Doug Jones' (D) victory over Roy Moore (R) was one of the most remarkable election upsets of the past decade. Alabama - with an R+14 partisan lean - is one of the most staunchly Republican states in the nation. Prior to Doug Jones, a Democrat had not won statewide office in Alabama since 2006, when Jim Folsom Jr. (D) was narrowly elected lieutenant governor by defeating Luther … [Read more...] about State Spotlight: The Alabama 2017 Special Election
Senate
State Spotlight: A Look Back at Missouri 2012
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill's (D) race against state attorney general Josh Hawley (R) is one of the key races that will decide control of the Senate in this November's midterm election. Despite Missouri's steady march to the right, McCaskill has persisted, serving as state auditor from 1998 until 2006, when she narrowly defeated Sen. Jim Talent (R) in the 2006 Democratic … [Read more...] about State Spotlight: A Look Back at Missouri 2012
Øptimus Legislative Model: Update September 17, 2018
With 50 days left until Election Day, our model moves slightly towards Republicans this week in the aggregate. The generic ballot national environment continued to go up for Democrats, now sitting at D+9.3, but the past week featured nearly 70 individual district polling that was often good news for Republicans. Republicans’ chances to keep the House rebounded slightly over … [Read more...] about Øptimus Legislative Model: Update September 17, 2018
Forecaster and model assessments of the House and Senate
While we have our own House and Senate model, which currently give the Democrats an 80.13% chance of winning the former with 224 seats, and the Republicans an 84.77% chance of retaining the latter with 51 seats, it's always good to get a second, third, and nth opinion. So here is every public model's current assessment of both chambers along with projected seat counts where … [Read more...] about Forecaster and model assessments of the House and Senate
Senate Model Comparison: Øptimus and FiveThirtyEight’s Predictions
Earlier today, FiveThirtyEight released their much-anticipated Senate model. We thought it'd be interesting to see how the Øptimus model predictions compare to theirs. The numbers below are all based off of our 9/11 model update and FiveThirtyEight's Classic model as of this afternoon. The two models work in very different ways- and we won't get too far into that element … [Read more...] about Senate Model Comparison: Øptimus and FiveThirtyEight’s Predictions