The Dobbs decision, consistent Democratic overperformance in special elections, Trump’s underperformance in Republican primaries, the Harris Campaign’s incredible ground operation with millions of volunteers, Trump’s shocking behavior and ugliness especially these last few weeks, Independents and newly-registered voters (unpolled!) overwhelmingly preferring Harris – IMHO, pollsters have failed to sufficiently take these factors into account.
Moreover, bad-faith pollsters have been releasing an unprecedented number of questionable, with the clear aim of impacting the polling averages such as 538. To an astonishing degree, they have succeeded in manipulating the media election narrative. (Likewise, Polymarket has been a case study in narrative manipulation.)
During this2024 election, especially, basing predictions on the 538 average, means trying to predict on the basis of skewed, highly-manipulated data. PEC should, in my opinion, have restricted itself to an average of just the high-quality independent polls.
Interestingly, the average of the highest-quality independent polls HAS NOT CHANGED.
It’s worth paying attention to one notable pollster exception, one who doesn’t do manipulative weighting or make a whole bunch of hidden assumptions, is Ann Selzer. There are good reasons why she is perhaps the most respected and revered pollster in America.
Here are my predictions, going out on a limb and clearly at odds with the consensus:
PRESIDENCY: Kamala Harris wins at least six of the swing states: MI, WI, PA, NV, GA and NC. Stunningly, she also wins FL and IA. Texas will be surprisingly close. It’s possible that Trump wins AZ.
SENATE: Democratic winners include Gallego AZ, Alsobrooks MD, Slotkin MI, Rosen NV, Casey PA. Baldwin holds in WI, as does Sherrod Brown in OH and Tester in MT. Allred defeats Cruz in TX, and Mucarsel-Powell unseats Scott in FL. Osborn loses a close race against Fischer in NE.
Democrats with caucusing Independents expand control to 52–48.
HOUSE: 226–209, Democratic control. I would not be surprise to see Dems reach 230.
Based on what I see in the special-election data, I think a realistic upper-bound estimate for Harris performance would be the +2.5 point estimate I made. Call it the Hopium Bound. It includes Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, and adds up to Harris 319 EV, Trump 218 EV.
I think we're too polarized for things to go any further. Of course I could be wrong!
That could well be. But I think the massive gender gap, the Selzer poll, Harris’ huge advantage in the polls of those who had already cast and Early Vote (far too little emphasis on those polls!), likewise the gaps in specialized large-sample polls of specific demographics (younger voters; Blacks; Latino/Hispanic voters) paint a very different picture.
Add to that the Florida poll of people who had voted early. It showed Harris leading with +1, despite the fact that Rs had a 10+ point advantage in voters!
In other words, despite the polarization, there is a huge swathe of Republican voters (say, almost half of Haley’s voters) who are voting for Harris rather than Trump, because the cannot abide the Fascist. Likewise, there have been repeated indications of Independents in most swing states breaking heavily for Harris.
In other words: The political polarization that focuses on Party is camouflaging rather than clarifying the true underlying dynamics of what is happening.
And pollsters clearly have not adjusted to the post-Dobbs reality, to the referenda results, and to the almost-unbroken series of Democratic overperfomances in the special elections.
(I realize full well that I am almost alone in believing that Harris can win Iowa or Florida. That said, 319 EV would be an excellent result – and well beyond "The Margin of Steal"; hard to see how SCOTUS and others courts, or disloyal electors, can mess with that!)
Kudos to you for taking the special elections into account!
Florida has already been called for Trump, so your predictions are starting to be wrong. I'm all in for the "Hopium" result myself, but you've gone overboard.
I know you are dedicated to stopping the chaos and harm Trump is doing to America.
I was censored off Hopium because I tried to voice the seriousness of how inadequate the Democrats are fighting the demise of our democracy and how Rosenberg, for some unknown reason, touts the "WE ARE STRONG,,THEY ARE WEAK" rubric.
Weakening Polls are not helping the situation as Trumps illegal use of power becomes more unstoppable, Rosenberg is in Never Never Land when it comes to the reality of the strength of Trump's takeover... It doesn't matter if he loses in early court filings.. The S Ct. backs him overwhelmingly.
You are smart you know the capturing and harsh daily headlines are a winner just by being the daily REALITY SHOW moment.
Read the experts Tim Snyder..et al., are "scared" and see the acceleration of a slippery slope that elections under a federal police force won't cut it;
I keep replying to Hopium but can't post.. I think he is exercising the very censorship he argues against.
Below is my message to Hopium .. hoping some way some how the organization will move beyond political blinders and postcards..
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even your journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even you journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
You are replying to one of my posts that is almost a year old! So, this is probably not the best place for a visible discussion. Nevertheless I will try to respond as best I can.
Tim Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Jennifer Rubin and many other anti-authoritarian experts are on my reading list. They are indeed spot-on in their descriptions and warnings about America’s slide into autocracy.
Simon Rosenberg is a warrior and I have a keen appreciation for what he is doing with his information-packed, action-oriented Hopium Chronicles. Simon is result-oriented. Imho, he expertly guides the community to take action that matters! For several years, the Hopium community has been instrumental in achieving numerous Democratic downballot victories.
A key tenet of Simon’s is: "We have to fight with the army that we are given, not the one we wish for."
As a warrior, Simon has a low tolerance for rhetoric that interferes with the fight, rhetoric that results in despair, apathy and paralysis. I agree with his approach! There are plenty of other fora where you and others can paint a pessimistic picture of today’s political situation. (Hence I reserve my more bleak comments for other websites.) However, that does not mean Simon is pollyannaish.
Let me ask you this:
– What actions are *you* taking to resist America’s slide into dictatorship?
– What specific measures do *you* recommend ordinary Americans take?
Well.. thx for response, and of course I was just using your Substack name to break into Hopium and advance some dialogue I thinks needs to be out in the open. Perhaps your confirmation bias didn’t allow you to see Rosenberg’s continual put downs of those who tried to offer honest and substantiated opinion and arguments. He loves to say “You have to do better or we don’t say such things here” What the heck does that mean.. we can only post the “company” line.. we can’t add perspective that others may agree with and grow Hopium. He got way too personal and that indicates some esteem or ego issues.
When I was in grad school, we all learned that the best learning comes from discussion and “argument”. Rosenberg doesn’t allow such a forum.
He was way late to the party recognizing Biden’s weakness, Harris ineptness, and Trumps power. Saying he and the R’s are weak, powerless, and collapsing is ostrich politics. I know he and Nate Silver are not comrades, but the attached article can be substantiated and critiques properly in my opinion, Hopium’s Yellow Brick Road.
Maybe Rosenberg is pissed off at the exposure of his misleading support of suspect polls. To me what is going on now is similar to his approach during the election. Trump has an EFFECTIVE headlock on legal and educational institutions, the used to be Justice Dept, and Pentagon, and on and on .. Trump is not weak in practice only in polling. WHY COVER THAT UP…WHY NOT TELL IT LIKE IT IS… That is my message and your answer to what I’m doing!!
“For if our environment is familiar, our proven habits of thought and action predict successful performance. If our environment is not familiar, then relying on past practices would seem to be ill-advised—in these situations, the feeling of fear serves us by breaking our reliance on habit and making us consider alternative courses of action.”
That’s all I mean and how I think Hopium is way off the mark.
Do you think that Trump’s militarization of blue voting areas is because he likes uniforms. He intends to de-legitimatize the 2026 elections. I wrote out 2000 postcards for Ossoff, Warnock, and then Biden. We are past the postcard stage.
We need truth to power even if it hurts. The Hopium template is missing the point.
i was curious about the switch of wisconsin, dark blue in the unadjusted poll map to light blue in the tilt by 1.5 points to harris map. if the results in the tilted towards harris map would generate better results for her, why did the color of the map seem to indicate a worse outcome for her in wisconsin?
Some of the Vote Maximizer recommendations for close House races that I donated to are coming home. E.g., Riley has just been declared winner in NY-19.
A couple in CA remain very close, though only about 50% of votes counted.
At the moment, in 11 districts Democrats are in the lead to flip Republican districts, and 5 Republicans are in the lead to flip Democratic districts. If this holds, a net gain of 6 seats would be enough to give Democrats control of the House.
In these districts, the average Vote Maximizer per-voter power is 87 out of a possible 100. So it appears that Vote Maximizer was successful in identifying important districts.
I also note that of these 16 districts, 6 were drawn by an independent citizens' commission, 4 were drawn by a court (and 3 of those in New York by an Electoral Innovation Lab affiliate), and 2 used ranked-choice voting.
"Renowned Pollster J. Ann Selzer said Tuesday she would be reviewing her data to determine why a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released just days before the election produced results so far out of line with former President Donald Trump's resounding victory." [Des Moines Register at 11:40 pm CT]
Re: ".The House of Representatives has little net overall bias, thanks to reductions in gerrymandering in the last decade (three cheers for anti-gerrymandering reformers!). Therefore we can take the national vote as a measure of who will control the House in 2025." I thought that https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217322120 showed that there's about ten-seat (or 1% vote) advantage for the GOP in the House due to geography advantage, even if there was no net intentional gerrymandering.
They did not show that. They made specific assumptions that went into their simulations. For example, one can draw random maps without regard to race, or one can draw districts that comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Current election returns confirm my analysis. The average margin is R+1.1% and the median seat is R+1.5%. That is a 0.4-point advantage for Republicans. Based on specific results so far, they have a 1-2 seat advantage. That may change slightly, but basically my estimate is correct.
I note that at present, the House appears headed for a likely outcome of 221 R, 214 D seats. Maybe as few as 219 R, 217 D.
Sam, here's the relevant sentence from the Kenny paper I was referring to: "To win a majority in the US House of Representatives under the enacted plan, Democrats need more than 51.1% of the national two-party popular vote, just 0.14 percentage points more than under the nonpartisan baseline. "
That paper modified their SMC algorithm in a few states when needed to draw enough minority districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act. I could imagine that the high uncertainty in Kenny's votes-to-seats model might lead to an erroneous calculation of the national bias. But their district-drawing method looks sound to me.
Ohio Issue One (would have established anti-gerrymandering commission) failed. Ballot language from Republican Sec'y of State, approved by R dominated Ohio Supreme Court, was grossly misleading to voters, too many of whom were deceived into thinking "no" was the anti-gerrymandering choice. Mother Jones, among others, has the grisly details.
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even you journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
You need to put your ego aside and get to work Please tell me you have SOME Democratic Alternative besides what you are doing!!!
Some thoughts...
The Dobbs decision, consistent Democratic overperformance in special elections, Trump’s underperformance in Republican primaries, the Harris Campaign’s incredible ground operation with millions of volunteers, Trump’s shocking behavior and ugliness especially these last few weeks, Independents and newly-registered voters (unpolled!) overwhelmingly preferring Harris – IMHO, pollsters have failed to sufficiently take these factors into account.
Moreover, bad-faith pollsters have been releasing an unprecedented number of questionable, with the clear aim of impacting the polling averages such as 538. To an astonishing degree, they have succeeded in manipulating the media election narrative. (Likewise, Polymarket has been a case study in narrative manipulation.)
During this2024 election, especially, basing predictions on the 538 average, means trying to predict on the basis of skewed, highly-manipulated data. PEC should, in my opinion, have restricted itself to an average of just the high-quality independent polls.
Interestingly, the average of the highest-quality independent polls HAS NOT CHANGED.
It’s worth paying attention to one notable pollster exception, one who doesn’t do manipulative weighting or make a whole bunch of hidden assumptions, is Ann Selzer. There are good reasons why she is perhaps the most respected and revered pollster in America.
A prediction
Here are my predictions, going out on a limb and clearly at odds with the consensus:
PRESIDENCY: Kamala Harris wins at least six of the swing states: MI, WI, PA, NV, GA and NC. Stunningly, she also wins FL and IA. Texas will be surprisingly close. It’s possible that Trump wins AZ.
Harris wins 355–183 with AZ, 344–194 without it.
https://www.270towin.com/maps/zRBxY
SENATE: Democratic winners include Gallego AZ, Alsobrooks MD, Slotkin MI, Rosen NV, Casey PA. Baldwin holds in WI, as does Sherrod Brown in OH and Tester in MT. Allred defeats Cruz in TX, and Mucarsel-Powell unseats Scott in FL. Osborn loses a close race against Fischer in NE.
Democrats with caucusing Independents expand control to 52–48.
HOUSE: 226–209, Democratic control. I would not be surprise to see Dems reach 230.
Based on what I see in the special-election data, I think a realistic upper-bound estimate for Harris performance would be the +2.5 point estimate I made. Call it the Hopium Bound. It includes Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, and adds up to Harris 319 EV, Trump 218 EV.
I think we're too polarized for things to go any further. Of course I could be wrong!
That could well be. But I think the massive gender gap, the Selzer poll, Harris’ huge advantage in the polls of those who had already cast and Early Vote (far too little emphasis on those polls!), likewise the gaps in specialized large-sample polls of specific demographics (younger voters; Blacks; Latino/Hispanic voters) paint a very different picture.
Add to that the Florida poll of people who had voted early. It showed Harris leading with +1, despite the fact that Rs had a 10+ point advantage in voters!
In other words, despite the polarization, there is a huge swathe of Republican voters (say, almost half of Haley’s voters) who are voting for Harris rather than Trump, because the cannot abide the Fascist. Likewise, there have been repeated indications of Independents in most swing states breaking heavily for Harris.
In other words: The political polarization that focuses on Party is camouflaging rather than clarifying the true underlying dynamics of what is happening.
And pollsters clearly have not adjusted to the post-Dobbs reality, to the referenda results, and to the almost-unbroken series of Democratic overperfomances in the special elections.
(I realize full well that I am almost alone in believing that Harris can win Iowa or Florida. That said, 319 EV would be an excellent result – and well beyond "The Margin of Steal"; hard to see how SCOTUS and others courts, or disloyal electors, can mess with that!)
Kudos to you for taking the special elections into account!
Florida has already been called for Trump, so your predictions are starting to be wrong. I'm all in for the "Hopium" result myself, but you've gone overboard.
I deny that I made a prediction for President.
Not yours! Arctic Stones's!
Yes, indeed. I was very, very wrong.
Hello.. Oct 8, 2025
I know you are dedicated to stopping the chaos and harm Trump is doing to America.
I was censored off Hopium because I tried to voice the seriousness of how inadequate the Democrats are fighting the demise of our democracy and how Rosenberg, for some unknown reason, touts the "WE ARE STRONG,,THEY ARE WEAK" rubric.
Weakening Polls are not helping the situation as Trumps illegal use of power becomes more unstoppable, Rosenberg is in Never Never Land when it comes to the reality of the strength of Trump's takeover... It doesn't matter if he loses in early court filings.. The S Ct. backs him overwhelmingly.
You are smart you know the capturing and harsh daily headlines are a winner just by being the daily REALITY SHOW moment.
Read the experts Tim Snyder..et al., are "scared" and see the acceleration of a slippery slope that elections under a federal police force won't cut it;
I keep replying to Hopium but can't post.. I think he is exercising the very censorship he argues against.
Below is my message to Hopium .. hoping some way some how the organization will move beyond political blinders and postcards..
thx
-------------------------------------------------------------
Rosenberg,
You're kidding right..Dems are winning!!!???
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even your journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
You need to put your ego aside and get to work
Rosenberg,
You're kidding right..Dems are winning!!!???
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even you journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
You need to put your ego aside and get to work
Hi Boris,
You are replying to one of my posts that is almost a year old! So, this is probably not the best place for a visible discussion. Nevertheless I will try to respond as best I can.
Tim Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Jennifer Rubin and many other anti-authoritarian experts are on my reading list. They are indeed spot-on in their descriptions and warnings about America’s slide into autocracy.
Simon Rosenberg is a warrior and I have a keen appreciation for what he is doing with his information-packed, action-oriented Hopium Chronicles. Simon is result-oriented. Imho, he expertly guides the community to take action that matters! For several years, the Hopium community has been instrumental in achieving numerous Democratic downballot victories.
A key tenet of Simon’s is: "We have to fight with the army that we are given, not the one we wish for."
As a warrior, Simon has a low tolerance for rhetoric that interferes with the fight, rhetoric that results in despair, apathy and paralysis. I agree with his approach! There are plenty of other fora where you and others can paint a pessimistic picture of today’s political situation. (Hence I reserve my more bleak comments for other websites.) However, that does not mean Simon is pollyannaish.
Let me ask you this:
– What actions are *you* taking to resist America’s slide into dictatorship?
– What specific measures do *you* recommend ordinary Americans take?
Let’s hear your strategy!
Well.. thx for response, and of course I was just using your Substack name to break into Hopium and advance some dialogue I thinks needs to be out in the open. Perhaps your confirmation bias didn’t allow you to see Rosenberg’s continual put downs of those who tried to offer honest and substantiated opinion and arguments. He loves to say “You have to do better or we don’t say such things here” What the heck does that mean.. we can only post the “company” line.. we can’t add perspective that others may agree with and grow Hopium. He got way too personal and that indicates some esteem or ego issues.
When I was in grad school, we all learned that the best learning comes from discussion and “argument”. Rosenberg doesn’t allow such a forum.
He was way late to the party recognizing Biden’s weakness, Harris ineptness, and Trumps power. Saying he and the R’s are weak, powerless, and collapsing is ostrich politics. I know he and Nate Silver are not comrades, but the attached article can be substantiated and critiques properly in my opinion, Hopium’s Yellow Brick Road.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/hopium-comes-at-a-high-price
Maybe Rosenberg is pissed off at the exposure of his misleading support of suspect polls. To me what is going on now is similar to his approach during the election. Trump has an EFFECTIVE headlock on legal and educational institutions, the used to be Justice Dept, and Pentagon, and on and on .. Trump is not weak in practice only in polling. WHY COVER THAT UP…WHY NOT TELL IT LIKE IT IS… That is my message and your answer to what I’m doing!!
“For if our environment is familiar, our proven habits of thought and action predict successful performance. If our environment is not familiar, then relying on past practices would seem to be ill-advised—in these situations, the feeling of fear serves us by breaking our reliance on habit and making us consider alternative courses of action.”
That’s all I mean and how I think Hopium is way off the mark.
Do you think that Trump’s militarization of blue voting areas is because he likes uniforms. He intends to de-legitimatize the 2026 elections. I wrote out 2000 postcards for Ossoff, Warnock, and then Biden. We are past the postcard stage.
We need truth to power even if it hurts. The Hopium template is missing the point.
i was curious about the switch of wisconsin, dark blue in the unadjusted poll map to light blue in the tilt by 1.5 points to harris map. if the results in the tilted towards harris map would generate better results for her, why did the color of the map seem to indicate a worse outcome for her in wisconsin?
Oh yeah, I should probably fix that. Don’t pay any attention to those little color differences!
Generally the New York Times models are doing well, from a technical standpoint. Here is the projection for Iowa, which Trump is headed for winning by 12 points. That is pretty different from the Selzer poll, which had shown Harris up by 3. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-iowa-president.html#forecast
Some of the Vote Maximizer recommendations for close House races that I donated to are coming home. E.g., Riley has just been declared winner in NY-19.
A couple in CA remain very close, though only about 50% of votes counted.
Thank you for using the information!
At the moment, in 11 districts Democrats are in the lead to flip Republican districts, and 5 Republicans are in the lead to flip Democratic districts. If this holds, a net gain of 6 seats would be enough to give Democrats control of the House.
In these districts, the average Vote Maximizer per-voter power is 87 out of a possible 100. So it appears that Vote Maximizer was successful in identifying important districts.
I also note that of these 16 districts, 6 were drawn by an independent citizens' commission, 4 were drawn by a court (and 3 of those in New York by an Electoral Innovation Lab affiliate), and 2 used ranked-choice voting.
Wednesday morning, 10:00am: the net gain by Democrats might not hold up. Current flips are now 6 D's, 5 R's, a net gain of 1 seat. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-house.html
"Renowned Pollster J. Ann Selzer said Tuesday she would be reviewing her data to determine why a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released just days before the election produced results so far out of line with former President Donald Trump's resounding victory." [Des Moines Register at 11:40 pm CT]
Re: ".The House of Representatives has little net overall bias, thanks to reductions in gerrymandering in the last decade (three cheers for anti-gerrymandering reformers!). Therefore we can take the national vote as a measure of who will control the House in 2025." I thought that https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217322120 showed that there's about ten-seat (or 1% vote) advantage for the GOP in the House due to geography advantage, even if there was no net intentional gerrymandering.
Geoff, thanks for the link. An interesting study.
They did not show that. They made specific assumptions that went into their simulations. For example, one can draw random maps without regard to race, or one can draw districts that comply with the Voting Rights Act.
To repeat my statement: in our pre-election calculations there is approximately 0% bias in the House of Representatives, meaning that a majority national vote would produce a majority caucus most of the time, for either party. See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/midterm-house-elections-2022-gerrymandering-new-york/672145/
Current election returns confirm my analysis. The average margin is R+1.1% and the median seat is R+1.5%. That is a 0.4-point advantage for Republicans. Based on specific results so far, they have a 1-2 seat advantage. That may change slightly, but basically my estimate is correct.
I note that at present, the House appears headed for a likely outcome of 221 R, 214 D seats. Maybe as few as 219 R, 217 D.
Sam, here's the relevant sentence from the Kenny paper I was referring to: "To win a majority in the US House of Representatives under the enacted plan, Democrats need more than 51.1% of the national two-party popular vote, just 0.14 percentage points more than under the nonpartisan baseline. "
That paper modified their SMC algorithm in a few states when needed to draw enough minority districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act. I could imagine that the high uncertainty in Kenny's votes-to-seats model might lead to an erroneous calculation of the national bias. But their district-drawing method looks sound to me.
Ohio Issue One (would have established anti-gerrymandering commission) failed. Ballot language from Republican Sec'y of State, approved by R dominated Ohio Supreme Court, was grossly misleading to voters, too many of whom were deceived into thinking "no" was the anti-gerrymandering choice. Mother Jones, among others, has the grisly details.
test
Rosenberg,
You're kidding right..Dems are winning!!!???
Its too bad you didn't pay attention to Snyder several months ago, instead of accusing anyone that pointed out
Democratic weakness as trolls. Even you journalist buddy from Mexico said you have to stand up at each and every moment.
You were so late to the party. Even now you tout the Dems as strong and Trump as week.
THIS IS POLLING WHICH RIGHT NOW MEANS JACK!! Trump has the POWER, corrupt as it is....
YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC!
Doing what you are promoting...postcards, thanking our representatives, your "get to work" mantra is ignoring the reality of Trump's
pockets loaded with the other branches of government support. Levitsky said so also several months ago. You piddled.
We all know what trump is up to, and your videos are repetitious. You ignore what people are saying about the likelihood that the upcoming
26 elections will never happen fairly or result in Democratic victory. Newsom said and worries about those very things!!
..
You Wrote...
"We are in the fight with Trump now all of us wanted to have. This past week we were strong, principled and resolute. They were unprepared, flummoxed, panicky, weak and wobbly."
WHAAAAT!!! .. The way you and Hopium act is like worrying about cutting the grass on your front lawn during an earthquake
You need to put your ego aside and get to work Please tell me you have SOME Democratic Alternative besides what you are doing!!!