Month: May 2018

Senate Races Initial Categorization

For today’s regular post I want to lay out what my initial subgroups to use in the analysis.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com
 Safe Republican Seats – Mississippi (Both seats),  Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming
These are deep red states, and unlike Texas and Tennessee, they currently lack a strong democratic contender.
Republican Seats to Watch – Arizona, Nevada,   Tennessee,  Texas
Arizona and Nevada are vulnerable because the incumbent is retiring, and both states were relatively close in the 2016 election.  Tennessee has a retiring incumbent and a former Democratic governor who is doing good in the polls.  In Texas,  O’Rouke is looking like he may have a chance.
Democratic Seats to Watch (States that Trump Won)-  Florida,  Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  Michigan,  West Virginia, Wisconsin
This category is of the states that Trump won,  and I want to watch these states to see if they have the potential of flipping.
Safe Blue States – California, Connecticut, Delaware,   Hawaii,   Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota (both seats), New Jersey,   New Mexico, New York,  Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington
Safe Incumbent Independent Senators – Maine, Vermont
I don’t see Sanders or King having any problem being reelected.
I want to profile all the states I have categorized as close.  I am going to go 1-2 a week, and I will wait until after the primary so I can discuss both candidates.  Right now,  I think that the Republicans will remain in control of the Senate,  with at least 50 seats (the VP can break ties).   There are vulnerable Republican seats, but there are also vulnerable Democratic seats.  I do expect individual seats to flip,  but the final result should be about the 51-49 split it is right now.

Can Beto O’Rouke Become the Next Senator of Texas?

I wanted my one of my first posts about the election to be about the Texas Senate Race.

A few weeks ago,  I listened to the FiveThirtyEight podcast on the Texas Senate Race which discussed the Quinnipiac poll (from April 18th) that showed a statistical tie (Cruz’s lead was less than the margin of error) between Cruz and O’Rouke.  I have thought about the race a lot because it has the potential to be unusually close.

The question of the race is this:  Can a Democratic candidate beat an incumbent Republican in a Red state that Trump won by 9 points?   The poll data is pretty weak right now,  with Real Clear Politics  just showing the Quinnipiac poll and one from JMC Analytics (an agency I have never heard of).  But this is something worth watching, and looks like it will be a close race.

O’Rouke has a chance,  but he will have to work on turnout and flipping Republican and Republican-leaning voters like myself, who are moderate, dislike Cruz and the direction of the GOP.

My planned vote is for Ted Cruz, not because I approve of him nor because I agree with most of his politics,  but because Cruz better represents my politics and I think O’Rouke would vote the party line if elected.  The Republican Senate majority is vulnerable,  which is also influencing my decision.  Only time will tell who the other moderate Republicans will vote for,  but Texas will be a race to watch on election night.

 

 

2018 Midterms

It’s (finally) Election season again which means my Friday politics blog posts are going to start back up again from now at least the end of August.  I am starting a Statistics Ph.D. program at Texas A&M in the fall so I might not have time to blog regularly for the end of election season,  but I will try.  I am so excited to follow the 2018 midterm elections!

This summer I plan to immerse myself back into the midterm elections as I did for the 2016 Presidential race.  The goal right now is to use the model I already built to predict the 33 Senate races and possibly a few House races if I have time.  This election gives me the opportunity to try to build a few new, different kinds of priors to use in my Iterative Gaussian model.   I will continue to break the races into groups and use a method similar what I have used to predict Presidential elections,  but I am planning to bring in poll data from the Generic House Ballot with some adjustments.

The Senate races are going to bring in new challenges because each race has a different set of candidates that will complicate how I choose races to serve as the prior.  What will probably happen is that I will break races down into categories based on the competitiveness of a race and what direction I think it is leaning.  Hopefully, we will see polling for every Senate race start to pop up after the primaries.   If some of the races don’t have any polls, I might have to get creative.

Right now,  I think Republicans will keep the Senate Majority. There are only 8 Republican Senate seats up for reelection.  Of those, only Nevada was not won by Trump in the last election.  Additionally, there are vulnerable Democratic senators in West Virginia, Missouri, Montana, and Indiana which are all states Trump won by a large margin.  Given the polarization of the electorate,  I don’t think enough Trump voters (at least those happy with his performance) can be convinced to vote for a Democrat.  I also believe Ted Cruz will be reelected to his seat in Texas.  O’Rouke might have more money and is gaining popularity,  but it will be an uphill battle for him to convince enough moderate Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to vote for him even though he will probably vote the party line if elected.