How do you forecast for November?

[_subgenius]

Seems like Trump has gone dark on insane Twitter just like he did right before the 2016 election, no?

I'm actually surprised he hasn't leaked nude photos of his wife or daughter, mentioned something about firing Rosenstein, or held a KKK rally. Usually he's big on distracting people from bad stories (Kavanaugh) with other bad stories. I guess he only cares to distract from bad stories about himself (with other bad stories about himself).

Its only a bad story to rubes like you....most people are trending towards Kavanaugh and towards the candidates that supported him.

[_Brackite]

The latest from 538:

IN Democrat Donnelly –– 75.9%
Arizona Democrat Sinema — 66.1%
MO Democrat McCaskill -- 60.8%
NV Democrat Rosen ---- 53.6%

ND Democrat Senator Heitkamp is probably going to lose her re-election bid.

The latest Arizona Senate Poll:

The poll shows Sinema, who has represented a Phoenix-area district for three terms in Congress, leading among likely voters with 44.6 percent. McSally, who has represented a Tucson-area district for two terms, trailed by three percentage points with 41.6 percent.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcent ... 1499952002

[_EAllusion]

Because Congressional polls are someone correlated nationally, you can't look at the odds of each seat independently. They'll move to some extent in tandem. We're a small polling error away from Republicans gaining several Senate seats and barely holding onto Congress. At which point, given how far off the rails the party is, there's a real serious chance of enduring authoritarian control by the Republican party with American democracy being a quasi-sham. We are not at all far off the national GOP being similar in character to the NC GOP, only with a much worse person as the figurehead of the party.

Sleep tight.

[_EAllusion]

geez, dude, give us a break and go back to pontificating in the mirror. For about 8 years we have all heard guys like you run around talking about how the Republican party is turning on itself, falling apart, self-destructing, blah blah blah..

Feel free to quote me saying those things. Funnily, I remember being the sort of person who criticizes those ideas. I can quote some examples of that if you'd like.

exploited the weak platform positions of Democrats.

Democratic policy generally speaking is vastly more popular than Republican policy for what it is worth. It's not even close. Even the ones I vociferously disagree with. Republicans win despite that. It really helps that elections are covered as competing policy platforms barely at all as of late. When the national attention turns to what Republicans want to do, their popularity tends to crater until the spotlight moves on. See the legislative fights over repealing Obamacare and tax reform as two recent examples.

What Republicans exploited was lucking into a mid-term election in one of the worst economic downturns in the past century when a Democrat was president. That's what set up everything that follows.

do Democrats have anything other than "Trump is mean" for a platform?

They're mostly campaigning on health care, actually. If you're not aware of that, what does that say about how the media chooses to cover Democratic messaging?

[_Gunnar]

Its only a bad story to rubes like you....most people are trending towards Kavanaugh and towards the candidates that supported him.

Why are you so adamantly in favor of an administration and candidates so ovbviously corrupt corrupt and self-serving as Trump and supporters, like Hunter, who is indicted and will likely be convicted for serious crimes? Why do you seem to hate democracy so much? Do you emulate Trump's ability to get away with whatever he tries to do, however dishonest and selfish? Do you aspire to be able to get away with doing similarly dishonest acts? I have extreme difficulty avoiding coming to the conclusion that you are either hopelessly deluded yourself, or actually admire Trump's brazen disregard for law and truth and decency, whenever they get in the way of his agenda.

[_Some Schmo]

I have extreme difficulty avoiding coming to the conclusion that you are either hopelessly deluded yourself, or actually admire Trump's brazen disregard for law and truth and decency, whenever they get in the way of his agenda.

Given what we knew about Drumpf in 2016 (forgetting everything we've found out since), there are only four basic reasons someone voted for Drumpf:

- Ignorance: I suspect this is the main reason. Most people just don't pay attention.
- Stupidity: You were conned by his BS.
- Insanity: You actually thought he'd be a good president.
- Asshole: You were fully aware that he'd be a disaster but didn't care for whatever reason.

You can essentially apply this guide to any Drumpf supporter. It will be any one or combination of the four.

[_honorentheos]

Kudos to Heidi Heitkamp for basically saying she knows a no vote on confirming Kavanaugh is political suicide for her reelection bid, but she couldn't look at herself in the mirror if she voted yes.

[_honorentheos]

I'm speculating here, but it occurs to me that when Kavanaugh came out last Thursday going straight from an 11 to a 15 (drawing on Matt Damon's portrayal from SNL), it sent a jolt through Republicans that hadn't been present to this point in the midterms. In fact, when Ford's testimony ended it seemed like a true low point with even Trump and Fox News ready to just hunker down and weather things out going forward. But afterward it was all hands fixing bayonets, scrambling over one another to join in the counter charge.

The message that seems to motivate conservative voters most effectively is one of "righteous" rage over what they see as liberal deception. The idea Democrats represent a morally bankrupt worldview willing to do anything to win seems to be the one axiom of modern conservatism. And frankly, it's fairly difficult to unwind someone spun up over this as no degree of fact-sharing is going to illuminate the hypocrisy involved in it or undermine the argument in the mind of the faithful. Attempting to do so is the very fuel that feeds it. Liberals getting wound up themselves to oppose it may be the only short term strategy to counter it, which seems to be what is happening, but it leaves us as a nation in a fraught place. The only thing that seems to have an effect on the outrage is time and reality creeping in. But it's like the outrage is a southwestern forest in a decades long drought, where a single spark that lands just about anywhere near it can set it off into a roaring uncontrolled fire again.

It makes it difficult to really say what will happen come November. Both sides seem to have found new motivation for very different reasons but none of the fundamentals have changed. But there are a half dozen hidden bombs that could also go off, sending things in new directions. Trump could fire Rod Rosenstein next week and his replacement put the Russia investigation into a slow grind timed to keep it quiet until after the election. Trump's finances are just getting started on their run through the 24 hour news cycle, and with focus shifting away from Kavanaugh that could become the October surprise that matters most. But who's to say it doesn't motivate conservatives to come to Trump's defense under the cry that defending Kavanaugh worked against scheming Democrats, and Trump is the next one needing defended?

These are interesting times.

[_Brackite]

According to 538, Manchin now has a 88.2% chance of getting re-elected. Link
I believe that he will be re-elected. But I believe that Heitkamp will lose along with Nelson and/or McCaskill.

According to 538, the Democrats now have a 74.2% chance of taking back the House. Link
And Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick is still comfortably up in the polls to take back Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District for the Democrats. Link

Edited To Add: The Democrats are likely going to pick up California's 49th Congressional District with the Democrat there now comfortably up in the polls.

[_EAllusion]

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.

I'll still go with these predictions. Things have gotten a little worse for Democrats just recently, but my predictions were on the pessimistic side for Democrats to begin with. My math was off on Governorships. I meant 8. That might be high. I'll revise down to 7. The governor's races are the least covered, most important part of the 2018 election. They are the key to reversing gerrymandering so Republicans don't have such a structurally unfair edge for the next decade as well.

The Florida legislation on restoring voting rights to felons is polling above the needed 60%. I didn't think it was likely to pass because I figured Republicans would be able to make that enough of a partisan issue to drive support below 60%. Now it seems realistically possible. That has the potential to remake Florida from a slightly red state to blueish. I'm surprised more dark money hasn't come in to crush that. Plutocrats might be asleep at the wheel on a really key electioneering issue for once.