: The houses, I think, escaped them a little bit, especially the past month or so.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: In a world where they win the house, they're definitely holding the center.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you get one of their better outcomes and they hold the house somehow.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I also think it's unlikely at this point, but...
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: If we do hit one of those universal outcomes, they're almost guaranteed to be holding.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Democrats,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: if Democrats win the Senate,
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: there's just, there's no chance that they're losing the House, especially.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Very unlikely.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think the odds of that are like 3% or something like that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Functionally zero.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going to have these folks back.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: If you have questions on races,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: come ready next week because we will run through as many as we can.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the model, again, House, Senate, Governor is what we're able to do in the forecasting.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: They have information about every race,
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: including Beau French for Texas Railroad Commissioner,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: the biggest railroad commissioner race of all time.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Madison Murrell,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: data scientist at Decision Desk HQ,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: who runs and manages the model that is producing these results.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey Skelly, chief elections analyst at DDHQ.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to explore this stuff on your own, the great thing is you can do it.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: Votes.com.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: You will be able to see the forecast.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: You will be able to see some past results.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Become a member of Votes Pro for a discounted rate between now and the election,
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: and you will get the And Linda is saying remind us about custom dashboards.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: If you are a member of Votes Pro,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: you can build,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: see the screen that we're showing right here,
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: you can build a dashboard with any races, any historical information.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Anything that you want.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Prediction markets.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey's putting this up.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: This is what he used on August.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is my August 4th primary night.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: So he's just got a bunch of different races in there, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's got the markets.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: He's got race results.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's got county.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: You can see El Syed in Wayne, El Syed in key counties.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: You can build all of that.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can literally build something that the people who call these races look at
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: and use and will use on election night.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: Votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Please check it out.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: We will have them back next week.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Assuming that they have time, we'll have them back next week.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: We'll run through the probabilities and we'll run through individual races.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, guys.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I know how busy you are.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Take care.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for everyone who joined live.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for everyone who watched it on replay.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Chris.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Bye, y'all.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: See ya.