Nate Silver, the numbers-crunching genius who correctly predicted every state's vote in the 2012 presidential election, is tracking current senate races. Yesterday, he released a statement that gives the Republicans a 60% chance of taking control of the Senate by a one-seat margin.
Now, a couple of caveats.
1. This is based on current polls, trends, and his vast knowledge of political history. But it is only a measure of today's prediction. There are three months left, and many things happen in the last three months of campaigns.
2. Nate's impressive accuracy was in predicting presidential votes. In some of them, his prediction would change over time; his 100% success was based on his final predictions just prior to the election.
3, Senate races are sort of a hybrid between national presidential politics and more local, congressional district politics.
4. A 60% chance of winning by one seat. That's pretty slim -- and Democrats have a 40% chance of preventing that happening. But it's enough to turn over all committees and the agenda, powerful differences. On the other hand, it will take only flipping one seat that now seems in the Republican column.
5. The sobering thought behind these stats is that the senate will likely be even more closely divided, even if we hold onto control; so breaking filibusters will be even harder.
Nevertheless, there is cause for concern -- even though in general Democrats seem less worried than they were four months ago as some of the 'in trouble' incumbents, like Mary Landreau and Mark Pryor seem to be doing better than originally feared. On the other hand, Mark Udall is doing less well in Colorado.
I believe the two wild cards are going to be the possible pick-ups of Michelle Nunn in Georgia and Allison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. Each is essentially tied with her Republican opponent.
In the end, it will likely come down to the ground game in a few key states, that is, who gets their voters to go to the polls.
Ralph
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