From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
History Suggests Some Close Races Are Pretty Much Over
Sean Trende deserves some sort of medal for this chart:
He notes, “This trove of data dates back to 1998, and covers all manner of races: Senate, House, gubernatorial, and presidential.”
As of Thursday, we were 13 days from the election. Let’s use the RealClearPolitics average and see how things look for the big Senate races.
Let’s start with the good news for Republicans.
In Arkansas, Tom Cotton is enjoying a 5.5 point lead. 86 percent chance of victory!
In Colorado, Cory Gardner has a 4 point lead. 91 percent chance of victory!
In Alaska, Dan Sullivan has a 4.3 point lead. 91 percent for him, too!
In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell has a 4.4 point lead.
In Iowa, Joni Ernst has a 2.5 point lead, right between 2 and 3. Oooh, a 70 to 77 percent chance of victory!
(In Louisiana, Bill Cassidy has a 4.8 percent lead in a head-to-head matchup, but that race is almost certain to go to a runoff. Put that one aside for now.)
In case you were wondering, in South Dakota, Mike Rounds has a 9.8 percent lead in the RealClearPolitics average, but it would be 3.5 if you only used polls conducted in October. So you can interpret his odds of victory as either 97 percent or 91 percent if you round up to 4.
Here’s the kind of intriguing news for Republicans: In Kansas, “independent” Greg Orman’s lead is eight-tenths of a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average. Rounding that to one, we find on the above chart that Orman has . . . a 44 percent chance of victory. Yup, somehow having a one-point lead 13 days from Election Day is actually a bad sign. However, by 12 days, the chance of victory with a one point lead jumps up to 88 percent; by a few days later, it’s down to 68 percent.
In Georgia, Michelle Nunn’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average is 0.4 percent. So she’s not even on the chart. Bump her up to one point for the sake of argument, and she’s in the same spot as Orman.
Now on to the not-so-good news for Republicans . . .
In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan has a 1.6 point lead, which we’ll round up to 2 points. Bad news, Thom Tillis, that’s a 70 percent chance of victory for her!
In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen also has a 1.6 point lead, which comes to a 70 percent chance of victory. Considering how steadily Scott Brown has closed these past weeks, you have to wonder if this is one of those 30 percent cases.
Every other Senate race has a 6 percentage point margin or higher.
This is a nice but not quite ideal scenario for Republicans. Assuming neither Georgia or Louisiana are resolved on Election Night, let’s assume Republicans lose the seat in Kansas and gain seats in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado and Iowa. That’s a net gain of six seats! But as great as that sounds, it would give Republicans 50 seats and Democrats 48. If Democrats win both runoffs, they could keep control of the chamber by having Vice President Biden break the ties. If Cassidy wins the December runoff, Georgia’s January runoff becomes moot to control of the Senate.
Kansas, the Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations of the entire political world depend upon you reelecting Pat Roberts — or North Carolina or New Hampshire making Thom Tillis or Scott Brown one of those underdogs that win 30 percent of the time.