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One of the things that is so extraordinary about this election year is all of the issues that are yet to be decided that could have a huge effect on the races: The second Mueller trial, Cohen in the Southern District of New York, Trump Charities with the AG of New York. The plea deals of Cohen, immunity for Pecker....there are so many variables it makes prognostication a bitch.

FiveThirtyEight is forecasting 72.6% chance the Democrats take the House, and a 27.4% chance the GOP maintains a majority. I think it's a bit closer than that, more like 60-40. But I don't see any great diplomatic of legislative breakthroughs coming before November, and the steady drip-drip-drip of indictments seems to keep the President in a permanent state of reacting to the story instead of getting out in front of it. If the polls stay this gloomy for the GOP, will you see a move away from Trump? I doubt it. Not until after the election, and then depending in what information comes out.

We are always living through history, but sometimes we live through extraordinary history, the Chinese curse of living in interesting times. And these times are undeniably interesting.

I think that the best possibility for Democrats is to reach 49 seats in the Senate.
I think the Republicans go over 225 seats in the House.
I think the Republicans go over 27 for Governors, thus taking the State Houses with them.

I also think that the fractures (eg Sanders influence in Florida, etc) in the Democrat party being exposed by the primaries are troublesome for the DNC because the DNC leadership is entrenched.

I've come to doubt very much what I think will happen in elections. It's occurred to me that I have no idea what appeals to people or how they think. What seems like an obvious choice is clearly not obvious to everyone else.

Some Schmo wrote:I've come to doubt very much what I think will happen in elections. It's occurred to me that I have no idea what appeals to people or how they think. What seems like an obvious choice is clearly not obvious to everyone else.

I think the problem is really just dealing with the black swans in these kinds of things. How could any of us possibly have predicted Comey's heavy influence on the outcome of 2016? The best you can do is look at polling, historical applications, and current trends and hope that no crazy outside impacter veers you way off course.

The interesting (read as frighting) part of this midterm is we will be testing just how heavily the structuring of the current system favors Republicans. There is more than an outside chance that Democrats heavily over-perform on the general ballot and still don't wind up with a "win".

Cloudy, with a chance of rain. Snow over Thanksgiving. Ski weekend at Targhee.

I think 538's prediction models are solid and the other forecasters all are roughly aligned with them. Democrats have about as good of a chance of winning the House as Clinton did the presidency on election day. I'll take the odds and assume they eek out a bare majority while winning a near landslide in votes.

There's a not insignificant chance Democrats win a quasi-landslide in historical terms and still lose the House. If that happens, I think the general public will wake up to what's going on there a little more.

For the Senate, I think Democrats are in deep trouble in Florida, Missouri, and North Dakota. They also have toss-up battles in several other states. They're modest favorites to pick up in Arizona and Nevada and have a realistic outside shot in Tennessee and Texas. I'll go ahead and predict they lose two seats overall.

The Senate math is getting extremely distorted due to US population trends and within the lifetime of most of us it's going to start getting way, way beyond anything the Constitution intended where a tiny fraction of the population controls a huge % of the Senate votes. I suspect this election outcome might inject that reality more into the national conversation. The Senate apportionment was a compromise picked at a time when the math was different.

Govenorships I think are a little more favorable to Democrats. I'll predict they pick up 9 seats for a total of 25.

As more information comes in, I'm totally modifying these still too early predictions.

Xenophon wrote:I think the problem is really just dealing with the black swans in these kinds of things. How could any of us possibly have predicted Comey's heavy influence on the outcome of 2016? The best you can do is look at polling, historical applications, and current trends and hope that no crazy outside impacter veers you way off course.

The interesting (read as frighting) part of this midterm is we will be testing just how heavily the structuring of the current system favors Republicans. There is more than an outside chance that Democrats heavily over-perform on the general ballot and still don't wind up with a "win".

Have you by chance read:

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impro ... 081297381X

The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"

A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this second edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

I read this book yeeeeeears ago, and it's really interesting to see how his observations have come to fruition through the lens of hindsight.

Admittedly he's very kind to Trump and his Presidency.

- Doc

In other prediction news, I've been paying very close attention to recession forecasting, which is a half step above witchcraft, because frankly I'm hopeful there's a recession timed perfectly to affect the 2020 election. Recession predictions within the next two years have taken a huge upswing recently.

I haven't read the second edition, Doc, but I do still have the original on shelf somewhere at home.

EAllusion wrote:There's a not insignificant chance Democrats win a quasi-landslide in historical terms and still lose the House. If that happens, I think the general public will wake up to what's going on there a little more.

Agreed, but outside of those plugged pretty intently into the numbers I'm not seeing quite the alarm over this I would maybe expect. I haven't been impressed with the average voters understanding of heavily the deck is stacked in Republicans favor on this one. I hope that your prediction of the national conversation steering more towards this and the Senate vs Population skew holds true. I remain skeptical of that given how quickly we moved away from discussions on how disproportionate the Electoral College has become following 2016 results.

Xenophon wrote:I haven't read the second edition, Doc, but I do still have the original on shelf somewhere at home.

EAllusion wrote:There's a not insignificant chance Democrats win a quasi-landslide in historical terms and still lose the House. If that happens, I think the general public will wake up to what's going on there a little more.

Agreed, but outside of those plugged pretty intently into the numbers I'm not seeing quite the alarm over this I would maybe expect. I haven't been impressed with the average voters understanding of heavily the deck is stacked in Republicans favor on this one. I hope that your prediction of the national conversation steering more towards this and the Senate vs Population skew holds true. I remain skeptical of that given how quickly we moved away from discussions on how disproportionate the Electoral College has become following 2016 results.

I'm extremely hopeful that Democrats push their margins into the low double digits where gerrymandering starts to work against the Republican party. I want them to have a Gob Bluth "I made a huge mistake" moment. The odds of that happening are roughly equal to the odds that Republicans retain the House in prediction models like 538's. Fear of disappointment; however, makes it hard for me to purely look at the numbers. I intuitively think Republicans just flat out controlling the House and pushing even further towards eroding democracy to set up enduring authoritarian control is much more likely the reality I'll live in.