Wisconsin’s Republican Sen. Ron Johnson announced he was running for reelection on Sunday. That should be viewed as good news by Republicans, who need a net gain of just one seat in this year’s midterm elections to wrestle Senate control from the Democrats. While we don’t know what the outcome […] Read more »
Failure and success in political polling and election forecasting
… The recent successes and failures of pre-election polling invite several questions: Why did the polls get it wrong in some high-profile races? Conversely, how is it that the polls sometimes do so well? Should we be concerned about political biases of pollsters who themselves are part of the educated […] Read more »
Idiosyncrasies of Senate Races Could Play to Dems’ Advantage
… At this point it would seem to take divine intervention, Republican self-destruction, or both to save the House Democratic majority. With every seat up simultaneously before voters every two years, the House is an amazingly accurate barometer of the prevailing political mood—something quite remarkable given how few congressional districts […] Read more »
Why 2022 Rhymes With the Previous Four Midterms
It feels safer to bet on unpredictability than stability in this era of tremendous political and social churn and upheaval. While we know that the midterm elections favor the ‘out’ party (i.e. the party that doesn’t control the White House), many wonder if history can be a reliable guide when […] Read more »
An Early Midterm Forecast
Political observers seem to be treating a Republican takeover of the US House next year as an inevitability. And maybe that’s true, but I wanted to apply a bit of simple modeling to it to see if we can get some handle on how likely that is to happen. The […] Read more »
Despite Their Accomplishments, Democrats Close 2021 Demoralized
President Biden and congressional Democrats could look back at this year with pride and accomplishment, given their passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $1 trillion infrastructure package. But instead, the first session of the 117th Congress is now in the history books, and Democrats head into […] Read more »