Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Decision Desk HQ 2026 Post-Labor Day Forecast Update, with Chris Cillizza

Transcript

Decision Desk HQ 2026 Post-Labor Day Forecast Update, with Chris Cillizza · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we are live.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: You are you are looking live.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: That is this is the DDHQ posse.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Madison is on at least on my right.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Geoffrey is on my screen left.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Geoffrey is the chief elections officer.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's not right.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Analyst.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, damn it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: CEO, I should have made it that.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Head honcho at Decision Desk HQ.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Madison is a fellow.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And Madison, what are your other titles?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've been up to data scientist since we last spoke.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, congratulations.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's all happening.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Data scientist slash student slash whatever else.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Woman of many talents.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Madison runs the,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: or is in primary charge of the DDHQ forecast model, which we've talked about before.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to be on probably every other week to talk about changes in the model.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is Decision Desk HQ's...
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: The best effort to predict where based on everything they plug into the model,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: what we will see on November 3rd.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, why don't you before?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, thank you to everyone who's joining.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: I would say if you have questions on the model on specific races, please let us know.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Put it in the live chat and we will get to them.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, why don't you just do a like a.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: The model for dummies.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're probably going to have you do this every two weeks.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Just how we get to where we are.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And Jeffrey, can you share your screen so people can...
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I would urge people, if you have not gone to votes.decisiondeskhq.com, you should.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a ton of great free content.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: You can upgrade to a pro membership for even better content.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: But the forecast, I believe, is in front of the...
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: This is what you will see when you get there.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Geoffrey's click forecast.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: The forecasting is in front of the paywall.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Madison,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: why don't you just talk about the model itself and then we'll talk about the House
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: and Senate.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the model,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of falls into like, I would say like two camps of like stuff that goes in.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like stuff that has happened and that we already know that isn't going to change ever.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then stuff that is happening and is going to change over the course of the cycle.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So stuff that has happened is like 2024 presidential results, incumbency.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that obviously changes the primary sometimes,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: but more static measures like that of like,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: how does this district, state, et cetera, tend to vote historically?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the history and lifespan of our training set, right?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other stuff that changes is going to be prediction markets.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Those are in there, weighted kind of by volume and all of that good business, and then polling.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And those are to kind of give us signal of,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know, yes,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: we know how these districts and entities vote Democrat versus Republican
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: over history, but how do they feel about X, Y, and Z candidates?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do they feel about this scandal, that scandal?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: The forecast historical training set has no idea who Grant Plattner was,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: but polls and markets do.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they kind of bridge that gap between 2024 and today.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's basically how the model works,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: and it blends all those things together,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: pumps out these really pretty numbers that are sometimes scary,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes controversial, but good numbers in my opinion generally.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say to people,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: this is in between kind of political prognosticators like
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: the Cook Political Report inside elections that are kind of they are on
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: the old timey kind of like scout end of like if we're using a baseball metaphor,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: like the eye test.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they factor in polling and that sort of thing, too.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: But this is not the extreme of it's just, you know, what history is shown.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is a mix of what history is shown, plus the current
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: The current sort of what we know to to Madison's point about polling and
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: about prediction markets.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, Geoffrey, can you pull up the Senate?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do that one first.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: What does the model have in the Senate?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And Madison,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: explain to people how often you run the model and what the model spits out
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: to get us this 50 50 toss up.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we run the model every morning, roughly 10 a.m.-ish Eastern time, give or take.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a little earlier, usually by noon every day.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: if something crazy happens and we're like,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: wow, we need to see this immediately, we'll run it immediately.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But at a minimum, it gets run every weekday.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And basically it spits out what it primarily is calculating is margins.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those margins gets turned into probabilities.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then with those probabilities,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: we also will run 1 million simulations of those probabilities.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, Geoff, if you want to scroll down to those pretty histogram parts at the bottom.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I like those ones.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it spits out these simulations.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which basically tell us,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: based on the probability each of these seats go a different way,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: this is what the Senate and the House look like,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: assuming their seats and both chambers are correlated with each other.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And all that means
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: is that if Democrats are doing well in the House,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: in theory, they'll do well in the Senate too, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: And this is interesting to me because you guys,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: and I don't know if it was this week or at the end of last week,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: but this forecast has moved toward...
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I saw earlier this week, I looked at it where-
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Out of your million simulations,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: like 10.04% produced a 50-50 Senate and 10.04% produced
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: a 51 Democrat 49 Republican Senate, which would obviously give Democrats control.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is there all race or races in there, Geoffrey or Madison, that have changed?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it the overall wins?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you explain why the model has moved to?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you can see the arrows in the last week, as Geoffrey was showing, moved up.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can take this one.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then, Jeff, if you want to follow up, you're totally
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: welcome to.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Really a big thing that has obviously obviously polling is coming in.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the big driver on this on a lot of aspects.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the first part of that is one of the big things in our model that moves
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: a lot is kind of we use the generic ballot average,
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is basically a poll that's like,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: would you prefer any Democrat in Congress to any Republican in Congress?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: No names.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hence generic.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what we use to gauge political environment.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that has moved towards Democrats quite a bit.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be it was jumpier a couple months ago.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's been very consistent between, let's call it six and seven in the past couple weeks or so.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been really, really...
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Consistently favoring Democrats recently.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a big part of it.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been driving a lot of our races on a national level.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then additionally, we've gotten in some other kind of left-leaning polling that's come out.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly, I think some interesting ones are Iowa and Ohio.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think Iowa is maybe the latest...
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know there was a poll today that had Tariq ahead and Robson and the governor's race ahead 10.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I was I was still leaning Republican.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But Ohio and Texas have because of this generic ballot thing and then because
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: of their own polling from those state level also leaning towards Democrats.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those two have shifted forward.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ever so slightly in Democrats favor over the past.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, with Geoffrey is showing this.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: It is remarkable,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: by the way,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Skelley,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: that if you had told me 53 days out from the election that Texas and Maine would be
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: the same rough probability of going Democratic, I would have been surprised.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's a pretty, pretty remarkable.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: but the polling,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: I would point people to,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: there's been like five polls in the last week and a half that have Tallarico up
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: in Texas by, you know, between like two and five points.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it's pretty consistent.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the big part of it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then let's do the House if we can.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: House, I know,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: has been pretty consistent,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: still pretty consistent, 68% probability that Democrats win.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Any real change there, Madison?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is it moving in the same way as the Senate?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is it getting better for Democrats in terms of the probabilities?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's moving directionally in the same way,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: but obviously it's a little bit less like Maybe controversial is not the right word,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a little bit less special because we've been expecting this forecast
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: to favor Democrats for the House the whole time.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, okay, yeah,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: like a week ago,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they were at, Hold on, I'm looking at seat count on my own.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: A week ago, they were at 228, 207 in terms of 28 Democratic seats, 207 Republican.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're at 229, 206.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so while that is like a two-seat change for all the way around,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: it's still not a very robust change and it's not deviating from kind
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: of what we've It's consistent.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's consistent.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's never dipped below or anything like that.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Senate's been a little bit more special lately.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, a couple things.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're going to get to your questions.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: I see a couple people have already put races they want us to talk about specifically.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Texas and Iowa.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've written them down.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: I want to shout out Matt Swiger,
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: who says,
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: it's definitely worth mentioning how great DDHQ is at also being able
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: to show even obscure-ish races instead of just national and state.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was able to use them to track my small city mayoral race earlier this year.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they do.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: When we do these election nights,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Geoffrey, myself, and Chuck Todd, we get the DDHQ full access.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I was unaware that there were 972 races in some state.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're collecting on everything.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Again, votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Trust me, there's plenty there that's free.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think you would want to sign up for the pro subscription.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: That gives you access.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Skelley, you want to talk about what that gives you access to, the difference between the two?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then we will get to your questions.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have a race you want us to talk about, put it in the chat.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead, Geoffrey.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So right now there's actually basically a general election deal that makes it a lot cheaper.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you can have that through the end of the year.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it would be really nice on election night.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have access to a few different things.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: For one thing, you can see our vote drop information.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like on election night.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, Oh, the numbers just changed in the overall.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where did that data come from?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Was that like a really pivotal county?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that will tell you where it came from,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: the county and direction, the amounts of votes that dropped.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what I think is probably the coolest feature for like an election night and
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: an election junkie is the decision view.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of having like 12 tabs open...
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like me normally.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: The races that you're interested in.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can use our decision view feature or the votes pro option and put basically all
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: the little things you're interested in one view.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can have many different views and switch through them and have, but have multiple races.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you wanted every important race in Texas on one decision view, you could have them.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Senate race, governor's race, some key house races.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: if you're interested in seeing if like the 35th in South Texas will flip
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: For Republicans or Democrats will manage to hold on to it,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: even though it's one of the targeted seats for Republicans
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: and their new gerrymander.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can have all this up there.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can have like prediction market data.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can have the vote drop data.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can have for statewide elections.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: We now have a feature that allows you to see the election results by media market.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: which is really fun and really interesting because it's a way of almost looking
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: at states in a more regional way.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Especially a big state.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of political professionals look at states.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's how they look at it is by media market.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot of features like this.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the Decision View, I think, is the cherry on top.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's the thing that really, really is super, super special.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: But there's so many things that you can then use on Decision View.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say for people who've been watching our most recent live streams
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: that Geoffrey,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: myself and Chuck do on Tuesday primary nights,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Geoffrey has been using Decision View,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: which is basically,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: to his point, you can kind of create the dashboards you want effectively, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: What you want to see.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: It really is like an a la carte menu.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: You can sign up for a pro membership.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Get the general election special.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's run through some races.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And people, if you have questions on races, Again, we will go through them.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: I've written them down in the order they came in.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we briefly touched on Texas,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Texas Senate,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: but that is the most questions I get always are about Texas and Michigan, right?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about Texas.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can we pull up the Texas odds?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: So James Tallarico is narrowly favored to win Texas.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: She said that there, Tallarico 53%, Paxson 47%.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Skelley, I know you have this if you scroll down.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Can you just show the progress of that over time?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right there.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: So Madison, can you talk about this?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, we've seen this go from even in May.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Paxton was not an overwhelming favorite,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: or I should say it was probably the Republican nominee at that point
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: because we didn't have nominees.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: But Paxton has steadily been 55, 56, as Skelley's 12, 60.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: This this has flipped this flip kind of at the end of August.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is that polling in the state?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is it the generic ballot?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a combination?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: What what does it there?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a little bit all the above.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Tallarico, he's been winning the polls.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've been seeing a lot of and he's winning the polls and
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: the generic ballot polls have been leaning towards Democrats.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's been doing exceptionally well.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that this is we've been talking about this a lot internally
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: where this is a good indicator or like this is kind of like Democrats perfect storm
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: to have like a fighting chance in Texas.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: They needed,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: A Democrat-favorite environment with a good,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: strong Democratic candidate and a less strong Republican candidate.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they have all of those three things.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, like, yeah, we have this at, what is it, like 53, 57 right now?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 53,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: 47, yeah.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: That in no way means that, you know, Tallarico's gonna, like, take it home.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a coin flip, yeah.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's effectively a coin flip.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: However,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know, It's, it's,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's showing that,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: um, that in, you know, most, in most scenarios, Tallery goes winning it.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, does this necessarily mean that he will win it?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe not,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: but they, their, their perfect storm is, is cooking up quite, quite well right now.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: For what it's worth,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, in 2018, better work, never had it this good position in the race.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Never let in polling.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there were like a handful of polls that he led in.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: And overall, he never led in terms of an average in that entire race.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And here's Tallarico pretty consistently leading at this point, not by a lot.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, notice that he is not right by 50.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, a number of the polls have not shown him right up by 50.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is worth noting that, like, look,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: the undecided universe of voters in Texas or the voters
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: who are saying they don't know,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: saying they aren't sure who they're going to vote for at this point,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: probably a Republican leading group.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean, though, that Tallarico isn't going to end up pulling this out.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that it's something to watch as we get closer to Election Day
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: and you get more people off the sidelines and also more polls that are, I mean,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: at this point,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: most polls are of likely voters,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: but that likely universe,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: likely voter universe could change some, which could help Paxton.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or Tallarico will continue to lead because Paxton's got lots of issues and the sort
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: of perfect storm that Madison was speaking to will continue to give Tallarico
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: at least a slight edge.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is...
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a third party, is there a libertarian in this race?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: There is, right?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Just to your 50% point is like, he could win with 49.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Rico could win with slightly, either of them could win with slightly less.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think the libertarian is going to get,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: the libertarian is not going to get 15% of the vote, but.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I believe the libertarian is Ted Brown.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, sure.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Not John Brown.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, not John Brown.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Jeffrey, can you, first of all, I have two observations.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: One, um,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: The nicest thing that has been said about Ken Paxton,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: including by the president, was just said by Madison.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: She said, the less good candidate, which is a very kind way of putting what Ken Paxton is.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, Geoffrey or Madison, can you explain?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: We did this the last time.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: We're probably going to do it every time we do this.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Explain the difference between 53% of the vote and a 53% probability of winning.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because right now...
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Tallarico is a 53%.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, he's winning by six points.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Can you guys just take that on?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to make sure people understand that every time we do this.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially what's going on here is, think of it like this.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Tallarico currently is winning slightly more often in our million simulations than a coin flip.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like every time you flip a coin, 50% chance it's heads, 50% chance it's tails.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: But in the universe where he's winning,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: if heads is Tallarico,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: every time it's hitting heads in one of our simulations,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: the percentage of the vote that he is winning could vary.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It could vary a lot.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: He could win 49% to 48.8% or something, or he could win 52, 46.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like the different...
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Vote percentage that he wins by, every one of those is a win.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it counts toward that binary outcome of a win or a loss.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the projected vote share right now on average is 50.5 to 49.5.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that means- And vote share is the percentage- Right, right.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not probability.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: The average across all of our forecasts- Is that,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Tallarico is narrowly winning on average,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: which reflects,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: these don't always perfectly line up because,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: there could be,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: there's variation across what those results look like in terms of
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: the projected vote share.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact that he is a very slight favorite, very,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: very slight favorite overall in the win probability,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: he's also just very narrowly winning on average in terms of vote share.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of this universe is Ken Paxton winning 51-49,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: but there's 51-49 Tallarico, 52-48 Tallarico.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: All those are possibilities in that 53%.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them are even higher than that for him.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: He might win 55-45.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Those are rarer.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're not getting those very much, but that's what's forming that probability number.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Versus the vote share, which is the actual vote that they are winning on election day.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And again, just think of it this way.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: A million times they do this every weekday.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Out of the million times,
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: James Tallarico wins 53% of the time and Ken Paxton wins 47% of the time.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty damn close, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Substantively, it is basically a coin flip.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's go to Iowa.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: I did a speech in Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas, Overland Park, Kansas on Thursday.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Was that yesterday?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yesterday.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, a lot of planes.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, that's a...
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was lovely.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I said, we're in Sharice David's district, which they were very pleased by, that I knew.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: So somebody in the crowd asked me, what's a...
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: So what's a seat in the Senate where if that goes,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: you would say Democrats are definitely going to be in the Senate majority?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Iowa, I said, look,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm saying it partly because of the Senate race,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: but also because it has a really competitive governor's race.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: It is at least three, three out of the four House districts are competitive.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's a lot going on there.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, can you speak to kind of what we've seen here in the numbers?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Ashley Hinson is the Republican member of Congress from eastern Iowa, right, Skelley?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Northeast, yeah, yeah.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like from actually the more,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: slightly more Democratic part, well, the more Democratic part of the state.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Turek is a state rep. A rep from the Omaha suburbs, actually.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: From the suburbs of Omaha, a state health district.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, not usually where Democrats are from in the state.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: In a district that Donald Trump won in 2024.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, can you talk about this, sort of where we've seen this race move a little bit?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a similar story to Texas, right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a similar story for all of them a little bit.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: But this one especially,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think as of looking at the poll average on my end,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: as of three days ago, Turek is leading our poll average.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: I see it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: He's got to be pulled up.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Geoffrey.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: He is ever so slightly, he has just like the most razor thin edge in that pool average.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you can count 0.5 as an edge.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that that's... Nominally ahead.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he's it's kind of the same deal where he's he's trending and
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: the environment is trending in a way that is positive for Democrats.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: you can still see that our,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: it's still we're still like,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know, we're not in like that 53 percent like Pax and Tallarico.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're still it's still close.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a little bit less close than Texas right now.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just because of how Iowa kind of historically votes.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they're a little bit, little bit of it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the number off the top of my head, but they absolutely voted for Trump in 2024.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: He won by he won by 13.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So so he did pretty well, I would say.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it's interesting there, too.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And another interesting part as a kind of like tangent of just like
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: the polls we've been seeing out of Iowa is we have Rob Sand.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Leading in the governor's forecast for that as well.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this is,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's looking good for Democrats in Iowa right now, or I guess maybe less bad.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Skelley, is Chet Culver the last Democrat to get elected governor of Iowa?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's right.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: 2006?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he won 2006 and then lost to Branstad in 2010.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then the last senator would have to be Harkin, right?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Did not see re-election in 2014 and Joni Ernst won.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And Joni Ernst won.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: So the last time they won a Senate seat was 10 years ago.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: The last time they won the governorship was 20 years ago.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: So to Madison's point, there's a lot of history there.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: But Republicans control every statewide office except state auditor,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: which is Rob Sand, who is running for governor.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: I have a few more that I saw.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, folks, throw them in if you want.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you have specific race questions, throw them in the live chat.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have a few more that I would I think are going to produce the model is going
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: to show are less competitive.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do Florida Senate where you have Ashley Moody
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: against surprisingly not Alex Vindman, but Angie Nixon, the Democratic Socialist.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ashley Moody was appointed.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: This is Marco Rubio's seat.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, or was Marco Rubio seat?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Where are we, uh, with the model on Florida?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Cause that is not one that when we kind of list the,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the most competitive races, it's not usually on there.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, right now Moody has about a four and five shot of winning.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: the things that go into this part of it's polling,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: um, Uh, she, she is leading, uh, she's led in the most recent polls.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: We actually don't have a,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: a formal polling average built out for this one yet because we didn't have as much,
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: we had more,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of Moody versus Venman polling,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: but we didn't have as much Moody versus Nixon polling.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but in the polls we do have,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: about the best number, I mean,
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: the best number we've seen basically is a change research poll,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: which is a democratic pollster and running even with Moody.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise Moody has been, has been ahead.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that, Plus the sort of Republican lean of Florida.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Florida has been,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: even when you were looking at polling of Alexander Vindman as
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: the potential Democrat, Florida has been different.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you've had this group of Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas, and Florida.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: These are five states that President Trump carried by 11 to 14 percentage points in 2024.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the other four, so not Florida, but the other four, Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like in Alaska by a little bit.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Florida has not shown that.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so overall,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: this has all produced a situation where Republicans are looking a little bit better
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: in Florida.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is not ruling out Nixon winning.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, 20 percent chance of winning is definitely not nothing.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it just says,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it is it is it has been categorically different from those other four.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, question about the model itself as it relates to Florida, but more generally.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Polling obviously does play a role, you mentioned this, in the model.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: What happens when, look, we got a ton of polling on Texas.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: We got a ton of polling on Michigan.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: We got a bunch of polling on Iowa.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: But in some of these other states, you have far less polling.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the polling that you have is often done by either a Democratic firm or
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: a Republican firm to,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: you know, maybe in theory, kind of like get people to pay attention to the race.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Does that just mean the polling matters less as a percentage of figuring out the outcomes?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Explain how you do that when you don't have as much data for some of these races
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: that are not the seven most competitive Senate races.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate Geoff pulling up the graph that I was going to ask him
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: to pull up preemptively.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it just goes to show here.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So for other races, like let's call it Texas, polling is maxed out.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like 60%, right?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Of the forecast.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Of the forecast.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 60% of 75.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, right,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: right, because the markets can be up to 25.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So polling is only ever going to be 40,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: at best, right,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: in a Texas situation,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: right, it's only ever going to be 45% of that final probability number that you see.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, And that,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: but obviously when you don't,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: that number,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: that weight, right,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: is derived from how many polls there are,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: right, and how much we trust and like them.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So with,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: like you said,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: like sponsored polls and stuff like that,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: those are handled a little bit differently than a non-sponsored poll or like
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: a non-partisan poll, stuff like that, or like an internal poll run by a campaign.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of fishing for a certain response, right?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that just means when we have, you know, less polls, it gets downweighted.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that typically puts a lot more emphasis on the fundamentals,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: which is basically the historical data that I was talking about earlier.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this is that just means that Florida,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Florida's average right now is more heavily considering,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: let's call it,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 2024 presidential results and some other stuff than it is polls.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you and if you if you're a Democrat and you want that number to move,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: you need a bunch of polls to come out that show it closer effectively.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's not a lot of polling.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what's out there is a lot of it's partisan and a lot of partisan sponsored, at least.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of it shows Ashley Moody ahead of Angie Nixon.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: In the fundamentals one,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: I have one more,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I have like a 50,000 foot view question that either of you can answer.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is about the construction of the model.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: How do you decide what the highest amount polling could matter in the forecast?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do you decide how much fundamentals can matter?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: What fundamental,
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: like you can see in here,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: national environment,
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: incumbency, presidential party cycle effects, campaign, like fundraising.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of models I know do not use, for example, the prediction markets.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: You've got calcium polymarket.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: You guys do.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is that all done on the front end?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And is there any tweaking done to the model in terms of the components that make up
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: the model between when you start it and when it ends on election day?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can speak to this a little bit.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty hand-weighty.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just get that kind of, you know, out at the top.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of just, we think that these things matter this much, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say with polls,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: that's a little bit
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: more distilled of a decision than with the markets, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've had polling for probably as long as anybody's been doing this, if not longer.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so...
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Polls, it's kind of,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: we know that,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: we like polls maybe a little bit better than historical election results
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: because it's not 2024, right?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And stuff like that.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we personally put a decent amount of trust into the polls that we're putting into the model.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's...
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how we picked that number.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I also will say that number was handed down to me from higher ups and people
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: with far more degrees in education and IQ than I have.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I was not necessarily involved in deciding the number.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's known as above your pay grade, which is a great thing.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: I use that all the time when people ask us hard questions.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So exactly how we landed at that number is well above my faith rate.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then with the markets too, this is something that we're going to see this year.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some people use them.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some people rely very heavily on them.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some people rely less on them.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some people only use CalShea and some people use both.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some people just use Polymarket.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: We use both.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: We use both, yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of going to be a test year in terms of the markets.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: For everybody using them.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's used them before.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we like 25.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: We like 25 and have it be scaled based on how much money is in there
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: because obviously you don't want to make a market where one guy decides to put $100
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: on his congressman deciding the entire forecast.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a little hand wavy and we're going to find out November 4th if
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: that number was right or wrong.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: And adjust accordingly for a future.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I got one more that I see, which is South Dakota.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: And this is an interesting one because if you've not followed the South Dakota race,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: this is Mike Rounds, incumbent senator, former governor, I believe, right, Geoffrey?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep, yep.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Two-term governor.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, running again.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: South Dakota is not typically a place that we focus on.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: But what's interesting is Brian- He's speaking a third term already.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe it's- Oh, it makes
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: me feel old.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: He got elected in 2014 to the Senate, reelected in 2020, and now he's running- Oh, man.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Dude, I remember covering the first John Cornyn Senate race,
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: and I was like, what was that, like a decade ago?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it was 24 years ago.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so Brian Banks,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: who's the other guy you see there, and I actually interviewed him on my Substack.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: I did a Substack Live with him.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: I like him.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's like a National Park Ranger.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: He ran against John Thune as a Democrat and got absolutely walloped.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: In this race, he is running as an independent.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that's interesting because the Democratic Party...
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Has sort of seeded,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: eventually,
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: the Democratic nominee who won the nomination dropped out and endorsed Banks.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of seeded the nomination to him.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a two-way race, a Republican against an Independent.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotten less buzz,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have to say,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: than Nebraska,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: where you have another incumbent,
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: you have an incumbent senator in Pete Ricketts running against an Independent
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: without a Democrat, a guy named Dan Osborne.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: We can look at that after.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is 98 to 2.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Does that mean Brian Banks has almost no chance of winning?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what's interesting here,
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: and I actually want to hear more from Madison about this because this is one
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: of those cases we don't have a lot of polling for this race.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what polling we do have,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: there was a partisan poll from Bangs' side that did have him not running far behind.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: But currently the polls are not playing a part in this
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: because I don't think we have enough polling.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if we get some more polling here,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it will then come into consideration and that might help Bangs' chances.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they keep releasing polling from their campaign that shows it close,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: but they're probably not enough of it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we just, well,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Madison,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I will defer to you on this,
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: but I know that I'm sure that that is part of the situation.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Internal polls.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the exact math.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: They definitely matter more than next.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: They definitely matter less than external polls.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can say that with a significant amount of confidence.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we basically have no external polling.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have an NRSC poll.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have a policy polling poll for bangs.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we have no independent polling of this race.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I think it's internal.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's internal and they're sponsored.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's, there's some drop off of like weight.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or some,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: some kind of math that also,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: that is also a little bit about my pay grade just ever so slightly.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: this one is just, this one is going to be very, um, dependent on historical results.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it is kind of,
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: there's a trend, um,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: across a couple of these,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know, I don't know if this is too far West to be called the Midwest.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know exactly where Midwest starts and ends.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: The census includes it in their Midwest region,
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't think generally, I think it's like the plains.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: Plains, probably, yeah.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the scub region, basically.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you similarly have, you know, situations in like Montana and Idaho.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's in Idaho and you have Seth Bodnar in.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: I actually think Seth Bodnar is probably the best candidate of all the independents running.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: He was raised the most money, former president of the University of Montana.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is that there's a Democrat.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: The Democrat hasn't gotten out of the race.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Alani Bankhead refuses to get out of the race, which makes it very hard for him to win.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a representative of a trend we're seeing.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think also Nebraska is also a classic example of kind of the thinking that maybe
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: the only way to unseat these Republicans in strong,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: strong, historically Republican areas are with, quote, independence.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Handle the quotes as you wish.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: it's going to be highly,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: since we don't have polls, highly derived from historical values.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have markets in there.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't Foresee the markets disagreeing super handedly.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to say here.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the best markets are five points off from what we have.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So like right now, Dan,
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: in our forecast of those sort of those those independents or,
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you could call them pseudo independents, quasi independents.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Who are functioning as the Democratic nominee in a lot of these races.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Osborne has the best shot, but right now he only has about a 15%.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a great shot.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: But that is higher.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, another thing here is that there isn't a ton of polling in Nebraska either.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it's been Osborne internals.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's another challenge for getting a read on what's happening.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for what it's worth, when we think about the Nebraska situation, Osborne ran in 2024.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Same situation, ran against Deb Fisher, the other Republican senator from Nebraska.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: He ended up losing by about seven.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this was while Kamala Harris was losing the state by about 20.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he clearly ran ahead of the Democratic ticket as the as
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: an independent functioning essentially as the Democrat or partly as the Democrat.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see how in an environment where,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know, right now the generic ballot is about is almost D plus seven.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's D plus six to seven right now.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's a seven to eight point swing,
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: even nine point swing,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: depending on where it is from where we were in 2024 nationally.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you could think,
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: well, maybe Osborne has a shot at winning this thing if he gets that kind of swing.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing is Pete Ricketts may be taking this more seriously than Deb Fischer ever did.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so he may,
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: in that sense,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: he may be sort of running the campaign to cast Osborne as a Democratic vote from
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: the jump.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: at the end of the day, Osborne this time around, he's not surprising anybody.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so in terms of campaign strategy and how people are thinking about the race,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: how voters are acquainting themselves with the candidates is a little different from
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: where we were in 2024.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: I will make one last call for people.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you have a race you want us to talk about and show you the forecast for, let us know.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Put it in the chat.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: I will say I see a couple of people talking about Missouri, which does pose a challenge.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you have not followed Missouri,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: They had a primary under a map that was redrawn by Republicans designed to create.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's a seven to two delegation right now, seven Republicans, two Democrats.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: That was designed to create an eight one delegation,
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: eliminating a manual cleaver seat in the Kansas City area.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: Democrat.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: The Supreme Court has now stepped in twice to say you need to use the old map.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is the primary was held under the new map.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: What do you guys do?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: How do you mathematically?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that seems to me a unique like and we don't know,
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: by the way, how unless unless it's changed.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know how they're going to handle this.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Are they going to make it an all party primary on November 3rd with runoffs
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: in December under the old map?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: Are they going to try something else?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: What do you guys do?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously Missouri isn't the most competitive state in terms of House district.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't even have a Senate race this time around.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: No statewides.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, take it back.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a state auditor seat that they elect in midterm years.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: But they don't have...
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know, it's weird.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was...
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Nicole Galloway,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: that's how she got elected a few years ago as a Democrat,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: even though Missouri is taking a hard time.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because it was a mid-term, right.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was 2018.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then anyway, they have your governor's races in presidential years.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: So they're one of those states.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't have a Senate race this year.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, not a lot happening.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: But still.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: But now they have the redistricting proposition.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the big thing.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So what do
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: you guys do?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I see this notice, but explain this notice.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the answer right now is nothing.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: The answer will be is we will adjust our values to reflect.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this is kind of good.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's good in the terms that it's not a new map because I remember
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: a few months ago waiting for like presidential,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: 2024 presidential results under Louisiana and Alabama's maps,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: waiting for those to come and like Be pre-apportioned so that I didn't have
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: to do it.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it took forever to wait for those.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the good news about this one is that the 2024 presidential election happened
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: under the map that they want to use.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: The old map.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Great for me.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: It will be a quick fix.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a pretty quick fix.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have notes.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not notes.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have the numbers sitting ready to be copied and pasted in when
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: the official call is made on what's actually going to happen with it.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the model currently,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Madison,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: the model currently is based on the new map under which the primary was held
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: because I see this fifth district.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: If the 5th District goes back to the old map,
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: Emanuel Cleaver is going to be an overwhelming favorite to win.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: But currently, right now in the holding pattern, it's the new map.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: You guys are waiting for the final,
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: final decision to say we're using the old map to plug those numbers in.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: On September, late September 3rd, I basically froze the whole thing and forbade it from...
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Posting and updating in any way.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: The new one here is the one that the Republican legislature passed for
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: the 2026 election,
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: but it looks like they're going back to the old map, which is here on the left.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right now,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: what you see on our forecast,
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Frozen is the quote-unquote new map on this graphic,
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: but it looks like they are going to go back to the old map,
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: but it's unclear,
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: as you noted, Chris, what other complications might come along with that.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: And for people who see it,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: look on the old map,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: you see that that very small area that kind of looks like Idaho around Kansas City.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's Emanuel Cleaver's district right now.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one that he has been elected to in the past.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: The other one, and Skelly can explain this, how they do this.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: It just extends all the way out.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: And all those other places that are in there are all very Republican.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right, Geoffrey?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it splits Kansas City.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to see on this map,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: but basically there's like a little part of the fourth district that shoots up
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: the western edge of Kansas City,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: which is actually a lot of that's the predominantly black part of the city.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and puts it in the fourth and splits it from the fifth.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes it basically makes all these seats,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: except for the St. Louis based first district, very safe Republicans.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if it took effect, it was going to absolutely guarantee a one seat pickup for the GOP.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: But now it looks like that's probably not going to happen.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, seems like it.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, seems like the old map is going to be for this cycle.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is amazing.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: I did kind of want to know about the Missouri thing because I do find that.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's one of the things like when you build a model,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: it's like with all this redistricting and read different lines.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, it does create challenges.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a mess.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way,
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: it's not going to get any easier because Geoffrey and I have talked
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: about this publicly and privately.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: Every state that can redraw lines that didn't in 2025 and 26 will in 2027.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they're going to come back.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was just I was talking to someone again.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking to somebody about Pennsylvania.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, look,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: the weird quirk of Pennsylvania is the state Senate has been in Republican control
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: since like 1991 or something.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Josh Shapiro is going out of his way to try to.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: Take control.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: he's going to,
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: we expect to win pretty convincingly to take back control of the state Senate.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: If they do that, they have the state house, the state Senate and the governorship.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big old state with a lot of congressional districts where if you're
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: a Republican in that state,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: I would be very worried if you happen to win your house seat in 2026,
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: but your party loses control of the state Senate.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: That'll be a congressional map.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: They have a, they have a kind of a commission thing for the state legislature there.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the congressional map is passed by the legislature.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: So now the current map was because there was a disagreement that the governor vetoed
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: and the state Supreme Court ended up effectively drawing it.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a very, I would say, you know, very partisan neutral map.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's currently drawn.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to get a partisan gerrymander in either direction.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: You could make real gains.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, congratulations on being a data scientist now.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: That feels like a real upgrade.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Do you get like a badge of any sort from DDHQ?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just get to kind of like, I just get to like stand like an inch taller than the intern.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that's exactly right.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Go get me coffee.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the point.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's what jobs are for.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: Get me my latte.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: Madison, Jeffrey, we're going to do this probably every two weeks.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: We might go to every week as we get closer.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: What we don't want to do is make it seem like the model is drastically changing when it is not.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because as Madison said,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: one seat up and one seat down is a change, but it's kind of directionally.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's smart to look at this stuff,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think, directionally as opposed to like, well, it was a 54% probability.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's a 53% probability.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically the same thing.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: Look, look broadly.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to keep doing this.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: I find it of huge value.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Votes.decisiondeskhq.com.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can get the forecast for free.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: I would urge you to look into a pro subscription that are discounted right now
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: through to get you all the way through the year,
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: get you all the way through November 3rd, which is in 53 days.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so...
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: I will see you guys soon.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for making time on a Friday afternoon.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Skelly has no plans, but Madison, you're young, so you probably have plans to do things.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Skelly and I is going to fall asleep on the couch in a couple hours, but thank you for...
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have all the stuff I have to do.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, exactly.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Just like the college experience, except not at all.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Take good care.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you either next week or the week after.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you to everyone who joined live.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: Look, go on Substack.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: Decision Desk HQ is on Substack.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Great stuff.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Skelley writes tons of great content.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: I steal his maps with credit and his graphics with credit all the time.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: Trust me, you will not regret it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then votes.decisiondeskhq.com where you can find all of this information.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, guys.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you soon.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everybody.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: See y'all.