Incumbent Kelly Loeffler casts her fate with Trump, a losing policy.
Democratic Senate Candidates Are Competitive in Red States
538 writer Perry Bacon explains Why Democratic Senate Candidates Are Competitive in Red States Like Alaska, Kansas and Montana
Democrats have a relatively clear path to securing a majority in the U.S. Senate: Win seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina — all states where the Democratic candidate is favored. Carrying these four states, and winning the presidency would take Democrats from 47 seats to 50 seats — Democrat Doug Jones is likely to lose his reelection race in Alabama — with a Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking 51st vote. Democrats also have about even odds of picking up a seat in Iowa.
I read that article yesterday and was shaking my head because of an obvious omission.
Perry discusses Montana, Kansas, and Alaska where Democrats have a “chance” of winning.
However, Perry left off Georgia, the Democrat’s best chance (outside of Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina).
Georgia Special Election
I have been following the special election closely and remarked to a couple of friends that I did not understand Nate Silver’s odds.
Georgia Special Election 2020-10-13
I thoughts those odds were wrong because with so many candidates running, no one would win outright.
My likely scenario was for the strongest Democrat (Warnock) to face either Loeffler or Collins in a January runoff.
Republicans Loeffler and Collins are battling each other as the Trump candidate. This is a huge advantage to Warnock.
Silver could not see it because it was not reflected in the polls. That changed Wednesday.
Georgia Special Election 2020-10-14
Question of the Day
Q: Did the odds of Warnock winning jump from 28% on October 13 to 51% on October 14?
A: No.
What changed was Silver’s perception of the odds.
Slave to the Polls
I had the same complaint against Silver in 2016 when Trump’s odds of beating Hillary allegedly went from 50% to 17% between August 4 and August 7, 2016
Silver is a slave to the polls.
I am willing to take a stab at what the polls are likely to say in the future, something Silver does not do.
While polls are important, so are trends and momentum. I will deviate from the polls if I have a good reason, not because of what I want.
When Did the Odds Change?
Warnock was steadily gaining ground while Loeffler and Collins were busy debating which one is the bigger Trump fan.
In a January runoff, Warnock has about an even chance of winning.
Will Georgia Turn Blue?
On Wednesday, in Will Georgia Turn Blue? Silver admitted his Georgia model may be faulty.
Our model has been skeptical about Biden’s Georgia chances, but that may no longer be true.
Dating back to June 1, the first date that we ran the forecast,1 only two states had flipped between Donald Trump and Joe Biden at any point: North Carolina and Ohio.2 On Wednesday, though, they were joined by a third state, Georgia, where for the first time all year, Joe Biden is the favorite — the ever-so-slight favorite! — in our forecast.
Recent developments have been favorable to Democrats in the special election, too. One Democrat — Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church — has consolidated the large majority of the Democratic vote following endorsements from Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats. He is very likely to advance to the runoff, based on recent polls. Meanwhile, the second runoff slot is a bitter feud between Loeffler and another Republican, Rep. Doug Collins, who have been trying to outcompete one another by bragging about how conservative they are and how much they support Trump. This is potentially toxic messaging in an increasingly purple state where Trump isn’t that popular. And indeed, Loffler and Collins have fallen behind Warnock in some recent polls that test one-on-one matchups.
In the regular Georgia Senate race, Perdue has a 72 percent chance and Ossoff a 28 percent chance, per our “Deluxe” forecast. There’s around a one-in-four chance that race will require a runoff, too, which could mean there could be two uncalled Senate until the runoff is held on Jan. 5.
Flashback September 27, 2020
Please recall my September 27 post, Senate Surprises: What to Look Out For in the Election
538 has the Iowa Republican Senate Forecast as 53-47 for the Republicans but I rate the state a 50-50 tossup because all recent polls of “likely voters” give Greenfield a lead with by an average of 2 percentage points.
538 expects Georgia to vote for Trump by a 50.7 to 48.5 margin. That puts Georgia in play for Biden. It also puts Warnock in play in the January 5 election.
Silver’s 17% estimate [for Warnock] is thus way too low. The special election will also be influenced by turnout in January adding more uncertainty.
I give Warnock a 40% chance, more than double Silver’s estimate.
Odds of Democrats Winning At Least One of Iowa or Georgia
- If we assume the Democrats odds of winning Iowa are 50% and Georgia 40% then the odds of the Democrats winning at least one is (0.50 + 0.40) – (0.50 * 0.40) = 0.70.
- If you go with Silver’s model, the odds of the Democrats winning at least one are (0.47 + 0.17) – (0.47 * 0.17) = 0.56.
52-48 happens if Democrats pick up two of five of Iowa, the Georgia special election, Kansas, Montana, or South Carolina (while holding every state they currently lead).
Democrats chances of winning the Senate are substantially higher than Silver projects. Georgia and Iowa are the keys to understanding why.
On September 27, Silver had the odds of Democrats winning the Senate as 62 in 100 with an expectation of 51-49.
His forecast is now 74 in 100 but still only 51-49 as the forecast.
I expect the Democrats will control 52-48. 54-46 is not likely, but it’s possible.
More realistically, the Democrats could win 53. That would require picking up three of six of Iowa, the Georgia special election, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, or the Georgia regular election (while holding every state they currently lead).
I added the Georgia regular election to the Senate mix. It is now in play.
Spotlight Iowa
Nate Silver now has Theresa Greenfield beating Joni Ernst 53-47 in Iowa. That’s a huge switch from Ernst over Greenfield 59-41 on September 19.
This is despite the fact he has Trump as a 57-43 favorite.
I suggest Silver is wrong somewhere. Either Trump is not a 57-43 favorite or Greenfield (D) is not a 53-47 favorite.
Which one?
I now have Iowa a 50-50 tossup but expect it will ultimately break for Biden. And if Iowa breaks for Biden, Greenfield is very likely to win.
Mish
So what happened?
The US is heading for an authoritarian socialist government via the Democratic party. I hope the people will realize they did this to themselves, when they long for the days when they had some control over their own lives…..
126 comments from Grumblenose just deleted in one fell swoop and with it 8 replies, sorry about the latter.
But if you purposely insult me, I will delete every comment you ever made, en, masse, with a couple of clicks.
“While polls are important, so are trends and momentum. I will deviate from the polls if I have a good reason, not because of what I want.“
Now that is really funny.
I’ve been waiting for Trump’s October surprise and out comes this story about Hunter Biden and a hard drive. Very quickly discredited. Came right after Barr was unable to produce the goods on a Russia investigation. It’s getting harder and harder to see that reversal occuring that Trump would need to eek out a win
Discredited? The Biden campaign has admitted the emails are legit.
source? link? no they haven’t
I saw that they denied there was such a meeting. I never saw that they denied the emails were legit. I do agree that these are pretty minor, at least so far. The emails may even have the reverse effect, driving support to Biden. They show the human-ness of Hunter, and the he was a real person dealing with real problems. They corroborate what Biden has said about Hunter, that he had drug problems, and that he has struggled at times, and has worked to recover from them.
Hunter Biden got a 3.5 million dollar wire transfer from Moscow mayor’s wife while Joe Biden was VP.
Moscow mayor and his wife belong to Putin’s elite.
Obama/Biden refused to all arms and missiles to Ukraine and Trump reversed this policy and Trump started selling arms and missiles to Ukraine.
I’ll second Sechel on this — Fox News is carrying details, but they have nothing corroborated that I could see. And no other news outlet is touching this because the source is so dubious. If you’ve got other sources or new places are weighing-in; I’d be interested to see that.
Joe Biden was in on the Hunter Biden corruption:
Joe Biden has been totally corrupt since he pushed laws favorable to creditcard companies and MBNA (the huge credit card issuer from Delaware) gave Hunter Biden a job with a huge salary and luxury office.
Even if true a big yawn. Democrats don’t give a damn and neither do independents. Republicans making a big stick over something that is irrelevant.
I don’t disagree with you, but Trump and Rudy thought otherwise. It was a thing for about 10 minutes.
That was envisioned by the Trump people as an October surprise…..but the real October surprise was the Rose Garden super-spreader event……and Trump’s absymal handling of it…..
“It was a thing for about 10 minutes.”
“I have the entire hard drive and the New York Post has only published about five percent of it,” Giuliani said. “The New York Post has at least two more situations even more serious than this. The real big time money corruption takes place with the Chinese Communist Party. “
It will be a thing for more than 10 minutes.
Have you read any of the coverage (other than Fox News) about this? There are others reporting on it, but it is uniformly being treated as if there is no reason to believe it because there are very large concerns about whether it is real or not.
I’ll ask again – do you have any other sources that are not putting out a narrative that I’ve outlined above? I’d like to see them and see what they have to say. I have not found any news organizations treating this as anything but a foreign meddling stunt.
October Surprise — war with ???istan.
Hmmmmm, interesting comment. Been wondering about this too lately. What will an increasingly desperate Trump do if things don’t turn around for him in the polls?
It’s pretty clear that just having rallies with your base may make them excited to vote, but it doesn’t swing many voters.
All these people run in the same circles hard to say where meeting someone /favors etc cross the line. I figure if they could prosecute they would anything else doesnt matter.
More bad news for the GOP: https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-screwed-up-kansas-so-badly-a-democrat-might-win-senate-seat-there?ref=home
People claiming here that the republican in Georgia is a done deal shoe in because the state is so racist; LOL!
The senate race in Kansas is now so close the democrat may pick that one up and when it comes to a red state Kansas is just behind UT; IN; and KY. If they can go dem (or even close) without Georgia’s P.O.’ed African American electorate what will Georgia’s final tally be?
Georgia will flip.
I normally take a skeptical view on polls. They sample a small pct and extrapolate from that. And come up with some margin for error number that’s impossible to know with any accuracy. Small changes in sampling yield huge differences in results.
This is further exacerbated this year because if you outwardly support Trump or the GOP, you risk being fired and/or harassed, so many will lie to prevent this. I’ve read 5% of Trump voters lie. If true, you need to look at Biden/Dem numbers and divide by 1.05 and divide red numbers by 0.95 to get a more accurate picture.
Considering businesses are generally run by people that would skew Republican and considering the experience that my wife has had with leaders in the smaller companies she’s worked for – I don’t consider the percentage of people ‘hiding their views’ on one side to be any different than the other.
She was told point-blank to vote Republican in the last 2 companies she worked for. She had to just smile and say nothing if she disagreed and wanted to stay employed.
It’s only a matter of time before the true damage Trump has done to the GOP is fully understood. I heard all these claims in 2018 there was going to be this massive red wave. I had already started to observe energized democrats and concerned republicans and conservatives about the direction Trump was leading the GOP.
Well, we know 2018 wasn’t good for the GOP, and Trump has done little to reverse the misfortunes of 2018 nor has he strived to understand why the GOP had their asses handed to them in that election.
Every time you divide the country, you leave just a few more people on the other side. Eventually you don’t have enough left to win elections.