Projected New Senate:     50 Democrats     50 Republicans    

Polling data in Excel Battleground states Previous report Next report News Strong Dem (43) Weak Dem (5) Barely Dem (2) Exactly tied (0) Barely GOP (2) Weak GOP (2) Strong GOP (46) No Senate race   Map algorithm explained

Oct. 23	New polls:	(None)
	Pickups:	Missouri Montana Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island

Welcome	General FAQ	Polling FAQ	Votemaster FAQ
Donations	All Senate races	Hot House races	Poll Graphs
More election data	Senate info	Political websites	Articles and books
2004 Election	EVP track record	Political humor	For bloggers
Animated map	Contribute a page

News from the Votemaster

Poll of the Day

Since all readers of this site presumably have at least some minor interest in political polling, let's have our own poll. If this feature proves popular, it could be repeated (daily). Please make your choice below and then click on "Vote" to see the results. For purposes of this poll, please consider Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as a Democrat, but Joe Lieberman (D-CT) as an independent. I know this is backwards, but it gives the least ambiguous results. Multiple votes from the same computer will be rejected; if you want to vote more than once, you'll have to enlist your friends to help out. If you want to speculate with real money in political futures contracts, see the Iowa Electronic Markets.

Senate Polls

No new Senate polls today.

House Polls

We have two House polls, one of them quite surprising. NH-02 is a rematch of the 2004 election, in which Charlie Bass (R) beat Paul Hodes (D) by 20 percentage points. Incumbent Bass has been leading Hodes all year, but now we have a poll by the Becker Institute showing a reversal, with Hodes now ahead 48% to 39%. I think I want to see another poll before I believe this, though. In NH-01, incumbent Republican Jeb Bradley is ahead of insurgent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter 49% to 37%. That is quite believable, although it does show a strong gain for Shea-Porter.

Politics

If you missed the site during the weekend, Saturday I had a story about the open seats in Congress. Sunday I had a story about how peculiarities of the telephone system can give misleading House polls.

The sixth year of an administration has rarely been kind to the party occupying the White House. The President's party has historically been clobbered after 6 consecutive years of power. There are too many accumulated grievances and people tend to blame the President and his party. The table below shows the 6th year of all the two-term administrations since Wilson, counting Harding/Coolidge, Roosevelt/Truman, Kennedy/Johnson, and Nixon/Ford as single administrations (in all cases it was a President/Vice President combo). The Greek letter Δ is used by statisticians to mean "change," in this case since the previous election. The purple columns show the net gain/loss for the White House for both the Senate and House. It is not a zero-sum game due to gains and losses of third parties. The only administration not to lose Senate seats was Clinton in 1998, probably because so many people were angrier with the Republicans for impeaching Clinton than for what Clinton actually did. He even gained 5 seats in the House.

Thus based on historical precedent going back almost 100 years, we should expect the Democrats to pick up six seats in the Senate and 31 in the House, not far at all from what most experts are predicting.

Breakdown of the Senate and House elections by party since 1912 are available in Excel format and csv format.

The mud season has started. Here is an example. Forecast: mud for about two weeks, then sunny.

Projected New House*:     228 Democrats     206 Republicans     1 Tie

WWW www.electoral-vote.com