Final US election forecasts

On Wednesday we will get most of(but not all) of the US election results. In the post I’m going to go through the various forecasts and predictions. There will be some further polls in the next 48 hours, but they are unlikely to move the averages much.

US House

Is 2022 the Republicans won a majority being 222 to 213 of the 435 House seats, flipping control. However the polls had them winning by a larger margin, so they underperformed to the polls.

Since then, the Republicans have dropped to 220 seats, just two above the 218 needed to control the chamber.

538 and DDHQ have the Republicans slight favourites to retain control, as does the Polymarket prediction market. The naysayers are The Economist at 45% and Race to WH at 30%.

The actual seat projections are as close as you can get. You need 218 for control and 538 and DDHQ has them on 218, and Cook on 221. Others have them just missing out with The Economist on 216 and Race to WH on 213.

This indicates that not only is control as close as you can get, but whichever party wins may have the slimmest of majorities, which will make life very hard for the Speaker.

The Senate

The Democrats hold this 51 to 49. In a 50/50 tie the Vice-President’s casting vote determines control.

All forecasts are for the Republicans to win at least 51 seats. 538 has this at 90% probability, DDHQ 74%, Economist 71%, Race to WH 65%. Polymarket betting is at 79%.

All models project the Republicans winning back the majority with 51 or 52 seats.

538 has the Republicans 99.9% likely to flip West Virginia where they have a 38% lead and 91% likely to flip Montana with a 7.5% lead. This gets them to 51, so would be a huge upset to fall short.

No other seats are forecast to flip but the Democrats only have probabilities of 53% in Ohio, 69% in Wisconsin, 72% in Pennsylvania and 76% in Michigan. It is quite possible one of those four will flip also, making it 52 to 48.

While the Republicans will be glad for a majority, no matter how small, they should be doing much better. The electoral map is the most favourable in a generation and terrible candidate choices have allowed the Democrats to remain ahead in seats where they should lose, especially Arizona.

Governors

Only 11 of 50 Governors are up for election. The only toss up is New Hampshire which has the Republican candidate up by around 2%. If they retain this, 27 of 50 states will be governed by Republicans.

State Legislatures

Republicans control 57 state chambers, Democrats 41 and two are bipartisan.

10 chambers could flip. They are:

• Arizona House – held by Republicans 31/60
• Arizona Senate – held by Republicans 16/30
• Wisconsin Assembly – held by Republicans 64/99 (large boundary changes as gerrymander gone)
• New Hampshire House – held by Republicans 197/400 (388 filled)
• New Hampshire Senate – held by Republicans – 14/24
• Alaska House – bipartisan 23/40
• Michigan House – held by Democrats 56/100
• Pennsylvania House – held by Democrats 102/203
• Minnesota House – held by Democrats 70/134
• Minnesota Senate – held by Democrats 33/66 (1 vacancy)

Overall 28 state legislatures are controlled by Republican, 20 by Democrats and 2 are split.

If you take Governors into account, you have:

• Republican trifecta 23
• Democrat trifecta 17
• Split 10

The aim is to get the trifecta.

President

All six aggregators have Trump ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. That doesn’t mean he will win them, just that ni matter which way you aggregate the polls, he is ahead. The leads of 0.7% to 2.3% are all within the margin of error and the normal polling error in a presidential election.

That gets Trump to 268 electoral votes – one short of a tie. Pennsylvania looks to be the critical state. He leads on average by 0.3%, ranging from 0.3% behind with one aggregator to 0.7% ahead with another. This is the state to watch.

Michigan and Wisconsin have Harris ahead by 0.9% and 0.4%. Still very close. Trump could win all seven swing states – as could Harris.

Four of the six sites have Trump forecast to win 287 to 251. One has him 297 to 241, and one has Harris 270 to 268.

In terms of probability, Trump’s chances range from 49.8% to 53.4%. This is as close to a toss up as you can get.

It will all come down to which demographics turnout better than the polls predicted.

This is the final update, unless there is a November surprise. I’ll have a live-blog from midday on Wednesday.