New Senate:     51 Democrats     49 Republicans    

Polling data in Excel Battleground states Previous report Next report News Strong Dem (46) Weak Dem (2) Barely Dem (3) Exactly tied (0) Barely GOP (1) Weak GOP (1) Strong GOP (47) No Senate race   Map algorithm explained

Nov. 11

Pickups:

Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia

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News from the Votemaster

A number of House races are still undecided and different sources give different numbers of them. It is a bit of a judgment call on these. For example, suppose the unofficial tally shows Jones ahead of Smith by 3000 votes, with 3200 provisional ballots left to be counted. Did Jones win? Probably, but if all the provisional ballots are in a district loaded with Smith voters, maybe not. What if there are 5000 provisional ballots? 10,000? This is where the judgment comes in.

Here is a brief rundown on the undecided races CQ politics thinks are still in play. In most cases provisional ballots and sometimes absentee ballots are yet to be counted. Incumbents are denoted by asterisks.

I consider CT-02 , FL-13 , GA-12 , NM-01 , NC-08 , TX-23 , WA-08 , and WY-AL as undecided. I have called OH-02 and OH-15 for the Republicans and LA-02 for the Democrats.

Many people have pointed me to the Iowa Electronic Markets as an indicator supposedly better than the polls. This market allows people to buy and sell futures contracts on political outcomes. In effect, it is a form of legalized gambling with real money on the election results. At midnight on Nov. 6, the day before the election, the closing prices were as follows for the following contracts, each of which paid $1 if the outcome matched the contract:

An example in practice: suppose the night before the election you expected the Democrats to win the House and the Republicans to win the Senate. For $540 you could have bought 1000 contracts. If the result had turned out as you expected, you would have collected $1000., otherwise you would have gotten nothing. If, on the other hand, you expected the Democrats to win all the marbles (as happened), you could have bought 1000 contracts for only $300 and collected $1000 after the election. In other words, the market was effectively giving 3:1 odds against a Democratic sweep. So much for the wisdom of the markets.

I'll talk about the pollsters in the next couple of days, but just one quickie here. The prediction made by the polling algorithm I am using for 6 am. on Nov. 7, before the polls opened, got every state right, as shown here.

Projected New House:     230 Democrats     197 Republicans     8 Ties

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