Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Reeling in the Fears.....and a Yuuuuge Mea Culpa

Tom on the carnage...

First things first…my apologies not just for being wrong, but for offering such definitive words (and numbers) of reassurance over the course of the last few weeks.  There are few things in life that I was more certain of than a Clinton victory.  Many of you sent me fairly plaintive pleas for affirmation of that belief in the post-Comey period (and long before that as well) and, well, I was right there for you. 

Unfortunately, I was wrong.  And boy do I feel terrible about that.

More significantly, I am trying to grapple with the reality of a President Trump, and what it means about our citizenry, and the implications for so many incredibly significant issues, from the Supreme Court to the Middle East to women’s reproductive health to everyone’s health care to climate change and it goes on and on.  I’m failing in the grappling.  I cannot wrap my mind around this.

What happened?

I’m assuming the answer to “what went wrong with the polling” will be that most pollsters used incorrect assumptions in weighting various sub segments, with Trump’s supporters being undersampled or underweighted and the opposite for Clinton’s.  This, of course, is what Romney’s pollsters did wrong in 2012, when he was assured by them on Election Day that he was going to win.  The difference is that the public pollsters (and thus “aggregators” like Nate Silver and me) had it right in 2012.

Forgetting about the polls and comparing Clinton’s loss to Obama’s wins, I am assuming we will indeed find that Clinton was not able to energize her base and Trump was.  But one number that caught my eye on CNN’s exit polling was that Trump received 29% of the Latino vote, which was 2 points better than Romney.  A shocker.

But I will leave those analyses for others.  I’m taking time off from this gig!

A few items from last night, not that these matter much:

·         Clinton actually is ahead in the popular vote right now, by just over 200,000 votes, with 92% of the vote in.  Like Al Gore. 

·         Losing Florida was not a death blow, nor Ohio…she still had a strong path among the rest of the states I had called for her, at the time she was in trouble in Florida

·         Key to that path was holding onto Wisconsin, a “Blue Wall” state.  I kept on saying to all of you who emailed me that she needed to turn Wisconsin, and that the persistent 60,000-90,000 gap in votes was going to narrow when the final tally came in from the last precincts in Dem-strongholds Madison and Milwaukee.  Turns out it has indeed narrowed, to 27,000 votes with 5% of the precincts still out there.  But not quite enough -- every outlet has formally called Wisconsin for Trump.

·         Michigan was the other “must have” state if she was going to pull it off, another place she faced a significant gap but some late urban voting...and it is still not called -- but the gap there has indeed narrowed as well, from over 100,000 votes to a mere 13,000 right now, at 96%.

·         But what I did not see coming at all was Pennsylvania slipping away.  When that started happening – and I checked to see that there were no votes left in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – that’s when I knew it was truly all over.

·         I have four states wrong thus far:  Florida and North Carolina, which I had by a point each, and then Pennsylvania (I had it at +3 for Clinton) and Wisconsin (which I had by 8 points!), a state Hillary Clinton never visited even once, so confident was her campaign team that it was solid.  New Hampshire and Michigan remain too close to call.

·         There was a time that a 269-269 scenario seemed plausible.  It was the last gasp on the assumption she lost Wisconsin.  If you take the 228 she has now, and give her the two states that are still not called (Michigan and New Hampshire) that gets her to 248….at the time she was still ahead in Pennsylvania (+20 for 268) and then she needed one of the Maine or Nebraska districts.  But then she lost Pennsylvania and that was that.  (And of course the House would have gone for Trump anyway in a tie.)

·         Don’t blame Jill Stein.  Her votes could have made a difference in Wisconsin, but not Pennsylvania, Florida or North Carolina.  Gary Johnson….not sure about his impact.  He was taking votes from both, though more from Clinton.

·         I had the Senate control call wrong, too….it is now 51-47 for the GOP, with two races (New Hampshire and the Louisiana run-off) still outstanding.  I called 30 out of 32 Senate race right (thus far), which is quite good given how many Toss-ups there were – but the Senate control hung in the balance of those two misses

·         I did better in the House.  The GOP has a 238-193 edge now with 4 races still to go, meaning the Dems are +5 and could go to +9.  I had them at +5.

·         I was only 7 out of 11 for the Governors with two still outstanding.  Too many close races with very little polling.

Anyway, I’m going to lose myself in the NBA for a while.

I want to thank all of you for your support of our site, and the political conversation that we carried on for two years around this campaign.  Every time we did a post, we would get numbers of emails back, from seemingly different people each time, and we would “chat” about what was going on.  I received countless links to interesting articles from many of you and several of you added me to your political lists.  It was a blast.

And we made some good calls along the way.  Just not the one that mattered!

Thank you also for the many kind words you found for me last night.  Under the circumstances, in particular, it was incredibly nice of you to think to cheer me up!

I’m not sure about the fate of the blog at this point, but I will probably do a post-mortem or two.  Then take a good long time off and contemplate the implications of being wrong on the nature of the exercise – and the time commitment!

Many thanks to Steve for his incredible assessments of debates, speeches and general state of the race.  He got it right!  And to Bob for his unflagging “tech support” – it was Bob who invented the blog by enabling it to begin with (without my knowledge, when he created the blog out of my emails to friends and family).  And to Wendy for reading nearly every word of every post in advance as the “editor in chief.” 

I’m sure the sun will come up tomorrow.  I just wish I was that certain about January 21st!

Thanks again!

When in the Course of Human Events...

Steve, in the aftermath, looks back...and looks ahead...

I awoke this morning to a reality that I now know I had simply refused to truly process as even possible when it was merely in its hypothetical form for the last eighteen months. I had been comforted and lulled by statistics which were no doubt mathematically accurate in reporting what people said they would do but flawed in their ability to depict what people would actually do. I was reading and watching the news from sources that reinforced my views. And I was mingling largely with like-minded people in well-to-do enclaves who were appalled by Donald Trump’s candidacy but who felt that October and November surprises had been weathered and that sanity would prevail.

I had even written what I thought was a clever essay that was all ready to post this morning. It was called, “The Party of No vs. The Party of Know.” The thesis was that the Republicans lost because they were only united by what they hated, not a set of principles and actions they believed in. I made the point that for all the shifts in demography, ethnicity, and gender, the biggest change in the Republican Party since Mitt Romney appeared to be in the amount of education. It was a less educated party than four years ago. The Party of No.

In contrast, over the past four years, the Democratic Party has statistically been proven to be more educated. More educated than the Republican Party, and more educated than it had ever been in the past.  It was the party of science and globalism, more open and accepting of otherness. The Party of Know.

Instead of happily posting that piece, I am back at the keyboard at square one, and though all the world has been turned on its head, I am certain of one thing.

Being wrong is not the worst thing. Quitting is.

Being on the wrong side of a democratic election is discouraging. Giving up on our democracy is crazy.

When, in the course of human events, democracy screams something at us at the top of its lungs, we’d all be wise to think long and hard and carefully about what it said.

We can whine that a demagogue bullshitted his way to the Presidency, but who, exactly, created the majority voting bloc that didn’t care about truth?

We can express outrage that our new President is a sexual predator, but who created a majority voting bloc that willingly ignored that behavior and elected him?

We can be horrified that our new President lacks a fundamental working knowledge of our Constitution, but who created the majority voting bloc that is ready to make that trade-off?

We did, that’s who. The United States of America.

Some people threaten to flee to Canada or Europe, but if you think that the U.K., France, or Austria is a safe haven, let me remind you that liberals are supposed to be the globalists. The problems France is dealing with and the polarization in their upcoming election are directly in line with Brexit and Trump. Some would argue that it is worse. Fine, go live in Manitoba if you must, but this time fleeing to Canada is not civil disobedience, it is abdication.

The rise of Donald Trump is a multi-faceted phenomenon that deserves close scrutiny. In the weeks and months ahead, I hope on these pages to examine many of the factors that led to his victory, if only to help illuminate the path to a brighter chapter in our nation’s history at some point in the future. Today, I see three essential drivers of Trump’s win.

A huge component of Trump’s victory is unmitigated rage against the establishment, be it found on Wall Street, in Washington, D.C., or in the media. I urge that you all attend a sensational play now at the Public Theater called “Sweat,” which brilliantly and poignantly depicts how the closing of the one factory in a one factory town utterly destroys people, families, friendships, and triggers truly unhinged rage at the establishment powers – the heartless businesses that decamp and head for the border, and the government that serves as an enabler.  It is a sympathetic portrayal of the betrayal that anti-Government people feel, and it provides searing and graphic background and context for the seething anger that has been on display for months at your typical Trump stadium shows.

And yet, at the same time, the play also lays bare the sense of unjustified entitlement that these people feel: that a lifetime of work at the factory was their birthright, just as it had been guaranteed to their parents and grandparents before. That the economics of manufacturing changed overnight was not their doing or their fault, and somebody – the south-of-the-border immigrant who crosses the picket line, or the cold hearted company executives who shut out the union – somebody else is to blame. This dimension of the play illuminates how the absence of education and transferable skills creates unemployable fifty-somethings who simply have a different flavor of entitlement, and little left in their lives but anger at what they have lost.

A second theme I intend to explore is the news media, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Trump phenomenon. Just as Dwight Eisenhower once famously warned of the rise of the “military-industrial complex,” it is now time to examine the “news-entertainment” complex. We are a nation that places outsized emphasis on entertainment, celebrity, and our once-independent fourth estate has been co-opted to play by the rules of entertainment. The titans like Cronkite and Bradlee who had the gravitas and influence to take down Presidents have been replaced by weaklings like Brian Williams and Matt Lauer, pretty boy news-readers who have never been real journalists and who wilt in the heat of the kitchen of democracy. Worse, the objectivity that gave Cronkite his power has been replaced by intentionally biased reporting on both sides of the political spectrum that reduces the news industry to propagandists worthy of Pravda. How can we self-righteously condemn the ignorance of a voter who is simply repeating what he or she heard on Fox News?

In my third area of exploration, I will return to the core thesis that informed the essay that I had hoped to publish today: that the biggest bifurcation in our country today is a gaping chasm of educational “haves” and “have-nots.” I shall continue to examine that hypothesis: our two-party system today had degenerated to “The Party of No vs. The Party of Know.”

Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is relatively easy to trace. The stinging defeats of John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012) fueled the growth of the Party’s Christian Conservative and Tea Party wings. These two “outlier” groups became convinced that the path of Republican centrists was forever doomed to produce milquetoast losers like McCain and Romney.  Indeed, what followed was the belief that centrist Republicans were every bit as much a part of the “Washington establishment” as Democrats.  Yes, “centrist Republicans” became the sworn enemy of, uh, other Republicans. This blood feud rupture made it increasingly difficult to articulate a unifying philosophy, and Republicans therefore defaulted to a set of common enemies. The schism obliterated any notion of what the party believed in; it merely animated what the party was opposed to.  The Republican brand became the party of “shut down the government,” repeal Obamacare, refusal to consider Supreme Court nominees, a publicly stated policy of working to thwart the every move of a Democratic President, and a seeming bottomless well of loathing for Hillary Clinton. A new Republican brand identity was forming in a bitter miasma of negativity: “The Party of No.”

Into this vacuum of positive beliefs strode Donald Trump, who poured a potpourri of angry rants and threats into a vessel emptied of meaning called the Republican Party. His message of rage against the government became the de facto platform of the Republican Party. Pillars of Republicanism -- free trade, religious freedom -- were pilloried.

In a very real sense, the victory of the anti-government faction of the Republican Party has changed the character of the “normative Republican.” Where the face of the Republican Party had once been the conservative, college-educated, white and white collar suburban centrist, the “anti-government” faction has a decidedly different cast. Much has been made of the fact that the Trump base is under-educated aging white males.

Consider this little snippet from a CNN write up of a CNN-ORC poll taken in three swing states shortly after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video.

College educated whites in Nevada and North Carolina break sharply in Clinton's favor, 49% Clinton to 41% Trump in Nevada and 59% Clinton to 37% Trump in North Carolina… in Ohio, 48% Clinton to 44% Trump. In all three states, college-educated whites backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, by wide margins. Those white voters without college degrees remain a core of Trump's support, backing him over Clinton by 48 points in North Carolina, 26 points in Ohio and 25 points in Nevada.

In the span of a single election cycle, Donald Trump and his impassioned anti-government believers changed the face of the Republican Party. The Republican Brand of Donald Trump is, plain and simple, less educated than the Republican Brand of Romney or the Republican Brand of McCain. 

I am sure your next questions are these:  (1) is the Democratic Party more educated than the Republican Party? and (2) has this changed in recent years?  Both, in fact, are true. This quote is from a Pew Center Study of Party Affiliation Trends from 1992 to 2014:

Democrats now hold a 12-point lead (52% to 40%) in leaned party identification among those with at least a college degree, up from just a four point gap seen as recently as 2010 (48% to 44%). Much of this advantage has come among adults with post-graduate experience; currently, 56% lean Democratic while just 36% lean Republican. Among those who have received a college degree but have no post-graduate experience, the gap is much narrower: 48% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while 43% affiliate with the GOP or lean Republican.

Education may be just one part of the broad equation, but its implications for the Republican brand going forward are significant. It is the less educated voter who tends to dismiss climate science. It is the less educated voter who is less equipped to discern whether a news report on a biased news network (take your pick, MSNBC or Fox) is hopelessly misleading. It is the less educated voter who is less equipped to discern whether or not his or her own candidate is telling the truth.  It is the less educated citizen who falls more easily under the spell of a supremely confident demagogue.

Yes, it would have been a wonderful essay explaining why the “Party of No” lost. 

However, the problem  is that the “The Party of Know” lost.

Let’s start by joining hands and acknowledging that maybe – just maybe – the Party of Know needs to know more.

For starters, perhaps it is time to finally stare at the nomination of Hillary Clinton and ask whether it was such a great idea after all. Many ardent Hillary supporters simply refused to acknowledge any basis for her high negativity ratings, so they plowed forward in the belief that such unsubstantiated loathing should not be factored into the nominating process. Seeing no justification for her appalling low ratings on likeability and trust, they ignored the warning signals. Whether you think those awful ratings for trust or likeability were merited, they were real.

Here is a fact about yesterday’s vote that should be examined. Hillary Clinton’s loss was attributable to losses in in Rust Belt states... the very states in which Bernie Sanders ran his strongest primary races against her. Those were the states that heard and responded to messages about bad trade deals and income inequality. For sake of argument, one could hypothesize that Sanders would have won all the liberal "gimmes" that Hillary won, and he would have been far more competitive in the Rust Belt. Yes, it is entirely possible that Bernie Sanders might have beaten Donald Trump.

And, just to round out the critique, we need to remind the Democrats in 2020 that every time they run a dry, odorless, colorless, policy wonk whose platform is experience and competence (Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, Hillary Clinton) they lose, and that every time they run a brilliant charismatic (John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) they win.

Maybe “The Party of Know” needs to know a great deal more. Maybe we all do.

I, for one, need to spend less time with MSNBC and more time with original source material.

Perhaps liberals need to spend less time explaining why we are right and more time actually being smart about what voters really feel, and more time finding solutions that they believe will truly address their concerns.

The Party of Know needs to know one thing: in a democracy, truth is not subject to a vote, but leadership of the country is. You’ll recall that old Daniel Patrick Moynihan quote -- that people are entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Votes, my friend, are an opinion. Everyone can have one, and nobody has to justify it.

Here’s a radical thought: perhaps in the next four years, The Party of Know may want to actually try to collaborate with Republicans to get things done. Sure the Republicans tried to obstruct Obama’s every move, but what was it that Michelle said? “When they go low, we go high.”

But for now, the Party of Know has to know one thing. 

Are you ready, everyone? 

Repeat after me:

“Donald Trump is the President of my country. I am a patriot. Donald Trump is my President.”

In fact, Mr. Trump, you needn’t be concerned about my loyalty.

If I were you, however, I’d be more than a bit concerned about that spigot of rage you opened when it is turned back on you. I think that will happen when the zealots you’ve unleashed discover that you’ve actually been lying to them all along… that you can’t build the wall, you can’t ban Muslims, you can’t bring manufacturing jobs back, you can’t lower taxes, you can’t bomb the shit out of ISIS, and you can’t replace Obamacare. And, oh by the way, the mid-terms are just two years away.

In the coming years, we risk the continued downward drift to a society driven by our most base fears rather than fueled by our aspirations. I do not see easy or quick solutions. But more than anything else, we need to repair vital societal institutions that have been degraded by decades of neglect. Our educational system is in need of desperate repair, particularly in underfunded, underprivileged areas in the K-12 years. In truth, the best way to defeat the Donald Trumps of the world is with educated voters who can discern fact from fiction.

For that to happen, we can't have out idealists quit and run away to some version of imaginary Canada, be it in the form of apathy, abdication, or accommodation.

Get out of bed, lefty. Stop your whining and your denial.

You lost the battle, but the war rages on.

Yesterday, in the long course of human events, democracy screamed at us.

If you chose to ignore that scream, perhaps you belong in the Party of No.

Monday, November 7, 2016

BTRTN's Official Predictions: Hillary Clinton Wins Historic Race; Dems Take Back Senate (Barely); GOP Maintains Firm Control of House and State Houses

At long last Election Day has arrived.  In just five hours, voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire will cast the first ballots in the election.  And when most of the ballots are counted nationwide, this “long national nightmare” of a race, unprecedented in venom, punctuated with sordid disclosures, October surprises galore, and a November one to boot, will finally end.  The revelation from FBI Director James Comey that he had found, in a “new“ trove of emails, absolutely nothing at all (simply a combination of duplicated or irrelevant emails) came too late to flip the election back to the large margins Clinton enjoyed before their discovery.  But it may have helped solidify the outcome and perhaps affect a swing state or two. 

Before we render our final predictions at BTRTN, a few notes:

·       These are our final predictions, but we reserve the right to read a final straggler poll or two tomorrow morning and amend as necessary.  Failure to do so in 2012 cost us Florida, the only state we missed in an otherwise unblemished presidential prediction.
·        If any reader wants our handy, dandy semi-famous spreadsheets that allow you to easily track Election Night outcomes for each of the presidential, Senate, House and Governor races (and see how we are doing against our predictions), just email us at tom@obameter2012.com and we will send them along to you.  Our past users swear by them!

On to the predictions, and here are the headlines:

·       Hillary Clinton will become our 45th President, and our first woman president, beating Donald Trump comfortably with a 322-216 electoral vote margin.  We have her winning the popular vote 49.3% to 46.8%, with Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullin picking off 3.8% of the vote.
·        Clinton will get to work with a Democratic majority in the Senate, as the Dems (barely) take back the Senate 50/50, with new Vice President Tim Kaine wielding the gavel in the event of ties, and with Chuck Schumer, Clinton’s one-time colleague as Senators from New York, as Senate Majority Leader.  But we won’t know the final Senate outcome for quite some time, as it will all come down to a few races that are extraordinarily close.
·        Clinton will have to deal with a GOP-controlled House, as the Dems pick up a net of only 5 seats, very modestly chipping away at a still formidable GOP advantage of 242-193, short of gaining control by 25 seats.  Again, the exact number will take days to sort out, as invariably some House races may take days to settle, and some may even end up with recounts or in courts.
·        And the GOP will continue to dominate the state houses; by winning 4 of the 12 gubernatorial races they will hold their 32-17 advantage (with one independent) in governors.

For new readers, here is a summary of BTRTN's track record in national elections over the years.  We believe our record stands with anyone’s!

Election
2008
2010
2012
2014
Total
Total %
Presidential (states)
48/50
n/a
49/50
n/a
97/100
97.0%
Senate
35/35
33/36
31/33
32/36
131/140
93.6%
House
n/a
420/435
416/435
425/435
1261/1305
96.6%
Governors
n/a
n/a
n/a
31/36
31/36
86.1%
TOTAL

96.1%

This will be a closer race than in 2012.  We see 11 races that will be decided by 5 points or less versus 6 in 2012.  Obama ended up beating Romney by 3.9 percentage points in the popular vote.  We have Clinton beating Trump by a mere 2.5 points.

But for those of you who still have doubts that Clinton will win, we offer you these “macro” stats.  Of 94 national polls taken since September 1, Clinton has led in 77, Trump in 11, with 7 ties.  And if you take the LA Times tracking poll out, which is a notoriously self-evident outlier, the numbers are even more one-sided at 77-2-5.

And if you are curious/nervous about the same figures post-Comey’s-First-Letter, there have been 14 polls since October 28 and Clinton is 12-1-1 in them, with the one losing poll being, of course, by the LA Times.  We are fond of saying that “national polls don’t matter,” but the fact is, such an overwhelming lead in national polls is not consistent with widespread swing state defeats.

THE PREDICTIONS

President

Hillary Clinton will hold onto the four “Toss-up D” states that she needed to push over the 270 barrier and provide a cushion had she lost some of them:  Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire, all of which had margins of three points or less in the final days.  A combination of Comey First Letter damage running its course as last week wore on; the Comey Second Letter announcement on Sunday; and the massive Clinton ground game, ad blitz and surrogate brigade, will combine to build a different kind of wall that will keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

Trump, for his part, will manage to hold onto Ohio in a late-night squeaker, plus states he should have won easily, Georgia, Arizona and Utah, and he will manage to pick-off Obama’s Iowa.

Clinton will be put over the top at 11:35 PM when CNN calls Michigan in her favor.  (We have a very sloppy method of predicting this timing so don’t be surprised if we are well off!)

Here is how every state will go….who will win, by what margin, and at what time it will be “called” by CNN.  (We have no prediction for Trump’s concession speech – whether he does one and, if so, at what time -- or what he will say.) 

BTRTN PREDICTION
Popular Vote %
Electoral Votes
Time race called (EST)
Clinton
Trump
Margin
Clinton
Trump
States
2016 Electoral Votes
Close Races to Watch
Polls Close (Latest)
49.3%
46.8%
2.5%
322
213

Indiana
11

7:00
41%
51%
-10%

11
7:00
Kentucky
8

7:00
40%
58%
-18%

8
7:00
Vermont
3

7:00
62%
32%
30%
3

7:00
W. Virginia
5

7:30
33%
63%
-30%

5
7:30
Alabama
9

8:00
38%
58%
-20%

9
8:00
Connecticut
7

8:00
54%
42%
12%
7

8:00
DC
3

8:00
89%
10%
79%
3

8:00
Delaware
3

8:00
56%
39%
17%
3

8:00
Illinois
20

8:00
56%
40%
16%
20

8:00
Maryland
10

8:00
62%
36%
26%
10

8:00
Massachusetts
11

8:00
61%
33%
28%
11

8:00
Mississippi
6

8:00
43%
55%
-12%

6
8:00
Oklahoma
7

8:00
35%
60%
-25%

7
8:00
Rhode Island
4

8:00
55%
41%
14%
4

8:00
Tennessee
11

8:00
42%
54%
-12%

11
8:00
Arkansas
6

8:30
39%
59%
-20%

6
8:30
Kansas
6

9:00
40%
56%
-16%

6
9:00
Louisiana
8

9:00
42%
56%
-14%

8
9:00
N. Dakota
3

9:00
35%
59%
-24%

3
9:00
Nebraska
5

9:00
37%
59%
-22%

5
9:00
New Mexico
5

9:00
48%
40%
8%
5

9:00
New York
29

9:00
58%
37%
21%
29

9:00
S. Dakota
3

9:00
38%
57%
-19%

3
9:00
Wyoming
3

9:00
28%
65%
-37%

3
9:00
Texas
38

9:00
43%
53%
-10%

38
9:00
Maine
4

8:00
52%
45%
7%
3
1
9:15
Wisconsin
10

9:00
53%
45%
8%
10

9:15
New Jersey
14

8:00
55%
43%
12%
14

9:25
S. Carolina
9

7:00
45%
51%
-6%

9
9:40
Montana
3

10:00
39%
53%
-14%

3
10:00
Pennsylvania
20

8:00
51%
47%
4%
20

10:05
New Hampshire
4

8:00
50%
46%
4%
4

10:10
Missouri
10

8:00
43%
53%
-10%

10
10:20
Georgia
16

7:00
47%
49%
-2%

16
10:30
Minnesota
10

9:00
52%
43%
9%
10

10:35
Virginia
13

7:00
51%
46%
5%
13

10:45
Utah
6

10:00
26%
38%
-12%

6
10:50
California
55

11:00
60%
38%
22%
55

11:00
Hawaii
4

11:00
58%
36%
22%
4

11:00
Idaho
4

11:00
37%
57%
-20%

4
11:00
Washington
12

11:00
56%
42%
14%
12

11:00
N. Carolina
15

7:30
49%
48%
1%
15

11:05
Iowa
6

10:00
46%
51%
-5%

6
11:20
Oregon
7

11:00
53%
43%
10%
7

11:25
Michigan
16

8:00
50%
47%
3%
16

11:35
Arizona
11

9:00
45%
49%
-4%

11
11:45
Florida
29

8:00
50.5%
49.0%
1.5%
29

12:15
Ohio
18

7:30
48%
49%
-1%

18
12:55
Colorado
9

9:00
48%
45%
3%
9

13:15
Nevada
6

10:00
49.5%
48.5%
1.0%
6

14:25
Alaska
3

13:00
42%
50%
-8%

3
15:15

Senate

Even we have to admit that control of the Senate is almost impossible to predict.  There are six races that are Toss-ups now, each within a 2-point or less margin.  New Hampshire is impossibly tight, and Nevada, Missouri and Pennsylvania are only slightly more definitively tilting one way or the other.  Indiana and Missouri offer further clues still – but all six are classic Toss-ups.

BTRTN calls New Hampshire, Nevada and Pennsylvania in the Dem camp, and those wins will be just enough to eke out 50 states and, with the Clinton win, give the Dems control of the Senate.  It won’t happen early.  Make plenty of coffee and bring snacks to await this outcome.

BTRTN PREDICTION
Dem
GOP
State
Inc. Party
Dem
GOP
Poll Margin as of 11/7
BTRTN         Rating as of 11/7
50
50
Not running





36
30
California
D
Harris
Sanchez (D)

Solid D
1

New York
D
Schumer
Long

Solid D
1

Maryland
D
Van Hollen
Szeliga

Solid D
1

Hawaii
D
Schatz
Carroll

Solid D
1

Oregon
D
Wyden
Callaghan

Solid D
1

Vermont
D
Leahy
Milne

Solid D
1

Connecticut
D
Blumenthal
Carter

Solid D
1

Washington
D
Murray
Vance

Solid D
1

Colorado
D
Bennet
Glenn

Solid D
1

Illinois
R
Duckworth
Kirk

Solid D
1

Wisconsin
R
Feingold
Johnson
D + 2
Toss-up D
1

Pennsylvania
R
McGinty
Toomey
D + 2
Toss-up D
1

Nevada
D
Cortez Masto
Heck
D + 2
Toss-up D
1

New Hamp.
R
Hassan
Ayotte
D + 0
Toss-up D
1

Missouri
R
Kander
Blunt
R + 0
Toss-up R

1
N. Carolina
R
Ross
Burr
R + 1
Toss-up R

1
Indiana
R
Bayh
Young
R + 4
Lean R

1
Florida
R
Murphy
Rubio

Solid R

1
Kentucky
R
Gray
Paul

Solid R

1
Ohio
R
Strickland
Portman

Solid R

1
Arkansas
R
Eldridge
Boozman

Solid R

1
Iowa
R
Judge
Grassley

Solid R

1
Georgia
R
Barksdale
Isakson

Solid R

1
Kansas
R
Wiesner
Moran

Solid R

1
S. Carolina
R
Dixon
Scott

Solid R

1
Arizona
R
Kirkpatrick
McCain

Solid R

1
Utah
R
Snow
Lee

Solid R

1
N. Dakota
R
Grassheim
Hoeven

Solid R

1
Oklahoma
R
Workman
Lankford

Solid R

1
S. Dakota
R
Williams
Thune

Solid R

1
Alabama
R
Crumpton
Shelby

Solid R

1
Alaska
R
Metcalfe
Murkowski

Solid R

1
Idaho
R
Sturgill
Crapo

Solid R

1
Louisiana
R
  24 cand.'s
Dec runoff

Solid R

1

House

The Dems will fall well short of a "wave" to regain control, picking up only five seats, perhaps the true casualty of the Comey escapade.  The Dems might have picked up 15-20 had it not been for the downballot fall-out from the first letter.

Below are listed just the 49 races that we consider competitive.

BTRTN PREDICTION
Proj. Dem
Proj. GOP
State
Dist.
Incumbent (188 D- 237 R)
BTRTN         Rating as of 11/7
193
242
188 D - 247 R





New York
3
D
Likely D
1

California
24
D
Lean D
1

California
7
D
Lean D
1

Florida
13
R
Lean D
1

Nevada
4
R
Lean D
1

New Hampshire
1
R
Lean D
1

Arizona
1
D
Lean D
1

Minnesota
2
R
Toss-up D
1

Minnesota
8
D
Toss-up D
1

Nebraska
2
D
Toss-up D
1

Iowa
1
R
Toss-up D
1

Nevada
3
R
Toss-up R

1
New Jersey
5
R
Toss-up R

1
Florida
18
D
Toss-up R

1
Illinois
10
R
Toss-up R

1
Texas
23
R
Toss-up R

1
Florida
26
R
Toss-up R

1
Maine
2
R
Toss-up R

1
New York
19
R
Toss-up R

1
New York
22
R
Toss-up R

1
Pennsylvania
8
R
Toss-up R

1
California
49
R
Toss-up R

1
Colorado
6
R
Toss-up R

1
Virginia
10
R
Toss-up R

1
Florida
7
R
Toss-up R

1
California
10
R
Toss-up R

1
Michigan
1
R
Toss-up R

1
New York
1
R
Toss-up R

1
Kansas
3
R
Toss-up R

1
California
25
R
Toss-up R

1
Iowa
3
R
Lean R

1
New York
24
R
Lean R

1
Utah
4
R
Lean R

1
Michigan
7
R
Lean R

1
Minnesota
3
R
Lean R

1
Wisconsin
8
R
Lean R

1
California
21
R
Lean R

1
Indiana
9
R
Lean R

1
Pennsylvania
16
R
Likely R

1
Virginia
5
R
Likely R

1
Alaksa
1
R
Likely R

1
Arizona
2
R
Likely R

1
Colorado
3
R
Likely R

1
Michigan
8
R
Likely R

1
Montana
1
R
Likely R

1
New York
23
R
Likely R

1
Illinois
12
R
Likely R

1
Indiana
2
R
Likely R

1
New York
21
R
Likely R

1

Governors

This is a bit of an off-year for State Houses, with only 12 races in total.  And despite the fact that the Dems have only 18 Governors overall, there was little chance for change, since 8 of them were up for reelection, versus only 4 of the 31 Republicans governors (there is one Independent Governor, in Alaska, and he is not up for reelection). 

With such a stacked deck, we see the GOP holding serve, continuing to hold 31 Governorships to 18 for the Dems. 

The big action here will be in 2018, when there will be 36 state houses on the line – heading into the 2020 census which will guide congressional redistricting, and the next round of gerrymandering games.  Those who control state houses and legislatures dictate those terms, with huge national implications.

BTRTN PREDICTION
Proj. Dem
Proj. GOP
State
Inc. Party
GOP
GOP
Poll Margin as of 11/7
BTRTN         Rating as of 11/7
8
4
Delaware
D
Carney
Bonini

Solid D
1

Oregon
D
Brown
Pierce

Solid D
1

Washington
D
Inslee
Bryant

Solid D
1

New Hamp.
D
Sununu
Ostern
D + 11
Lean D
1

Indiana
R
Gregg
Holcomb
D + 4
Lean D
1

N. Carolina
R
Cooper
McCrory
D + 2
Toss-up D
1

Missouri
D
Koster
Greitens
D + 2
Toss-up D
1

Montana
D
Bullock
Gianforte
D + 1
Toss-up D
1

Vermont
D
Minter
Scott
R + 2
Toss-up R

1
W. Virginia
D
Justice
Cole
R + 6
Lean R

1
N. Dakota
R
Nelson
Burgum

Solid R

1
Utah
R
Weinholtz
Herbert

Solid R

1

There you go…our predictions for all 538 races (55 separate presidential electoral vote races including the 50 states, the District of Columbia and two congressional districts in each of Maine and Nebraska; 36 Senate races; 12 Governors and all 435 House seats) that will dictate the state of our world for the next decade or more.  But that future could hang on just one of them, whether it is Florida or North Carolina or Michigan or the tiny second Congressional District in Maine, and that one race could be decided in the wee hours of the night, or even later.  Get out to vote tomorrow, make some calls, and  then fasten your seat belts for an historic night.