Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Forecast Update: Is a blue wave rising or cresting?

Transcript

Forecast Update: Is a blue wave rising or cresting? · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: We are live after an always longer than I expect delay.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Geoffrey Skelley,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Chief Elections Analyst at Decision Desk HQ, Maddisen
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Morrell,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Data Scientist,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: which is a title I now realize at 50 I will never hold at Decision Desk HQ.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: We are here to talk about the DDHQ 2026 forecast election model.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've done a bunch of these, but look, we're down to it now, folks, 20 days left.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to do one each week here if I can get these very busy people to join me.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maddisen,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: do...
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: A minute explainer on the forecast and then let's pull it up and why don't you walk us through.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: But explain how you get to these numbers and why they're different from polling and
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: then walk us through where we are.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So basically we take historical election results, incumbency, incumbent performance.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we kind of call the fundamentals.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We take those, we chuck them into some complex stats models, blend them in with polls.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So polls are a part of it, but it's definitely not all of it or even most of it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plurality.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: But Take that, blend it in with polls.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then newly this year,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: we blend in prediction markets to basically get what we believe
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: to be our probabilities of how each race will go.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And similarly,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: either seat count within chambers or vote margin within races,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: which is not the same as a probability.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yes,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: we basically take all those numbers,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: kind of mesh them together in a long string of code.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that pumps out these numbers.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We rate them as, you know, toss ups, likelies, leans, whatever.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you see here.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And basically, oh, yeah.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I would just I would add you can get all of this votes dot decisiondeskhq.com.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can see exactly what screen is on right now.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you click on forecast, you can see that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can also find on that page much more detail should you be interested
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: in what Maddisen is talking about and sort of how this all works.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would say models are,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: the best compromise between solely looking at polling and solely looking
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: at historical data.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: They do to try to bring both of those in.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: as Maddisen mentioned,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: the DDHQ model also uses – And some of the trade prediction markets,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: which gets you,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think, kind of like really, really up to the second pulse on these rates.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: So as we're seeing here,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: you can see how literally,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a very extensive process of how this model is built.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's, Maddisen, let's, that said, so votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And let me, I'll put a plug in right now for the Votes Pro page.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, deal which you can get through the election.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're going to be able to build yourself your own dashboard on election night.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to be able to do historical stuff.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's really amazing and a really good deal.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you should sign up for it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So go to votes.decisiondeskhq.com and, um, sign up for pro Maddisen.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the numbers.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about where the house probability is and where
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: the Senate probability is, um, uh, in the forecast as of October 14th at 9 48 AM.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So this morning.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So both of these,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think kind of what's stark,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: especially since we last spoke,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: is the fact that it hasn't moved a whole lot,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: which is like sometimes no movement is still, you know, indicative of stuff.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Democrats are currently sitting at just over three quarters of a shot at the House.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which kind of makes sense, you know, given the climate and the buzz and all that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then for at least quite some time,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember exactly how long,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: but for some time,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: we've been favoring,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: mildly favoring the Democrats in the Senate as well, I think at about 56%.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: we've had those numbers within one or two points or whatever for the past couple
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: of weeks or so, or like definitely week or so.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that might be uninteresting,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it's particularly interesting that we're seeing such consistency
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: in these numbers as everything starts to pick up and as we're running into about two
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: or three weeks out of the election.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, Geoffrey, can you switch over to the Senate one real quick,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: the Senate probability, just so we can see that?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to – so as Maddisen points out, 56%.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why don't – explain, Maddisen and Geoffrey, feel free to add here too.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Explain why – The fact that that blue line has stayed up over 50 and
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: the red line has stayed under 50 pretty consistently each day as you run this model
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: for the last,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'm guessing looking at lean the last couple weeks at a minimum.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So since early September, the stream's crossed.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's over the past month.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Explain, Maddisen, why is that important to your point?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Just pull on that string a little bit more.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think one thing that we're seeing is like definitely especially like
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: as summer was warming up and stuff like that,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: we got a lot more Democratic like leaning polls or Democratic favorable polls,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: as you kind of see with like that general uptick.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's definitely what kind of got us to the point of it flipping over.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: But as polls have continued to come in and stuff like that,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: we've been seeing a lot more consistency in the lean of the polls.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Polls have just lately been favoring Democrats a lot stronger than other candidates.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or than they had in the past.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the past is kind of all over the place.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's really polling.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Senate race is in like April or whatever.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or June.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: As much as I wish they would.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot more polling now too, which is a good point.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of polling and a lot of the polling is pointing in a similar direction.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as we were kind of,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: especially in the summer,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: at least I was thinking like,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: oh, it's going to, you know, it's going to get really warm for Democrats.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's going to cool back down a little bit as the election kind of nears.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we just haven't been seeing that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've been seeing a lot of,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know, a lot of warmth and favorable environment for the Democrats.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I believe our generic ballot is currently at 7.7 or at least it was this morning.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: 7.8 now.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Big change.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Big change.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been it's been kind of really in that like low eights to high sevens in
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: the past couple of weeks,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: which is also definitely playing a part in just how good things are looking,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: at least from a numbers perspective and polls perspective for Democrats.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously that's whether or not you believe the polls.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different conversation.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: But so, Skelley, I want to ask you that before we go any further, which is, you know,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Polls do play a role in your model and in every model I've ever seen anyone build.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: How do you guys guard against it just – look, Geoffrey and I do live streams.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: We did live streams basically every primary night.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: We were on when Abdul El-Sayed was supposed to win the Michigan Senate primary by 25 points.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: He won by one.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: We were on the next week, I think.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: When Francesca Hong was supposed to win the Democratic gubernatorial primary
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: by 25 points and she loses.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Polling,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: the three of us know this because we spend our life with this,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: but polling is at least as much art as science in terms of what you put
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: in dictates what you get out.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you guys, Geoffrey, is it looking at the generic ballot?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is it looking at historical results?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: How do you ensure that If the polls are off in one direction, like,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: not measuring enough Republican support,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: which is the case Republicans are making,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: that the model isn't just sort of a glorified pollster.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, look, there's uncertainty built into politics.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: The read of the polling averages,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: the fact that we still weight the fundamentals relatively significantly in a lot
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: of these races also I think guards against –
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: basically it's giving you
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: an anchor point that maybe you could end up debating if that undersells
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: when you have some sort of huge dramatic change.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, I also think it makes it more realistic.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: If we were just going by the polls in Kansas,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: where you do have a nominal lead for the Democratic candidate in a state
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: that they haven't won since 1932,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: if you were just going by that,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: you'd be like, oh, maybe the Democrats are favored or it's a pure toss up.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: But no, we give Republican Roger Marshall about a two and three shot of winning
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: because look, Kansas is historically a Republican leading state.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of It is still a Republican-leaning state.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: By some distance,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: it is more Republican-leaning than sort of
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: the core toss-up battleground states we've been talking about in this election,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: like the Iowas and the Texas.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Not a lot redder, but it is a little bit redder than those.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so to have Kansas be in the conversation is probably not a good sign
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: for Republicans,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: but it is also,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: at the end of the day – We're not just favoring Adam Hamilton
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: because he is very slightly ahead in the polls.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: There's sort of more information that is coming in.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: South Carolina Senate is probably another example.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, same story, same story.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me make a pitch to folks.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've got one or two more questions for Maddisen and Geoffrey,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: but I want to hear if you have a race, House,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Senate, or Governor – Let us know and we will feature it and we will talk about it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got a race,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a ton,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: but I'd really, if you have a race, put it in the chat that you want to talk about.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody asked last week about the Texas Railroad Commissioner's race.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: We do not have a model projection on that,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: although I thought Geoffrey did an amazing job of answering that question anyway.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: But House Senate Governor, let us know, put it in the chat and we'll get to him.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I want to You're looking right now at where it says win probability up top where it is focused.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: If they click – Geoffrey, can you click on seat count?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the – this is what the chamber is most likely to look like in terms
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: of numbers after – Currently 51-49.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maddisen,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: can you explain how you guys get to this?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jeffrey,
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: maybe if you scroll down and show the outcome possibilities, you know what I mean?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like 47-49, I think it's towards the bottom more.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: That, yes, yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's essentially a bell curve of a type.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of potential outcomes.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Maddisen, how does this work for people?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Take people inside this.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: You are literally running...
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a million times?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: In other cases, more than that, but for this purpose, a million.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a million times you run what into the model or you run what through the model?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So a million times we basically take the models probabilities.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So those final like race level number probability numbers that you see.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we basically run all of the House races and all the Senate races
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: against each other with all their probabilities and come up.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of spits out a distribution of like with all of those things happening
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: and being correlated together.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: What are the odds that, you know, the House goes one way and the Senate goes one way?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: How many seats does it win?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: How many seats does it not win?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually, interestingly enough, if you go back up to the map, a lot of those toss ups.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those are five.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: That would be five flips.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all currently in the probabilities leaning Democrat.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So with five flips, we technically get to 52 Democratic seats.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But because,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: we're running a bunch of simulations,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: those end up becoming it gets averaged out to 51.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like you can find a lot of scenarios
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: where Democrats are actually winning 52 seats or 53 or like whatever.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: we take all those million scenarios with all the probabilities correlated together,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: spits out this nice looking bell curve where,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know, on average of all the million potential elections or whatever.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You get to 51 Democratic seats and 49 Republican seats.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Jeffrey,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: if you scroll down back to where we were to the bell curve,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: that the most likely outcome right now is 51, 49.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: The second most likely outcome is 52, 48 Democrats and then 50, 50, 50.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: These three are all very similar.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're all just between nine points.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: 3, 5, and 9.67% of the time.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking about roughly 30% of cases being this,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: and then you expand it out to these limits.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: To be clear, this is where we currently are.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: If there were no net change, it's Republicans at 53 and Democrats at 47.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: So the likeliest outcomes are that Democrats are going to gain.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a question of are they going to gain enough to get the majority?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: And in many cases, they do gain enough for the majority and then some.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: They sweep the toss-ups.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they pick off a Kansas.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: D plus six right there is like 8%, almost 9%.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, D plus six is them,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know, that,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: that to be clear, they need four of the states that Republicans currently hold.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's them getting four plus,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: basically getting every one of the toss ups,
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: getting Alaska,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: maybe picking off another state in there,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: like, or we're getting North Carolina, I guess that's six.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, North Carolina.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: The four toss-ups and Alaska,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: which has kind of been on the borderline between Lean D and toss-up.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then going beyond,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: that's like a world where they pick off like a Kansas or a South Carolina.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Nebraska.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: This kind of world over here.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And can we do that same view for the house, Geoffrey and Maddisen, the seat?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the house seems like in one way,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: like kind of less dramatic in that the odds are very strongly
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: into borrow hunger games.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Much smaller bars here.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're much more in Democrats' favor of winning the – There's
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: a lot more options.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you got a lot more universes of outcomes.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so right now,
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: the most likely is D. 20-ish, 20-something.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: So this is where the difference between sort of the average – so
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: the average seed outcome is 235.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: But that's because they're all – So that's the average.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, average.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: The median is like 228-ish.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Got it.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is going back to my difference between mean and median, Skelley.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So to be clear – Don't forget about mode.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot forget about mode.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: So to be clear right now,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: if you sort of just look at the like toss-up lean kind of – like just purely
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: who is favored.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: So in this case,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: that could include a Democrat or Republican being at 51% chance of winning
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: and it being considered favored.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Essentially, it is about 228, 207.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it makes sense that that's sort of the median.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: The thing is that in a lot of these scenarios,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats pick off a few of those seats where they're slight underdogs because,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: as Maddisen was saying, the results are correlated.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so in a lot of cases,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: they are having a good enough night that they end up winning some of those seats
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: where they are very slight underdogs and you get this longer tail of Obviously,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: these are very unlikely out here,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: but they pull the average in the direction where that's the average, 235 to 200.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because there are definitely universes where they get like 242.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: if it's an environment where Kansas goes Democratic at the Senate level,
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that means every seat that Donald Trump won by 16 or less in
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: the House is going to go.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it means that some of those D plus, R plus 13, R plus 10, R plus 12.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you start getting into the 250s, 260s.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility because,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Maddisen always makes plans.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's really important.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: They are not – they are fought in the same political environment.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like the House is fought in one and the Senate is fought in another
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: or Maine is fought in one and Kansas is fought in another.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are differences for sure.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: But everybody who's a Republican has to deal with the fact
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: that Donald Trump is not popular and people don't like how he's handled the economy.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like it – you know, that's – OK, let's talk about individual races.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Folks, if you have individual races, I see some we will go through them.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have individual races, how senator, governor you want looked at, tell us.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got a few, too.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with Mississippi Senate,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: which is, I think, probably Skelley, you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably in the 50s.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Five plus Democratic seats, like a big gainer, but not outside the realm of possibility.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: You guys want to talk about what the model shows there?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: So right now, I would say it's interesting.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of those cases where I think that some of
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: the conversation around this race is more bullish for Democrats
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: than our forecast would think.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like right now, we give Cindy Hyde-Smith a 93% chance of winning a re-election.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Part of this is that we don't actually have We have a number of polls,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: but they're all polls from Democratic pollsters and not enough for us to have
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: an average.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hyde-Smith has led for the most part in these races.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's one of those cases where it's hard to see Democrats actually winning Mississippi.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's interesting about Mississippi is that it has the largest,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: in terms of the share of the state's population that is black,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: it is the largest in the country.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a little under 40%.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so that obviously,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: given the polarized voting in the deep south by race, Very heavily Democratic.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking nine in ten black voters voting Democratic,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: possibly more in this kind of electoral environment.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the Democratic nominee is an African – Scott Colom is an African-American guy.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: District attorney.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean like I interviewed him.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: I like him.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Raising money, well-credentialed.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: He looks like a very – like he's about the best possible kind
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: of candidate Democrats can hope for in a state like Mississippi.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Where they don't have much of a bench because Republicans have dominated politics there.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge for Democrats is finding remotely enough white voters to win.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the voting has been so polarized by race.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: It is the most polarized state by race in terms of voting habits
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: where Democrats might get 95% of the black vote.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: But even in that case, Republicans are getting 80% of the white vote, 78% of the white vote.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just not enough for Democrats to win.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Mike Espy,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: when he ran in 2018 and became the closest Democrats have come in recent memory
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: to winning in Mississippi, at the end of
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: the day, he lost by what, seven, I think?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Six or seven?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Seven, I think.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was about as good as we've seen Democrats be able to do in 2018 was obviously.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it wasn't a great year in the Senate for Democrats,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: but that was partly a function of which seats were up.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: But in the House, they did quite well.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a big swing in their direction,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: much like, you know, we're expecting a swing in their direction here.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: it's but it's just Mississippi is just you're really dealing
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: with some difficult dynamics for Democrats.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I saw, you know, we talked about Arkansas last time.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to say he's a better bet
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: than Arkansas.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: People keep asking about Arkansas.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I just can we can you just flat that up?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about it last week, but let's just pull it up.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is Tom Cotton,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: the Republican incumbent against Hallie Shoffner, the Democratic challenger.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a very, very hard state for a Democrat to have a chance in.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, look.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, 96% chance Cotton wins.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: That may be underestimating him.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Mississippi, President Trump carried Mississippi by about 23 percentage points.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now that was – A very good year for Republicans at the end of the day compared
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: to what some recent presidential results are.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: But again,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Mike Espy losing by like seven was the best that Democrats have been able
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: to do recently in a federal race in Mississippi.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a 16 point.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Arkansas is just
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: too
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: red.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not going to happen.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would say if Tom Cotton loses, Democrats are going to have like a 60 plus seat majority.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, well, I can
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: tell you, I can tell you.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably a chance in your model,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: but there is a chance or percent in look in, in this universe where they win.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: That would be what?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Which seat number would that be for Democrats?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: That would be, in just order of our current probabilities, the 16th flip for Democrats.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be 66.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, 63.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, 63, right.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: 47.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: So they wouldn't be quite two-thirds,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: but this would be – I mean this would be – that would be – Unbelievable in this day
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: and age.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me, it's like Mississippi, maybe because of the baseline vote the Democrats have.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Baseline black vote.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe black turnout is really high and maybe white turnout is a little lower.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe there are a few more white voters who are willing to vote Democratic
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: and maybe you can squint and And see, see it happen.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: But Arkansas is a whole, it's like a whole 'nother order of magnitude.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that marks the last time in these things we talk about the Arkansas Senate race.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cause we've now talked about it two weeks,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: which is probably a week and a half more than we should have.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, let's do some people would like
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: to make fetch happen.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just not quite going to happen.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, Maddisen, that's a reference to a movie in the nineties called Mean Girls.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, it came out in 2004, which is the year I was born.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I have seen it many times.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was born too.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Came out October, I think it came out in October 2004.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Mean Girls Day is my half birthday.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't, I know what fetch is.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: October 3rd?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is it October 3rd?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: October 3rd, yep.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: He asked me what day it was, October 3rd.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Maddisen is 22 is what we've learned on this.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Maddisen is less than half as old as I am, Skelley.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: How depressing is that?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Despite how youthful I look.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have a couple governor's races that I want to go through.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I said to folks, look,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: if you have questions about individual races,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: put them in the chat and we'll get to them.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Two big ones in big, important states.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do Texas Governor first, Greg Abbott, Gina Hinojosa.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is closer polling-wise than I think anyone, including Greg Abbott, thought it would be.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we're looking at this and I think go back,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: if you missed it,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: go back to Geoffrey's explanation of the difference between just polling
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: and modeling, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: That what is happening here is yes,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: the polling is a factor here,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: but so are historical election results, so are prediction markets.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we are at 72% probability for Abbott.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Take it away.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, 72% chance.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: So roughly seven and 10 shot for Abbott.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's even while he's only up by about a point in our polling average.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And What that comes back to is a couple things.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: One, Texas is Republican lean at a baseline.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Abbott's status is an incumbent.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: By comparison,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: the Senate race does not have an incumbent running because John Cornyn lost in
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican primary to Ken Paxton.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: And- If you sort of are thinking about this also from –
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: and this can get incorporated into things like the markets
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: and people's interpretations of what's going on in this race.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing to remember is that Abbott has consistently – when he's won in
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: the past and there was a Senate race at the same time,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think he won by 13 or something,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: 12 in 2018 even as Ted Cruz was only winning by three.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the Senate race.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: So like, you know, 10 point difference.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Now the difference may be smaller and the polls suggest it's going to be smaller this time.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's right now it's like a three-ish, three or four point gap between the margins and the polls.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so Abbott is more in danger than he has ever been.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd asked Gina Andohosa, do you want a three in 10 shot?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: She would be like, heck yeah, I do.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's just knowing that Abbott is likely going to do better than Paxton.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: By – to some extent.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And knowing that – and just thinking about this even qualitatively along with
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: the quantitative aspect,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: it's like knowing that Talarico is probably going to run ahead of Hinojosa.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's probably not winning by much.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Two, three.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if he wins by more than that- It's very hard for the WWE Universe where he
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: wins by six.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: If he wins by like six, that would be very surprising.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 20-point swing.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if he wins by six,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Hinojosa is maybe winning.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: She'll win.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the thing.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: But that just is not a very likely situation.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so if Abbott is running ahead of Paxton, and Hinojosa is running behind Talarico-
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: A world where Talarico is winning is probably one where Abbott is also winning.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a given.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Hinojosa has like a 3 in 10 shot of winning.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it could come together.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe things are not nearly as split.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: And as I said, the polls this time around don't show as big a split between these races.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so maybe that reflects that maybe Abbott,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: because he's seeking a fourth term,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: He's not really – it reminds me a little bit of say like a Bob Casey running
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: for reelection in 2024.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Bob Casey had always been – in Pennsylvania.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Bob Casey had always been this Democrat who outperformed sort of
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: the Democratic baseline in Pennsylvania.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: But at that point,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: he's just like default Democrat and in a year that was turning into a better year
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: for Republicans and it caught up to him, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: His sort of – his profile as a candidate – Became a little less independent of his party label.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for Abbott,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: there are some suburban voters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: that maybe Talarico is winning over.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of the reason why he can even have a slight lead
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: in his polling better than Beto O'Rourke ever did in Texas.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Actually leading, which Beto O'Rourke did like twice in polls.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And Talarico leads most, not by much, but most, but is leading in them.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: So there is a categorical difference in those races or between them.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas with Abbott,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: like maybe the fact that he's not running notably ahead of Hinojosa is
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: because he's he's been around for so long and he's so associated with sort of
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican label that maybe he's having a more difficult time sort
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: of positioning himself as winning over some voters who might normally have have been
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: in his camp.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Quickly resetting,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking to Geoffrey Skelley,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Chief Elections Analyst at Decision Desk HQ and Maddisen Morrell,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: who is a data scientist at DDHQ and who manages this model that we are looking at.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can look, follow along with us, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can click the forecast button.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: It will take you into where we are.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can also sign up for Votes Pro,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: which is specially discounted between now and the election, 20 days away.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Trust us,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: you will want To check it out,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: it will give you the view that Geoffrey is clicking on.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can put as many things into one dashboard as you would like.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: See this, he's got, this is Missouri, right, in Michigan, August.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Those are my August 4th primary.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's just lots of stuff in here.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: You have the Michigan U.S.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Senate race, Missouri first Democratic primary race, Michigan governor stuff.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: The number of votes drops.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: If you're interested in prediction markets, you can see how those are moving during the night.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: You can customize as many of these as you want if you're a Votes Pro user and flip between them.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can have a bunch of information all in one place and then set it up
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: so you can quickly be like, oh, we're hitting the eight o'clock hour.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I want to move into my eight o'clock races or what have you.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: However you
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: want to organize.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you are on, I always say, if you are on this Substack Live, Votes Pro is for you.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Skelley,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: can you go back to that same – the Texas governor screen that you were showing
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: because I just – scroll down where we can see like what's in – yeah,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: where it says forecast components because Maddisen, I want to ask you about this.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about fundamentals, polls, prediction markets.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: In this forecast component, it's 30% fundamentals, 45% polls, 25% markets.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain to people, those numbers move by race, I assume.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain to people how and why they do and what the highest each
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: of those can be as a chunk of the overall market?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me, overall forecast.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So those are especially, so fundamentals is always there, right?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we have no polls and no markets, we always have fundamentals as a baseline.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Market or polls are weighted at how many we have.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously if there's like two polls,
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: especially if it's like two like internal polls or something like that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this especially happens in like house races.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: If there are like no polls,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: obviously the poll should not be taking up and making up a huge part of
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: that final number, right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: That we...
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of really use the central limit theorem a lot here and just assume
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: that more data is better data.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So less polls means less impact on the final probability.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then same goes for markets.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: But markets are weighted by volume.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So how much money people have put in them, right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So one guy putting $100 onto his congressman because he likes them is not going
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: to have the same effect, nor should it, on the final probability, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, and there's, I think the dollar threshold for that is like 5,000 to kind of max out.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's different in governor races, but yes.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: What we should take from this kind of split,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: 30% fundamentals,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: 45% polls,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: 25% markets is we have a fair number of polls in the Texas governor's race.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why they're accounting for almost half.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if a house race,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: which we'll do a few house races,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: what you're probably going to see, folks,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: is the polling chunk's going to be less because the truth of
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: the matter is there aren't polls on house races every three times
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: a week like there are in, let's say, the Texas governor's race.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of governor's race, let me do one more because I see somebody asked about it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, it's like the most under-the-radar governor's race, which is Georgia.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a swing state.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big state.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really hear much about it.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have Keisha Lance Bottoms,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: the former mayor of Atlanta,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: against Rick Jackson,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: who is a very,
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: very wealthy man who beat Donald Trump's preferred pick in the primary and
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: then runoff.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Although, Skelley, did Trump also endorse Rick Jackson in the runoff?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, he did.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, he stuck with
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Burt Jones.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: He only endorsed Jackson after Jackson had won the nomination.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Jackson has spent a ton of his own money in this race.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is obviously a critical state.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Can we talk about where that one is?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was a little – I looked at this earlier
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: because I was just fiddling around,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: and I was a little surprised that the model has Keisha Lance Bottoms,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think, narrowly favored, right, guys?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: The race is – 57 percent, yeah.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the race is broadly in our toss-up category with a very small edge to bottoms.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is true.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: She's down by about two points in our governor's average.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: In the polling, right.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: In the polling, sorry, excuse me.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: She's down like 49.47, as you can see here in our polling average of Georgia.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of what is probably playing into this, fundamentals I think are a big part of it.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Georgia and the fact that you have John Ossoff doing well in the Senate race sort
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: of is just like an indicator of that.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: All these things are coming together that sort of a toss-up state like Georgia –
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: That you might give a slight lean to the Democratic candidate in an open seat race
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: where there's no incumbent.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so you don't have like Brian Kemp seeking reelection because he's term limited.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: If he were seeking reelection, he probably would be more clearly favored.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's,
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: part of the distinction and why it's in the toss up zone and why Jackson,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: even though he is slightly ahead in the polls,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: is not clearly ahead in the I do want to reemphasize that this is very close to
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: a coin flip race.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: We shouldn't overstate what 57% means versus 50%.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically saying we give bottoms a very slight edge in what is pretty much a toss-up race.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And just to note the point that Maddisen had made about how the components work.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So in this case, unlike Texas, fundamentals matter more.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Polling slightly less.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Polling was 45% last time.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Polling is 37% here.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And markets were 25%,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: which I believe, Maddisen, you told me is the highest markets can matter, 25%.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's 23% here.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a mix.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's very rarely for a big race going to be like You know,
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: radically different because there's enough polling and enough interest markets wise,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: but fundamentals mattering more here,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: as Geoffrey explained, explains why you have Keisha Lance Bottoms slightly favored.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's do two house races that I saw people ask about,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: which one I know is very hotly contested,
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: which is the, um,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Lawler,
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: New York 17,
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Geoffrey, um, might take
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: us a minute to get there, but this is, we're getting there.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting there.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Lawler is one of,
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: now this has changed because they redrew a bunch of lines in Texas and in Florida
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: and stuff,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: but Prior to that re-redrawing of the lines,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Lawler was one of only three Republican House members who represented a district
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: that Kamala Harris won in 2024.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this was always going to be a medium to heavy lift depending on the environment.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about it.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, Lawler,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: as you pointed out,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: for that reason,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: that seat,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: the Nebraska 2nd Congressional District,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: which Don Bacon is retiring from, he's not seeking re-election.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's the seat around Omaha.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then Brian Fitzpatrick in the Pennsylvania's first district outside of in
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: the Philly suburbs, Bucks County.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: That is the those are the three seats.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now, with the redraws, as you said, it gets a little more complicated.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: But Lawler was always going to be a top target,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: given the sort of the components of this district.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: And right now we make him a slight underdog.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's sort of the similar situation with his bottoms in Georgia,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: where, you know, 58 yards.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Not quite 60%, you know, a hair better than a coin flip, but not much better.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is really a testament to Lawler.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And in the forecast model, I mean, look,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you pointed out, we don't have, we have, you know, we have a handful.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Again, much more reliance on fundamentals because there's less polling.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, it's just how
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: it works.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that's also,
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: a fair thing with the House because there are fewer House members in this day
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: and age because of the nature of partisanship who are,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Vastly outperform the sort of baseline of their districts.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's not to say that they can't.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it is challenging.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so at the end of the day, the fundamentals are good for Democrats here.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so the one thing that is not – of the various structural conditions of the race,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: the only one.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: That is good, probably notably good for Lawler is incumbency.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: And in our forecast model, we do have a component that measures how well someone runs.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm pretty sure Lawler has a pretty decent one because he is one in this seat,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: even though it is obviously it has a very slight Democratic lean,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: sort of its baseline partisanship.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so in that sense,
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: that's part of the reason why this isn't a lean D race in our forecast is
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: that Lawler is a relatively strong incumbent.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it is true.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: You've had some Republican internal polls that have shown him ahead very slightly.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: The one nonpartisan poll did have Conley slightly ahead, Democrat Cait Conley, his opponent.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Lawler is looking – Like he's going to be tough to beat, but he is maybe a slighter dog.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's sort of, again, the borderline between coin flip and a very, very slight favorite.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Feels like an environmental loss to me in that it's just a shit environment for Republicans.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: That would be such a house result.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Lawler could do everything right and lose.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's absolutely a house result.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the same with Fitzpatrick.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look,
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: the first district – I mean, look,
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Nebraska's second because it's an open seat of that sort of that trio looks gone.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit better than – Republicans, I think, have stopped advertising there.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they stopped advertising there.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: In our forecast now, Democrats basically have a 9 in 10 chance of flipping it.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: It is the bluest seat that Republicans hold based on – at least in
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: the 2024 election,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: before any of the redraws, it was the bluest seat that Republicans held.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: And Bacon had just outperformed the Republican baseline,
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: outperformed Trump by some distance there to hold on to it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: But – And Fitzpatrick,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: meanwhile,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: has a history in the first district,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: just as another comparison point,
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: so on the other side of that,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: where he has really outrun the baseline for Republicans.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: He managed to win in 2018,
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: even in a bad year for the GOP in a seat very similar to the one he currently holds.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: He is slightly favored.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lean R race in our forecast.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's at like 63% or something.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: But if he lost, it would not shock me at all.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because if he's at 63, it means 37 out of 100 times the Democrat wins.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's how it works.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's like we're getting into the world of like 238 seats or something for Democrats.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: They picked off Brian Fitzpatrick because it was a good year for Democrats.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they flipped a seat that at its baseline – Made more,
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, made sense as a seat that Democrats would flip.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I see a request.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know nothing about this.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maryland 3, Skelley, that's probably, you probably know that one, but I do not know that one.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: That is not one I am familiar with, but I'm sure they have a forecast for it.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so this is not going to be a competitive seat.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I don't know anything
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: about it.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sarah Elfreth is going to win re-election.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: This seat might have been It probably wouldn't have been interesting in
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: a general election,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: but it might have had an interesting primary had Maryland Democrats been able
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: to redraw the map in the way that they were talking about
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: because it did seem like some of the options
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: that were proposed would have actually created some potential issues for Elfreth and
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: that did not come to pass as it played out.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, this is a place where we don't have any polls.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's just fundamentals and markets.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Fundamentals and markets.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: And just for the record,
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: don't say that we don't do your random districts that nobody talks about
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: because we just did.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what I would say is let's go back,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Geoffrey, if we can, let's go back just to the main screen.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So Maddisen, why don't you sum up for people?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let me make a quick plug before you do that and say this is Maddisen Murrell,
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: data scientist who manages this model and this forecast for Decision Desk HQ,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: which is a mammoth job.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yet she's significantly more qualified for it than someone like me,
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: despite being 22 years old.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's just very, very, very smart, folks.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's just the reality.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Geoffrey Skelley,
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: who is 23 years old, who is the chief election analyst at Decision Desk HQ.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maddisen,
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: why don't you just talk about sort of, again, let's just reset.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: And folks, I would urge you, you can see this information, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can see this for yourself.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can click on the forecast tab.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: I would urge you to consider becoming a Votes Pro member so you can get all the amazing goodies.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Maddisen,
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: let's just give people the 50,000 foot.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And let's end on this because I don't think we've hit this yet, is the likelihood of a sweep.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or the likelihood of Republican sweeping and keeping.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know the Democratic sweep has now gone over 50% for you guys.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't we talk about those two numbers, Maddisen,
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: and then we'll say sayonara unless Geoffrey's got something to add.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of as we've been saying throughout this past 45 minutes,
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: the environment has been looking good and been trending good for Democrats.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's been pretty consistently in their favor between generic ballot and all
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: the other polls that have come out.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've seen this by for the past, I believe it's three weeks.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had to pull the date on it last week for the past three weeks.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: We've had Democrats favored for both the House and the Senate.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously, you know, there's some math behind that we can go into if we'd like briefly.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: But we have just over 54 percent.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So still within what we would consider like a toss up range.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's not,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: and that a lot of that uncertainty comes from the House or the Senate being kind of
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: as narrow as it is.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: But things have been looking good for Democrats.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats look really, really good for the House.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they've been looking a lot better for the Senate in the past, you know, weeks and months.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Conversely,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: kind of the,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: let's say stereotypical thing,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: especially that we were hearing a few months ago was a Democratic House and
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: a Republican Senate.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is about...
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just as likely, I believe, as a Republican sweep.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think sweep is 20, I guess.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're very close.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Very close.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, okay.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Last week it was 22 and 22, so forgive my stale numbers.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's close enough.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Within two points, it's basically the same.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: But, yeah,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: so obviously things are not looking as good for Republicans in either chamber,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: let alone both.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: They have the odds for – I believe that's yeah,
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: it's over over double that there's like technically speaking,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: like twice twice the odds of Republicans sweeping is Democrats sweeping.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not looking fantastic, at least on that front.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: But obviously,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: as you can see here,
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: kind of the conventional wisdom that Democrats are going to take the House,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans winning the Senate just because the Democrats have
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: an inherently steeper climb to the Senate.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's about just as likely.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: As Democrats holding on.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can get into the math a little bit if we want.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: So in order of likelihood in the model right now,
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: it is Democratic sweep,
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Republican Senate,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Democratic House, Republican sweep, Democratic Senate, Republican House.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Very tiny chance.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Basically no chance.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: No chance.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that would be a very weird
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: environment for that to happen.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: That wouldn't make any sense.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: This one's in here
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: for fun.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: This one's in here to add everything else up to 100.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Maddisen,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to leave yet because you keep saying,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know, we could go into the math here if you want.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: So go slightly into the math.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not missing your hints.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go slightly into how we get here.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, Geoff, if you could pull up the Senate.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Chamber.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually my best.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've trained up at the top of the lines.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is my most trained response.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: So basically,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: as you can kind of see with this chart right here,
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: so the Senate is the least favorable chamber for the Democrats.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: If they're Winning the House, or I guess, yeah.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: If they're winning the House, they're winning it about half the time.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: If they're winning the House, they are certainly winning the Senate, right?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, if they're, yeah.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, if they're winning the Senate, they're certainly winning
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: the House.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are too many.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's fine.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bring it down to one.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: You understand.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: If the Democrats are winning the Senate,
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: there's,
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: as we saw above, functionally no universe in which they're losing the House.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or I can put a number on it and it's 2%.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Conversely,
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: in the House,
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: if Democrats are winning the House,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: which is about a 23%, so pretty damn close to that one member.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: If they win the House, there's also functionally no odds that they lose the Senate.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you mean, sorry, you meant the Republicans.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: The Republicans,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: 23% chance that if they win the House,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: then that universe,
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: they're almost certainly winning the Senate because
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: the House is their worst chamber.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I got you.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm having these moments all the time, Maddisen, so just trust me, you're not alone.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Too much data.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: If either party wins their worst chamber, they will win their best chamber.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: In most cases.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: In most cases.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: In a lot of cases, yeah.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because really only if it's one of those really,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: really competitive sort of situations do you – or maybe even it undershoots
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: the Democrats.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like a slightly better than average outcome for Republicans is probably the one
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: where they hold the Senate but lose the House.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because the House is just too difficult for them to hold.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so that – maybe that's the universe where like – Republicans end up with
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: a 50-50 Senate or something and they hold on.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which would be a minus three, but they'd still control.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd lose the House under that scenario
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: but have like a 10-seat minority
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: as opposed to a 30-seat minority.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean that's probably what you're looking at, something of that nature.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think it's so important.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: The point Maddisen makes, and you got to think of this, it is all connected.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know it might not feel like it is if you live in Connecticut and your cousin lives
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: in Texas or whatever,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: but the political environment,
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: broadly speaking,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: under which all these people are running is going to be very similar.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd much rather be running for that.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Look, if Ken Paxton was the nominee for Senate in Maine- As a Republican,
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: he would have already lost.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: It would already be over.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it would be over.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: It would be over.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: being in the right state matters in terms of a state that more favors you,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: but you're still running in the same political environment.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the environment
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: right here.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the environment is basically 49-41 Democratic.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that's really, really, really, really important to remember.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: We will do this twice more.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: We may go long on the last one,
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: not too long, but slightly longer, but we're going to do this next week.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Schedules pending, but we'll do this next week with Maddisen and Geoffrey.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would urge you again, votes.decisiondeskhq.com, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can see a lot of already what we're seeing on screen.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can also become a Votes Pro member, which Skelley, how much is it?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not expensive.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, I believe it is $9.99 for the rest of the year.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's well worth your money if
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: you want to go- That's $9.99, to
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: be clear, not
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: $9.99.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, $9.99, not to scare people.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, $9.99.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's well worth becoming a Pro's member.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just like,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: the thing is like,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: We have all of our polling averages and stuff,
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: but you can look into like Hispanic voters nationally.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: You can look at Hispanic crosstabs for Texas,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: which is a very interesting one that I keep looking at because we have enough data
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: to do that for them.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: remember,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: President Trump won in the exit poll at least,
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: won Latino voters by about 10 in 2024.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: And right now, Talarico is ahead by like 16.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that'd be like a 25-ish point swing.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's an amazing resource.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: It really is.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Just to go to North Carolina,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: because it's a place where we actually have some early voting data, you can see what
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Which parties have returned what and how much?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we're updating this stuff constantly as the data is coming in from the states and counties.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this will obviously,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: when early voting gets going in some places,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Georgia just started their early voting.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can see that.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, you can see all this information and it's all right.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing resource.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot believe it's only $9.99,
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: but it's an amazing resource even just for Between now and the election and after
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: the election when you're going to want to sort through everything
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: and figure out what the hell happened.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: Votes Pro, so decisiondeskhq.com.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can export results.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: You can play around with stuff yourself.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, there's lots
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's really pretty remarkable stuff.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: We will be back sometimes next week and then sometime in the week before
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: the election with Maddisen and Geoffrey.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thrilled that you guys took as much time as you did.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for everyone who joined us live.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: We, I think, got to all the races that people asked about.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you have future – come primed next week.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a race you want us to look at,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: that's not the Arkansas Senate race because I've made clear we're not talking about
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: that any longer.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Cotton is going to win, folks.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: If he doesn't win,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: as Geoffrey said,
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are going to have 63 Senate seats, which is possible but not probable.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Come armed with that.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: We will make sure we go through as many as we can and we'll see sort of where the model stands.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maddisen,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: thank you for your yeomans-like work to maintain the model.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Skelley,
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: thank you for your terrific hair as always and your brain underneath
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: that amazing hairline.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Chris.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: We appreciate y'all.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next week.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everybody.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Bye, everybody.