The size of the Democratic field, combined with the party’s proportional allocation of delegates and other factors, raises the possibility of a very long nomination process that may not be decided until the convention.
It has become common to describe our home state of Virginia as a state that is “trending Democratic.” That’s an observation we agree with — we used that exact term a few weeks ago in our initial Electoral College ratings. But what are we really saying when we use a term like that?
— Our initial Electoral College ratings reflect a 2020 presidential election that starts as a Toss-up.
— We start with 248 electoral votes at least leaning Republican, 244 at least leaning Democratic, and 46 votes in the Toss-up category.
— The omissions from the initial Toss-up category that readers may find most surprising are Florida and Michigan.
— Much of the electoral map is easy to allocate far in advance: About 70% of the total electoral votes come from states and districts that have voted for the same party in at least the last five presidential elections.
Richmond chaos could threaten state legislative takeover but big-picture trends still favor team blue.
— There is at least one plausible Electoral College scenario that produces a 269-269 tie, which would throw the presidential election to the House of Representatives elected in 2020.
— If the House decides the presidency, you might think that Democrats would have the advantage, given their new majority. But it’s the Republicans that hold — and are likely to maintain — the advantage.
In the 2018 cycle, the big story was that the Democrats faced a historically difficult map of Senate races. They had to defend 26 of the 35 seats being contested, including Democratic incumbents in several dark red states. Ultimately, Democrats won 24 of the 35 races, nearly 70% of those on the ballot. But Republicans netted two seats overall, boosting their majority from 51 seats to 53 seats when the new Senate convenes next month. Democrats will hold 47 seats, a total that includes independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
— Following the 2018 election, Republicans now control 27 governorships to the Democrats’ 23, but a majority of the American public will live in states governed by Democrats starting next year.
— The 14 governorships at stake over the next two years feature some intriguing contests that will be held on mostly GOP-leaning turf.
— The most endangered governorship for either side is the open seat in Montana, which Democrats are defending.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats appeared likely to hold a 235-200 majority to start the next House, or a net gain of 40 seats, a handful more than it seemed like they had won in the immediate aftermath of the election. A lot of that has to do with the laborious and long vote count in California, where Democrats do better in the votes that are counted later in the process (there’s nothing new or unusual about this, by the way, so please look for conspiracies elsewhere). Earlier this week, engineer T.J. Cox (D) took the lead over Rep. David Valadao (R, CA-21), and as of this point Cox appears to be in the driver’s seat to win.
— Our final picks are coming Monday. In the meantime, our longstanding overall assessment — Democrats favored in House, Republicans bigger favorites in Senate — remains in place.
— Four ratings changes in the House.
— The battles for the state governorships are getting more volatile as Election Day nears. We are moving three races, Kansas, Oregon, and South Dakota, to Toss-up.
— Republican odds of holding the Senate are as good as ever.
— The playing field continues to expand in the House.
Democrats closing in on majority but it's not a sure thing.
Because we know readers want to see the up-to-the-minute state of play, we’re going to be publishing our Senate and gubernatorial maps, along with our House ratings tables, at the top of the Crystal Ball each week from here to the election. One can also always find our ratings at our Crystal Ball site as well as the UVA Center for Politics-Ipsos Political Atlas, which also features projections based on poll-based modeling and social media metrics.
Affluent suburban seats looking dicier for GOP, but their numbers in the House are not all bad; Colorado, Michigan gubernatorial races shift to Democrats.
GOP maintains edge in race for upper chamber, but Democratic path to majority remains open.
We’ve been starting Crystal Ball pieces with a few “key points” summing up the article. As we head into Labor Day weekend and the start of the sprint to Election Day, we thought we’d do something different. Instead of key points from this article, here are some key points about this election so far:
Tuesday’s bombshell developments — the conviction of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, followed in swift succession by a guilty plea from the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, that seemed to implicate the president in a scheme to skirt campaign finance laws — may very well not move the president’s approval rating. Previous developments related to Robert Mueller’s investigation of the 2016 campaign and Russian involvement really haven’t. But it would be wrong to look at what happened earlier this week and argue that the Cohen/Manafort news doesn’t mean anything to the battle for the House.
Now that 40 of the 50 states have held primaries so far, including major primaries in Minnesota and Wisconsin on Tuesday night, we thought this was a good time to take stock of, and to reassess, the gubernatorial landscape.
In a bygone political era, the symbolic end of summer — Labor Day — denoted the unofficial start of the campaign season. In our current era, one might be tempted to say that the symbolic start of summer — Memorial Day — now represents the campaign season kickoff, though American politics is in a state of perpetual campaigning. As soon as one campaign concludes with an election, candidates for the next election start to emerge. That will be the case after this November’s election, when one would expect the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination to begin in earnest.
House analysts know that handicapping results in individual seats can be tricky for a lot of reasons, including the lack of independent polling in most districts. Yes, the party committees, campaigns, and other outside groups will survey the districts, but many of these polls will never see the light of day, or will only be leaked to make one side look better than the other
