As we head into the home stretch, we will be making a prediction as to who we believe will win in every single federal contest just as we did for every single primary contest. But our basic guiding principle remains the same; past election results are the best guide to future results. If there is a conflict between the polling and the past, the past should be chosen. Change obviously happens, and it would be foolish to disregard signs of change. However without an incredibly detailed argument as to why the change is occurring it becomes the better part of valor to bet against change. This is why we did so well in the primary contests.
The 2012 Romney primary contest was won by the Establishment because an utterly unified Establishment confronted what turned out to be the absolute B squad of the Far Right. Even then Romney was constantly pushed and won with way less than 50%. This opened the door for the Far Right in 2016. It was hard to know which of the three right-winger candidates (Cruz,Carson,Trump) would ultimately emerge, but Donald Trump’s two wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina made it almost a fait accompli.
Likewise, Clinton’s lead with the African American vote, which was never really challenged, made her a lock for the nomination because that is how the Democratic math works. We learned this convincingly from Obama 2008. It was also why this blog took Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in Iowa. The candidate of the Christian Right has now won three straight Iowa caucuses and its growing strength was in evidence as far back as 2000.
Democratic wins in the New Hampshire, Michigan and Virginia Senate races in 2014 push us toward believing those states will stay Blue. In contrast the agonizing 2014 losses, in Florida’s Governor’s race, and Senate contests in North Carolina and Colorado show just how little difference there was between winning and losing. The increased turnout expected in a Presidential year could be enough to cause those states to snap back.
We also think it is safer to assume states will stay in the rough finish order they were in 2012 except where the evidence is strong enough to strongly warrant alternative conclusions. Iowa is a great example of such contrary evidence. In 2014, Republicans gained the open Iowa Senate seat by 8.3%. This was a big flashing red light that things were going badly for Democrats there, and that has mostly been the case this entire year. Iowa isn’t over, but the 2014 result more than any other has moved it out of the states we would expect to get Clinton to 270.
We will identify other such changes where we see them. But if you made state by state predictions from 2000 to 2012 and each time you bet that the state would vote for who won it last time, you would have only missed 14 states total in 2004(3), 2008(9) and 2012(2) combined. In 2006, Democrats won the marquee race in 5 of the states Obama would go on to pick up in 2008, losing in two and not having any in two. Interestingly it was the two states lacking in marquee races in 2006 which Obama went on to lose in 2012 after having won them in 2008. (Indiana and North Carolina).
This brings us at least briefly to a flaw we see in the 538 average. The current 538 average gives Clinton a better chance of winning a Romney won state (66.7%) than it gives her of winning overall (66.0%). Yet at the moment, the Clinton camp seems to believe they are competitive in only two Romney states (Arizona, and North Carolina). It is almost impossible for us to imagine a win in either coupled with an overall loss. Clinton wins North Carolina, but loses Pennsylvania is pretty much the only major path that can be conjured up, and it’s a real long shot. Winning North Carolina is hardly part of Clinton’s path of least resistance and it would be much easier for her to win on Obama’s clearest path to 270, which was identical in 2008 and 2012, than to snag a Romney state. We need more evidence that things are changing dramatically before finding it easier to reverse a 2012 outcome than to produce a repeat of the Obama majority.
In conclusion, digging into the past was the major reason we out predicted other blogs in the primary. This is our hope as to how we can do better in the general. There are nuggets of truth hiding in the past, or at least that is how we will approach it.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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