Sabato’s Crystal Ball Has 5 Tossup Senate Seats. Cook Political Has 7.

Sabato and Cook Political both cling to silliness.

Sabato’s Cloudy Ball

As of September 22, Sabato still has 5 Tossup Senate Races

Crystal Ball Changes September 22

Crystal Ball Silliness

If all you do is project everything that isn’t locked down a “tossup”, then don’t pretend you are a crystal ball.

Ohio isn’t a tossup now. And it wasn’t lean Republican a week ago. Nor was Michigan a tossup a week ago.

And look at this nonsense

We couldn’t blame someone for being skeptical, on a gut level, of what appears to be a growing blue wave this year. Polling, particularly in heavily white, working-class northern states, has sometimes overestimated Democrats, and not just in presidential years. It may also be the case that voting is more tied to tribe than to material conditions, limiting the upside for either party even in times of deep economic concerns, especially in places not typically favorable to them. If Democrats end up underperforming, some of these possibilities will have been at play.

We also are pushing Ohio’s open gubernatorial race as well as Gov. Joe Lombardo’s (R-NV) reelection bid from Leans Republican to Toss-up. We have resisted making this pair of moves for months because of the Buckeye State’s generic GOP lean as well as Lombardo’s incumbency, but we can no longer justify looking at the Republicans as favorites in either race given broader trends. Republicans have had big spending edges in both races but they still both appear highly competitive.

The Race Raters Are Lowballing the Democrats

G. Elliott Morris says The Race Raters Are Lowballing the Democrats

Based on my analysis of their historical ratings, Cook, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball are probably underestimating Democrats’ House win probability by about 30 percentage points.

As of publication, the three big election handicappers have the race for U.S. House as a pure toss-up and the Senate leaning Republican. The Cook Political Report currently has 206 seats at least leaning Democratic, 208 at least leaning Republican, and 21 tossups. Inside Elections has 200 Democratic, 202 Republican, and 33 tossups. Sabato’s Crystal Ball has 210 Democratic, 203 Republican, and 22 tossups.

Read literally, that implies Democrats need to win the lion’s share of seats rated “tossup” to carry the House: 12 of Cook’s 21, 18 of Inside Elections’ 33, 8 of Sabato’s 22. By “read literally,” I mean if you assume “tossup” means a 50-50 chance of going either way, Lean means something around 70-30 for the favored party, Likely 90-10, and Safe 97%+. The Democrats’ climb to a majority is even steeper if you consider they have more seats in the Lean Column.

This is despite Democrats being up by 7 points in the House generic ballot among likely voters, and posting even larger overperformance in district polls and special elections. Our model at FiftyPlusOne has Democrats at a median of 238 House seats and a 98% chance of the majority.

But for this Chart of the Week, I wanted to share an important finding here based on the historical performance of the race raters. And that is this: since 1990, race raters have badly overestimated support for the incumbent party in midterm elections. When they say “tossup,” historically, those races break overwhelmingly for the out-party. This equates to Democrats being likely to win about 70% of current tossups.

Cook Political

Cook political is even sillier than Sabato.

The least Cook Political and Sabato should do is add a “tilt” rating.

And most mainstream media echoes the above two.

Expert Ratings Ignore Signs of a Blue Wave

On September 20, Nate Silver chimed in with Expert Ratings Ignore Signs of a Blue Wave

In FLIPR’s view, it’s no longer accurate to describe the battle for the U.S. Senate as a “toss-up.”

In our terminology, that designation covers all races where neither party has more than a 60 percent chance of winning. But Democrats’ Senate chances are now between 63 percent and 69 percent in all three versions of FLIPR, including 65 percent in our headline “Deluxe” version.

It’s sometimes nice for forecasters when races are toss-ups; it keeps you from putting your neck out too far. And just to be abundantly clear, the Senate is salvageable for Republicans or at least bungle-able for Democrats. Democrats are kicking the equivalent of a 50+ yard field goal. Kickers make most of those kicks these days, but there are still plenty of ways to shank it.

But for what it’s worth, FLIPR is in pretty strong alignment with prediction markets, which have Democrats at 61 percent to win the Senate. Conversely, expert ratings imply a much different political environment. The Cook Political Report, for example, counts seven races as “toss-ups,” including states like New Hampshire where models and prediction markets imply that Democrats are heavy favorites.

This cautious view is misaligned with the long history of strong opposition performance in midterm elections, especially when the incumbent president is as unpopular as Trump. And it’s becoming harder to justify by the day. There’s not much longer to go — 44 days until Nov. 3 — and both national polls and race-by-race polls have been extremely strong for Democrats since Labor Day.

Democrats’ big lead on the generic ballot is consistent with history

It’s not hard to understand why Democrats have made further gains in polls lately. Gas prices have spiked to almost $4.50 per gallon, up 37 cents from a month ago and $1.29 from a year ago. Diesel prices have risen even more and affect more consumers than you might think.

Meanwhile, President Trump’s disapproval rating is now 58.9 percent, the highest of his term so far, and his net approval rating of -20.5 is basically tied for his worst.

Expert ratings ignore signals from the national environment

There are 14 Senate races which FLIPR Classic rates as having at least a 3 percent chance of being the tipping-point state. (Yes, it’s a pretty inclusive list, including some long shots like Minnesota and South Carolina.) On average in those races, Democrats currently lead by 1.9 points in the FLIPR Classic forecast. In 13 of these 14 states, however — everything except Minnesota — the raw, imputed expert margin is more optimistic for Republicans than FLIPR Classic. More specifically, the same set of races that FLIPR looks at D +1.9, the expert ratings have as R +3.3 on average instead.

In other words, the expert ratings assume a political environment that’s 5 to 6 points more Republican than the one FLIPR expects. Instead of a roughly D +8 map, they’re at more like a D +2 or D +3. In that type of political environment, Democrats would have little chance to win in red states like Iowa and Texas; the Senate would almost certainly stay in Republican hands. In fact, Democrats wouldn’t even be favored to win the House in this environment; it would project as more of a toss-up.

We think the experts are simply wrong about this. To assume a merely D +2 or D +3 national environment is inconsistent with literally every piece of evidence that we can think of, including Trump’s previous midterm in 2018, when Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by 8.6 points, right in line with what FLIPR expects this year.

G. Elliott Morris has a great analysis of this. Expert ratings at this point in midterm years (~45 days out) have historically had a persistent bias toward the president’s party. In midterms since 2010, he finds, the president’s party has won only 33 percent of House races that Cook Political rated as “toss-up.” I’d be very happy to bet on tails when the coin only comes up heads 33 percent of the time.

And no, I don’t agree with Morris often. But that just goes to show: expert raters dramatically underweight the tendency for the president’s party to perform poorly at the midterms, which is one of the most robust trends in American political history. This is really hard to justify.

Maybe the expert raters really do think that Abdul El-Sayed is a weak candidate; that’s not a crazy concern given his progressive views and the contentious primary in the state. Their rating would be more meaningful if the expert raters didn’t also rate a state like New Hampshire as a “toss-up,” where Chris Pappas has a meaningful lead in both polling and fundamentals — or all sorts of House races that don’t really deserve the toss-up label either.

To repeat, based on Morris’s work, the opposition party actually wins about 67 percent of House races that the experts rate as “toss-up” at this point. If that carries over to the Senate, that’s much closer to FLIPR Classic’

The expert ratings may well be better than the models by Nov. 3. But their ratings as of Sept. 20 are likely to be considerably worse than FLIPR, other statistical models or prediction markets, unless there’s a massive polling error in Republicans’ favor — always possible, but not something we’d bet on.

Silver’s Deluxe Model incorporates the experts. But he debiases the expert ratings so that they match FLIPR Classic’s estimate of the national political environment.

Mish vs Silver, the Experts, and the Betting Markets

Unlike everyone else, I factor in what I think the economy will look like by election time.

In January, I commented that most close races would swing towards Democrats. The War in Iran and tariff whiplash dramatically improved those odds.

Nate Silver Now Gives Democrats a 65 Percent Chance of Winning the Senate

On September 19, I commented Nate Silver Now Gives Democrats a 65 Percent Chance of Winning the Senate

Silver finally catches up to my forecast.

I was not at 65 percent all year. Rather, I was at 50 percent when the odds were 40 percent, and 55 percent when the odds were 45 percent,

I thought it was easy to see the war in Iran would make things worse and that Republicans would suffer from it.

Polymarket Balance of Power

The Polymarket Betting Odds Nate Silver, Kalshi, and I are in essential allignment.

I am reluctant to go much higher than 65 percent unless we get more more favorable polls in Alaska, Texas, and Iowa.

Meanwhile, calling 5 (Sabato) or 7 (Cook Political) seats as tossups is ridiculous.

The seven alleged tossups are Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Texas. Democrats need to hold Michigan and New Hampshire, then win 3 of Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, and Texas to take the Senate.

That would make Republicans the odds on favorite to hold the Senate under any realistic definition of tossup.

Sabato and Cook Political are on a limb up a silly tree.

What to Expect

By election time, the experts will align themselves more with the polls. They will pretend they called this election well.

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