Let’s talk about this upcoming Blue Wave, focusing on the upcoming House elections.
NOTE: Democrats hold 194 of 435 seats, short of the 218 they need to regain control. Democrats need to nab at least 24 seats from Republicans to regain the majority. The great Nate Silver of 538 says that there is an 86 percent probability that Democrats will pick up of 38 House Seats which would be equivalent to at Democrat BLUE WAVE.
However, the Political Contest Horary projections forecast a “Republican Hold the House” scenario with Democrats winning 21 seats: 1) AZ-02, 2) CA-45, 3) CA-49, 4) CO-6, 5) FL-27, 6) IA-01, 7) MI-08, MI-11, 9) MN-02, 10) MN-03, 11) NJ-05, 12) NJ-07, 13) NJ-11, 14) NM-02, 15) NY-22, 17) PA-07, 18) PA-08, 19) PA-17, 20) VA-07, 21) VA-10.
So far leading into the midterms, the focus by the mainstream media has been on how many of the seats the Democrats can hold, but they are all extremely competitive races. It is certainly possible based on what I’ve been seeing with the Political Contest Horary that the Republicans could increase or at least hold their majority. I think we need to bear in mind that out of the House races that are leaning Democrat, they are only doing so by very slim margins. So, it’s going to be up to 29 to 31 toss-up races that will actually determine House control, and all those races are much tighter than what the mainstream media or the polls are suggesting.
Bearing that in mind, we have to consider a number of other secular factors. One that I think is crucial is voter turnout. A new Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) poll shows that young people are engaged in this campaign and plan to vote this time, with 40 percent of respondents between 18 and 29 years old saying they would definitely do so. The poll notes that if 22 percent of that 40 percent actually do vote, that would represent the highest youth turnout in a Midterm Election in over 32 years. And, if they do, this group favors Democrats by 66 percent; thirty-two percent favor Republicans. However, there’s a problem for the Democrats: if their coalition doesn’t get the turnout they’re looking for or a strong enough turnout in the numbers based on the current projections, then the majority of the votes will come from older and more conservative Americans who lean Republican.
Now, another factor that we need to consider is the economy. Republicans best Democrats on the economy by strong margins in polling across the board, and the economy is getting its highest approval rating since 2001. Yes, that’s even higher than the Obama recovery in 2012 or 2016.
Also, another factor which is unprecedented is that we have a president who’s flying all throughout the country campaigning for Republicans for the past several weeks. This is not uncommon in some key crucial Senate elections. President Obama, President Bush, and President Clinton all went out and campaigned on their party candidate’s behalf to a certain degree. But in this case, we have Trump making several trips to several states in one day as if this was the 2016 campaign all over again. And so there’s no doubt that Trump has run up the numbers for the Republicans in those states he has rallied in.
Now the Cook Political Report says Democrats will gain somewhere between 30 and 40 seats, up from 25 to 35 seats last week. However, the Political Contest Horary indicates that we’re seeing around 21 districts going for Democrats, giving Democrats a total of 216 in the House of Representatives which is just enough for Republicans or 219 to keep control of the House, and using the Political Contest Horary methodology, the House control is still although laboring Democrats only by 53 percent for the political contest horror probability versus 85 percent for 538 for Nate Silver and Sixty 65 percent for predicted. So I believe as we get closer and closer to the midterms coming Tuesday many undecided voters are going to crash to Republican and make this Blue Wave become more purple and leaning in some cases with some possibility to red.
So, a Blue Wave transitioning to a Red Tide is the trend that I’m foreseeing as we get closer to when the polls open on Election Day.
I think the most competitive race right now is Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. For those of you who are not familiar with my work, this is a way using Political Contest Horary where we know the time when we determine the proper odds for particular candidates who are running for office and the latest poll snapshot, and using that time to erect a chart and using very specific rules to determine who will win in that particular contest in that particular race. So we don’t use any kind of natal astrology here, which is very common. This is a Mundane application of Horary at it’s best. For those of you who are skeptical or are not familiar with my work just know that going back to 2008 through 2016, we have on average around an 87-88 percent accuracy rate. We’re shooting for somewhere around 92 percent, hopefully, which is what we achieved in the 2016 U.S. Presidential General Election.
So using this methodology, the most contested race for the House has to be Iowa-03. No doubt about it, that’s going to be ground zero in how the polls and how the turnout is really going to be, an overall determining factor for how I believe the rest of these closely contested House races will go. So in Iowa-03 right now we have a Republican incumbent that’s holding that House district, and right now we have 538/Nate Silver saying a 68.2 percent probability for the Democratic candidate; PredictIt has a 52 percent probability for the Democratic candidate; and the Political Contest Horary indicating 52 percent probability for the Republican incumbent.
So both PredictIt and 538/Nate Silver indicate Iowa-03 is going Democrat. I believe it will crack Republican. It will be a nail-biting race. I believe this is the race to watch and hopefully there’ll be a number of polls emerging by Sunday or Monday to tell us more about whether the Political Contest Horary is going to be correct or not on this one. But I believe how Iowa-03 leans will be an augury of the actual numbers that we’re going to get for the House.
Right now I think we’re going to have a very split house. The Republicans may hold it. The Democrats may gain it, but barely. I believe it’s going to be pretty much split down the middle.
That’s pretty much what I’m seeing. Tomorrow I’d like to talk about the Senate and talk about the particulars of that race, especially with what’s going on in Florida and Indiana. I may also consider looking at some of the governor races if I have time on Monday to see which races are likely to either shift the governorship into the Republican or Democratic majority.
So that’s pretty much what I see. Thank you for your time, for reading this, and we’ll see how the election results match up with the Political Contest Horary after November 6th.