3 in 4 chances of ‘Blue Wave’, says FiveThirtyEight
November is fast approaching. The pundits are taking notes and following polls, surveys and tendencies trying to predict winners and losers in the race to retain or regain leadership in the House of Representatives. Here’s what Nathaniel Rakich, of FiveThirtyEight, says based on latest tallies and what the folks at FiveThirtyEight have seen:
According to the latest run of the “Classic” version of our model, Democrats have a 3 in 4 chance of taking over the House; their average gain is 34 seats. This hasn’t changed too much since we launched the forecast last Thursday, when Democrats’ average gain was 35 seats. However, there have been some changes under the surface as we’ve made improvements to the model. You can find an overview of those here, and we’ll be updating our “how the forecast works” page soon with more detail.
But since this is our first Election Update, today I want to focus on the bigger picture. Our model joins the political discourse as only one of many predictors of the fall’s elections, and three of the most respected election handicappers are our friends over at the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Historically, their race ratings have a strong record of accuracy — so much so that we have a whole iteration of our forecast, the “Deluxe” version, that exists solely to incorporate their ratings. So, while we remain devoted to hard data above all, it’s always good to see how our bloodless, but systematic, approach matches up with more subjective, but expert, opinions.
And, generally, they do. As of Tuesday, Cook, Inside Elections, Crystal Ball and FiveThirtyEight’s Classic forecast all had the same race rating for 322 out of the 435 House races. FiveThirtyEight agreed with or was only one category removed from Cook in 424 races, Crystal Ball in 423 races and Inside Elections in 410 races. Our mileage may vary in whether to call a GOP-favored race “lean Republican” or “likely Republican,” but, generally, our different techniques are leading mostly to the same results.
