Nate Silver New Forecast: GOP Takes Over The Senate

Nate Silver, the genius statistician who correctly predicted the outcomes of the 2012 presidential election in all 50 states and in 31 of 33 Senate races, just announced his outlook for the 2014 Senate race.

It’s no secret that Nate Silver’s predictions are close to perfect. The 36-year old former New York Times syndicated statistician left The Gray Lady for ESPN where he now prognosticates on his first love — sports — and, occasionally, politics. 

So accurate is Silver that Republicans waged war against him in 2012, when his predictions increasingly assured President Obama a strong win, that one radical Republican created the concept of “Unskewed Polls,” which assured a President Mitt Romney. The world knows how that ended.

Today, at his FiveThirtyEight website, Silver offers Republicans assurances of a likely takeover of the Senate, noting that “the most likely outcome involves the Republicans winning about the six seats they need to take over the Senate, give or take a couple.”

“Summing the probabilities of each race yields an estimate of 51 seats for Republicans. That makes them very slight favorites — perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-40 — to take control of the Senate, but also doesn’t leave them much room for error.”

Silver does offer Democrats a glimmer of hope.

“I also want to advance a cautionary note. It’s still early, and we should not rule out the possibility that one party could win most or all of the competitive races.”

The question Democrats, liberals, and progressives have to answer themselves is, what happens if the GOP retains the House — quite likely — and takes control of the Senate?

How many of these events are guaranteed?

Impeachment of President Barack Obama

Censure of President Barack Obama

Repeal of (part of) Obamacare

Wave of “religious liberty” laws

Wave of anti-choice, anti-women laws

Wave of anti-LGBT laws

Further culling of voting rights

No liberal or progressive judges confirmed

The end of the EPA, food stamps, and even unions

Immigration “reform” that deports 11-13 million people

Of course, the President would have to sign or veto some of these, but the GOP can force his hand.

What other outcomes do you foresee?

 

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr