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Notes -
American midterm election predictions?
Does anyone wish to use this space to register predictions for outcomes in tomorrow's American midterm elections?
Personally, I take a kind of efficient markets approach to this stuff, so I'll defer to the betting consensus. But if you want your time-stamped judgment registered as part of the official Motte record, here's your chance!
Mods - please feel free to remove if you don't think this is a good fit for the space.
I expect mild Republican 'overperformance' (defined here as 'winning a few races that were considered likely Dem wins). I don't think we see any surprise Dem victories at the federal level.
I officially expect the GOP to control the Senate. I will not be terribly surprised if they get 54 votes total. I'm with you as to believing the markets are correct. Indeed, I suspect the markets are a little underconfident. If they've priced in the risk of fraud and recounts then it's hard to see how we get any scenario other than GOP house and Senate, with small possibility of Dem Senate.
The two races I am particularly interested in as 'bellwethers' are New York and Arizona Governor. If Kari Lake wins I think that's proof positive of a 'red wave.' If Hochul loses... we're in a red tsunami scenario. I expect Lake to win. 60% confidence.
I also expect Herschel Walker to win by an unexpectedly large margin. Anyone showing up on election day that is undecided will be likely to go with him. He's got more name positive name recognition in Georgia than any other person I could try to name.
Oh, I am also officially predicting that Florida will get it's count done (i.e. able to definitely declare victory in all state and federal-level races) on election day or shortly thereafter (before noon the next day), there won't be a need for a recount, and there will be no major voter fraud (defined at 1000 or more 'false' votes in any given county) detected. 90% confidence on all of the above as a group.
PLEASE call me out on this if I'm wrong, I'm feeling extremely confident in my calibration, which is weird for me.
I'm going to guess that certain other states will have a harder time getting done on day of.
I don't necessarily believe in "if this happens, it's definitely a blowout" with regards to the NY governor race. I agree Hochul is likely to win but NY, like the rest of New England in a more exaggerated way, has interesting local political dynamics and because of the distribution of the city/suburbs/upstate split a relatively modest discontentment with the (perceived) weak-on-crime policies of the Democrats in the city and even moreso the suburbs could put a Republican in the governor's mansion.
Alls I'm saying is that I expect a Hochul loss to strongly correlate with a "GOP wins 54 senate seats" scenario.
I have paid virtually zero attention to the ground-level politics in New York.
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