Nate Silver is everywhere right now. Last night he explained the Senate races with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, and early this morning he released his final Senate predictions. Take a look.
Last night, Nate Silver explained the Senate races with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.Â
And later, the uber-accurate statistician released his final Senate prediction.
If you’re a Republican, it’s the best news yet.
If you’re not, it’s pretty bad.
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“After two months of forecasting, it comes down to this: Republicans are favored to win the Senate,” Silver writes. “Their chances of doing so are 76 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast, which is principally based on an analysis of the polls in each state and the historical accuracy of Senate polling.”
76 percent.
That’s the highest yet this year.
Of course, Democrats are notoriously under-sampled in many polls, and if we would actually get motivated to go to the polls we could keep the Senate.
Silver notes why we might not even know the final outcome tonight.
“Because of a variety of circumstances like possible runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana and the potential decision of Kansas independent Greg Orman about which party he chooses to caucus with, the outcome of the Senate may not be determined until days or weeks from now. The forecast refers only to the probability that Republicans will eventually claim control of the Senate by the time it convenes in January.”
How will it need to happen for the GOP to win the Senate?
Republicans need to win a net of six seats from Democrats. But at least three of these — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — are all but guaranteed Republican pickups, while a fourth, Arkansas, has become increasingly certain. On the other hand, Republicans could easily lose Georgia and Kansas, meaning that they’d need to win a gross of seven or eight Democratic seats to finish with a net of six.
The battle will mostly be concentrated in the eight states which neither party has established more than a 95 percent probability of winning. These are Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Other states — particularly Arkansas, Kentucky and Michigan — were once competitive but would now require pronounced polling errors for the trailing candidate to win.
Stay tuned – we’ll be here tracking results all night!
Image: Screenshot via MSNBC