fivethirtyeight--2020-11-02--What Two Studies With Very Different Findings Can Tell Us About Voting In A Pandemic

It ’ s not even Election Day yet , but tens of millions of Americans have already gone through the process of waiting in line to cast a vote .
Even for those with the options of mail-in and drop-off ballots , early voting lines have stretched for blocks in multiple states .
Theoretically , more early voting means fewer people will try to pack into the polls on Election Day proper — a good thing during a pandemic .
But when early voting , itself , results in big crowds — and the voters just keep on coming — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re really avoiding as much viral transmission as we ’ d hoped .
How big a COVID-19 risk is it to vote in person ?
Here at FiveThirtyEight , we ’ d normally turn to scientific research to answer a question like that .
So we did that .
And , well … There are two studies that tried to quantify how voting in the Wisconsin primary in early April contributed to the spread of COVID-19 .
One of them concludes that it didn ’ t .
The other says the opposite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling site , the more local COVID-19 cases occurred afterward .
It ’ s hugely consequential which study ’ s conclusions are accurate , given the millions of people voting in person this election season .
And experts told me one study is probably getting closer to the truth than the other .
But neither study really fully answers the question — a fact that ’ s also hugely consequential to understanding COVID-19 ’ s risks .
Studying a new virus in real time is frustratingly inexact , especially when our country has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thoroughly .
If you can still think back across the vast eons of time to April of 2020 , you ’ ll recall that the early weeks of the pandemic were a chaotic period for primary voting .
In Wisconsin , it wasn ’ t clear until almost the day of the election whether voting would happen in person and when .
The tumultuous nature of that primary is what attracted researchers to studying it .
“ I saw in the paper that they were forcing people to show up to vote .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ expecting to find lots of infections , ” said Lawrence Wein , professor of management science at the Stanford University School of Business .
Because of his focus on health care , he wanted to know how mismanagement of an election might contribute to the spread of COVID-19 .
Wein ’ s study calculated the state ’ s R-naught value — a measurement of how quickly the virus is spreading — in the weeks leading up to and after the April 7 primary election .
In that time , the R-naught didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his data showed hospitalizations in the state actually went down in the weeks after the vote , suggesting his calculations weren ’ t just a fluke caused by inadequate testing .
It wasn ’ t what Wein had expected , but his data suggested the steps election officials had taken — wearing masks and gloves , making hand sanitizer available to voters and facilitating social distancing — helped to keep COVID-19 from spreading at the polls .
But wait a second .
Because while Wein ’ s approach tells us something , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s no counterfactual , as in no way to tease out what would have happened if the election hadn ’ t been held .
Lacking that , you don ’ t know if a static R-naught means the election didn ’ t change anything , or if it means cases would have fallen otherwise and the election just kept them at the same level .
That ’ s where the other study comes in .
Chad Cotti , a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh , saw that districts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the primary in the same way .
Election sites were being closed and consolidated , Cotti said , but it wasn ’ t uniform .
The result was big differences from county to county in the density of voters per polling location .
“ I live in Appleton and I don ’ t think we had any ” consolidation , he said .
“ But Green Bay had significant consolidation , and those counties are adjacent to each other.
” Cotti ’ s paper used those differences to create a sort-of counterfactual .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ have happened to the overall state COVID-19 count if the primary election never happened .
But we can know whether counties that crammed more voters into fewer locations had a bigger effect than ones that didn ’ t .
And here there was a difference : A 10 percent increase in in-person voters at a given location turned out to be associated with an 18.4 percent increase in that county ’ s COVID-19 cases .
More voters , more virus .
Cotti ’ s paper is probably providing some insight Wein ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is perfect .
Cotti ’ s study , for example , is still a preprint that ’ s being revised as it goes through the peer review process .
One thing he told me the reviewers want him to address is the fact that the relationship between increases in voters-per-location and increases in local COVID cases is probably not a linear one .
“ Adding one person to a polling place doesn ’ t mean an incremental increase .
There ’ s probably a relatively safe density and then it starts to ramp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So twice as large a group may be more than twice as dangerous , ” he said .
But more importantly , other experts told me , neither of these studies can really tell us how risky elections are compared to other behavior .
To do that , you would have to randomly assign people to voting and non-voting groups , and see which one was more likely to contract COVID-19 , said Tariq Cheema , a pulmonary and critical care physician for Allegheny Health Network who has published research on COVID-19 transmission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know , not really ethical .
In fact , said Jennifer Dowd , a professor of demography and population health at Oxford University in England , this is the kind of challenge that makes sociology-based research a real bear even in the best of situations .
Say you want to know how a change in policy — like increasing the minimum wage — changes outcomes in a given city or state .
You ’ ll run into the same kinds of problems , she said .
How do you know that the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the same trajectory had one of them not raised the minimum wage ?
What if places more likely to raise the wage had something different about them to begin with ?
How do you separate cause and effect ?
“ It ’ s a very persistent problem in social science .
And with COVID , it ’ s been really hard , ” Dowd said .
For example , we don ’ t know if the data from the Cotti paper tells us about the risks of voting — or if it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more likely to be socializing in groups , generally .
The data is going to be messy , Dowd told me .
And any research purporting to show the impact of any given event on transmission is going to be imperfect .
That problem gets compounded by the fact that the United States never implemented a consistent and widespread test and trace program .
“ If you really had a comprehensive program and you can look at clusters , you ’ d be able to get very descriptive data .
You don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the patterns more clearly , ” Dowd said .
Instead , if we want to know how risky voting is , we ’ re basically left to make inferences from other research .
For instance , we know group situations are riskier .
We know breathing aerosols matters more for transmission than touching surfaces .
We know from studies of cases in places with more intensive tracing programs that it ’ s significantly safer to be outdoors than in .
We know mask use and distancing reduces transmission .
And the takeaway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerns are the lines , ” Cheema said .
Actual time voting is short and there aren ’ t a lot of other people around .
But hours-long lines leave a lot of time for big groups of people to be near each other , to eat and drink and take their masks off .
If those lines are inside , rather than out , the risks just go up .
He expects to see cases of COVID-19 spiking around the country sometime about Nov. 15 .
He likened it to the risks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a well-ventilated airplane with a mask on doesn ’ t seem to be a high-risk activity — but sitting around a crowded airport is .
Dowd had less concern about a voting-related spike but agreed that the waiting is the hardest part .
It is also the part voters have the least control over .
You can choose to wear a mask .
You can choose to stand at a safe distance .
You can go away and come back later when the line is shorter .
But you can ’ t generally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wait outside .
That ’ s why Cotti is happy the general election has had more options for how to vote than the primary elections offered .
“ More voting choices , a longer time when you can vote — that should reduce the number of people at the poll , ” he said .
“ It should reduce the risk .
”

It’s not even Election Day yet, but tens of millions of Americans have already gone through the process of waiting in line to cast a vote. Even for those with the options of mail-in and drop-off ballots, early voting lines have stretched for blocks in multiple states.
Theoretically, more early voting means fewer people will try to pack into the polls on Election Day proper — a good thing during a pandemic. But when early voting, itself, results in big crowds — and the voters just keep on coming — it’s worth wondering whether we’re really avoiding as much viral transmission as we’d hoped.
How big a COVID-19 risk is it to vote in person? Here at FiveThirtyEight, we’d normally turn to scientific research to answer a question like that. So we did that. And, well …
There are two studies that tried to quantify how voting in the Wisconsin primary in early April contributed to the spread of COVID-19. One of them concludes that it didn’t. The other says the opposite: the busier and more crowded the polling site, the more local COVID-19 cases occurred afterward.
It’s hugely consequential which study’s conclusions are accurate, given the millions of people voting in person this election season. And experts told me one study is probably getting closer to the truth than the other. But neither study really fully answers the question — a fact that’s also hugely consequential to understanding COVID-19’s risks. Studying a new virus in real time is frustratingly inexact, especially when our country has missed crucial opportunities to test and trace thoroughly.
If you can still think back across the vast eons of time to April of 2020, you’ll recall that the early weeks of the pandemic were a chaotic period for primary voting. In Wisconsin, it wasn’t clear until almost the day of the election whether voting would happen in person and when.
The tumultuous nature of that primary is what attracted researchers to studying it. “I saw in the paper that they were forcing people to show up to vote. I was abhorred by it and was expecting to find lots of infections,” said Lawrence Wein, professor of management science at the Stanford University School of Business. Because of his focus on health care, he wanted to know how mismanagement of an election might contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
Wein’s study calculated the state’s R-naught value — a measurement of how quickly the virus is spreading — in the weeks leading up to and after the April 7 primary election. In that time, the R-naught didn’t seem to change much. And his data showed hospitalizations in the state actually went down in the weeks after the vote, suggesting his calculations weren’t just a fluke caused by inadequate testing. It wasn’t what Wein had expected, but his data suggested the steps election officials had taken — wearing masks and gloves, making hand sanitizer available to voters and facilitating social distancing — helped to keep COVID-19 from spreading at the polls.
(FiveThirtyEight has published separate research by two sociologists that reached a similar finding.)
But wait a second. Because while Wein’s approach tells us something, it’s not the whole picture. There’s no counterfactual, as in no way to tease out what would have happened if the election hadn’t been held. Lacking that, you don’t know if a static R-naught means the election didn’t change anything, or if it means cases would have fallen otherwise and the election just kept them at the same level.
That’s where the other study comes in. Chad Cotti, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, saw that districts throughout the state weren’t approaching the primary in the same way. Election sites were being closed and consolidated, Cotti said, but it wasn’t uniform. The result was big differences from county to county in the density of voters per polling location. “I live in Appleton and I don’t think we had any” consolidation, he said. “But Green Bay had significant consolidation, and those counties are adjacent to each other.”
Cotti’s paper used those differences to create a sort-of counterfactual. We’ll never know what would have happened to the overall state COVID-19 count if the primary election never happened. But we can know whether counties that crammed more voters into fewer locations had a bigger effect than ones that didn’t.
And here there was a difference: A 10 percent increase in in-person voters at a given location turned out to be associated with an 18.4 percent increase in that county’s COVID-19 cases. More voters, more virus.
Cotti’s paper is probably providing some insight Wein’s lacks, but neither of these papers is perfect. Cotti’s study, for example, is still a preprint that’s being revised as it goes through the peer review process. One thing he told me the reviewers want him to address is the fact that the relationship between increases in voters-per-location and increases in local COVID cases is probably not a linear one. “Adding one person to a polling place doesn’t mean an incremental increase. There’s probably a relatively safe density and then it starts to ramp up quickly after a certain point. So twice as large a group may be more than twice as dangerous,” he said.
But more importantly, other experts told me, neither of these studies can really tell us how risky elections are compared to other behavior. To do that, you would have to randomly assign people to voting and non-voting groups, and see which one was more likely to contract COVID-19, said Tariq Cheema, a pulmonary and critical care physician for Allegheny Health Network who has published research on COVID-19 transmission. And that’s, you know, not really ethical.
In fact, said Jennifer Dowd, a professor of demography and population health at Oxford University in England, this is the kind of challenge that makes sociology-based research a real bear even in the best of situations. Say you want to know how a change in policy — like increasing the minimum wage — changes outcomes in a given city or state. You’ll run into the same kinds of problems, she said. How do you know that the two places you are comparing would have been on the same trajectory had one of them not raised the minimum wage? What if places more likely to raise the wage had something different about them to begin with? How do you separate cause and effect?
“It’s a very persistent problem in social science. And with COVID, it’s been really hard,” Dowd said. For example, we don’t know if the data from the Cotti paper tells us about the risks of voting — or if it tells us that people who vote are more likely to be socializing in groups, generally. The data is going to be messy, Dowd told me. And any research purporting to show the impact of any given event on transmission is going to be imperfect.
That problem gets compounded by the fact that the United States never implemented a consistent and widespread test and trace program. “If you really had a comprehensive program and you can look at clusters, you’d be able to get very descriptive data. You don’t know for sure but you could see the patterns more clearly,” Dowd said.
Instead, if we want to know how risky voting is, we’re basically left to make inferences from other research. For instance, we know group situations are riskier. We know breathing aerosols matters more for transmission than touching surfaces. We know from studies of cases in places with more intensive tracing programs that it’s significantly safer to be outdoors than in. We know mask use and distancing reduces transmission.
And the takeaway from that for voting? “My concerns are the lines,” Cheema said. Actual time voting is short and there aren’t a lot of other people around. But hours-long lines leave a lot of time for big groups of people to be near each other, to eat and drink and take their masks off. If those lines are inside, rather than out, the risks just go up. He expects to see cases of COVID-19 spiking around the country sometime about Nov. 15. He likened it to the risks of flying, in which being in a well-ventilated airplane with a mask on doesn’t seem to be a high-risk activity — but sitting around a crowded airport is.
Dowd had less concern about a voting-related spike but agreed that the waiting is the hardest part. It is also the part voters have the least control over. You can choose to wear a mask. You can choose to stand at a safe distance. You can go away and come back later when the line is shorter. But you can’t generally force your polling place to have people wait outside.
That’s why Cotti is happy the general election has had more options for how to vote than the primary elections offered. “More voting choices, a longer time when you can vote — that should reduce the number of people at the poll,” he said. “It should reduce the risk.”


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-02--Exit Polls Can Be Misleading — Especially This Year

Exit polls are usually a core component of election-night reporting — especially before real results come in .
They can provide an early sense of which candidate is leading and how certain key demographics voted .
But here at FiveThirtyEight , we won ’ t be covering exit polls much at all , at least not on election night .
That ’ s because pandemic-related changes to how the exit polls are being conducted will make them even less reliable this year .
What the deluge of final polls can tell us | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast Even under ideal conditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People often use them to suss out the horse race while waiting for results to get insight into who ’ s winning , but exit polls aren ’ t intended to be used this way .
Really , what they ’ re designed to do is help explain how a candidate won after everything is said and done , breaking down a candidate ’ s support using various demographic variables like gender , race and education .
( For example , they made it really easy to tease out how the gender gap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with time . )
But exit polls should not be used as a way to gauge a candidate ’ s support in real time .
For starters , exit poll numbers can — and do — change over the course of election night , so you should be especially skeptical of the earliest exit-poll numbers , typically released around 5 p.m. Eastern .
By definition , this first wave of exit polls are incomplete : Polling places are still open , and who ’ s represented in the electorate could change .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Election Day tend to be older than the electorate at large , which can skew the numbers some .
As the night wears on , though , more interviews get added to the sample , and the exit polls become much more representative of voters as a whole .
In fact , exit polls are eventually weighted to match the final results , but that only happens after the election is over .
On election night itself , the numbers are reweighted as more data becomes available , but what you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of uncertainty — especially this year given that the pandemic has radically transformed the way we run elections .
The pandemic has undermined the one major advantage exit polls have over other kinds of polls : their ability to survey only actual voters , since exit polls catch respondents as they exit polling locations .
But in 2020 , far fewer people will be voting in person on Election Day than in previous years ; according to data from political scientist Michael McDonald , more than 93 million people nationwide have already cast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That means that interviewing voters as they leave polling places on Election Day won ’ t give a reliable estimate of how people will vote , especially as the people waiting until Nov. 3 are likely to skew more Republican than the electorate as a whole .
To account for this , Edison Research — the polling firm that produces the exit polls used by ABC News , CBS News , CNN and NBC News — has changed its methodology so that the “ exit polls ” you see on Nov. 3 will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polls of Election Day voters and phone polls of mail voters .
In certain states , there will also be exit polls of early in-person voters , conducted at early-voting locations in essentially the same way as traditional exit polls ( just conducted earlier ) .
But exit polls will still be less reliable this year because the phone poll and the early exit poll are much tougher to get right than the traditional exit poll .
The phone poll essentially puts pollsters back in the uncomfortable territory of having to guess whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did .
( In a world in which trying to model likely-voter turnout is half the battle pollsters face , having that certainty in a traditional , non-pandemic exit poll is a big leg up . )
And while the early exit polls are better able to identify actual voters than pre-election polls , exit pollsters don ’ t have as much experience with early exit polling .
That means they ’ re making less informed decisions about how to weight their samples , which can affect the accuracy of their polls .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ know in advance what the proportion of in-person Election Day voters and absentee voters will be in 2020 .
So how heavily Edison decides to weight the traditional-exit-poll respondents versus the phone respondents and early voters will add to the exit polls ’ uncertainty this year .
What this boils down to is that , this year , there ’ s no reason to believe that exit polls will be any more accurate than traditional pre-election polls .
And so it ’ s hard to make a case for giving them more weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been looking at already .
We will be using exit polls in the weeks to come to understand how age , gender , race and education shaped voting behavior , once we know the outcome .
But if your main question is who will win the election , well , we ’ d never have recommended exit polls for that anyway .
This election night especially , it ’ s best just to wait for the final results — even if it takes a while .
What are the chances we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night ?

Exit polls are usually a core component of election-night reporting — especially before real results come in. They can provide an early sense of which candidate is leading and how certain key demographics voted. But here at FiveThirtyEight, we won’t be covering exit polls much at all, at least not on election night. That’s because pandemic-related changes to how the exit polls are being conducted will make them even less reliable this year.
What the deluge of final polls can tell us | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast
Even under ideal conditions, exit polls can be misleading. People often use them to suss out the horse race while waiting for results to get insight into who’s winning, but exit polls aren’t intended to be used this way. Really, what they’re designed to do is help explain how a candidate won after everything is said and done, breaking down a candidate’s support using various demographic variables like gender, race and education. (For example, they made it really easy to tease out how the gender gap between Democratic and Republican support has grown with time.)
[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]
But exit polls should not be used as a way to gauge a candidate’s support in real time. For starters, exit poll numbers can — and do — change over the course of election night, so you should be especially skeptical of the earliest exit-poll numbers, typically released around 5 p.m. Eastern. By definition, this first wave of exit polls are incomplete: Polling places are still open, and who’s represented in the electorate could change. For example, people who vote early on Election Day tend to be older than the electorate at large, which can skew the numbers some.
As the night wears on, though, more interviews get added to the sample, and the exit polls become much more representative of voters as a whole. In fact, exit polls are eventually weighted to match the final results, but that only happens after the election is over. On election night itself, the numbers are reweighted as more data becomes available, but what you’re seeing is still subject to a lot of uncertainty — especially this year given that the pandemic has radically transformed the way we run elections.
The pandemic has undermined the one major advantage exit polls have over other kinds of polls: their ability to survey only actual voters, since exit polls catch respondents as they exit polling locations. But in 2020, far fewer people will be voting in person on Election Day than in previous years; according to data from political scientist Michael McDonald, more than 93 million people nationwide have already cast an absentee or in-person early vote. That means that interviewing voters as they leave polling places on Election Day won’t give a reliable estimate of how people will vote, especially as the people waiting until Nov. 3 are likely to skew more Republican than the electorate as a whole.
To account for this, Edison Research — the polling firm that produces the exit polls used by ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News — has changed its methodology so that the “exit polls” you see on Nov. 3 will actually be a combination of traditional exit polls of Election Day voters and phone polls of mail voters. In certain states, there will also be exit polls of early in-person voters, conducted at early-voting locations in essentially the same way as traditional exit polls (just conducted earlier).
But exit polls will still be less reliable this year because the phone poll and the early exit poll are much tougher to get right than the traditional exit poll.
The phone poll essentially puts pollsters back in the uncomfortable territory of having to guess whether respondents who claim to have voted actually did. (In a world in which trying to model likely-voter turnout is half the battle pollsters face, having that certainty in a traditional, non-pandemic exit poll is a big leg up.)
And while the early exit polls are better able to identify actual voters than pre-election polls, exit pollsters don’t have as much experience with early exit polling. That means they’re making less informed decisions about how to weight their samples, which can affect the accuracy of their polls. It’s just really hard to know in advance what the proportion of in-person Election Day voters and absentee voters will be in 2020. So how heavily Edison decides to weight the traditional-exit-poll respondents versus the phone respondents and early voters will add to the exit polls’ uncertainty this year.
What this boils down to is that, this year, there’s no reason to believe that exit polls will be any more accurate than traditional pre-election polls. And so it’s hard to make a case for giving them more weight than the many pre-election polls we’ve been looking at already. We will be using exit polls in the weeks to come to understand how age, gender, race and education shaped voting behavior, once we know the outcome. But if your main question is who will win the election, well, we’d never have recommended exit polls for that anyway. This election night especially, it’s best just to wait for the final results — even if it takes a while.
What are the chances we’ll know the next president on election night?


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-02--I’m Here To Remind You That Trump Can Still Win

It ’ s tempting to write this story in the form of narrative fiction : “ On a frigid early December morning in Washington , the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that disputed mail ballots in Pennsylvania— ” You know , that kind of thing .
But given the stakes in this election , I think it ’ s important to be prosaic and sober-minded instead .
So let ’ s state a few basic facts : The reasons that President Trump ’ s chances in our forecast are about 10 percent and not zero : • As in 2016 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ College .
Projected margins in the tipping-point states are considerably tighter than the margins in the national popular vote .
• More specifically , Joe Biden ’ s lead in Pennsylvania — the most likely tipping-point state , according to our forecast — is solid but not spectacular : about 5 points in our polling average .
• Without Pennsylvania , Biden does have some paths to victory , but there ’ s no one alternative state he can feel especially secure about .
• While a lot of theories about why Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ shy ” Trump voters ) are probably wrong , systematic polling errors do occur , and it ’ s hard to predict them ahead of time or to anticipate the reasons in advance .
• There is some chance that Trump could “ win ” illegitimately .
To a large extent , these scenarios are beyond the scope of our forecast .
• There ’ s also some chance of a recount ( about 4 percent ) or an Electoral College tie ( around 0.5 percent ) , according to our forecast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short philosophical note .
I hate it when people use phrases — to be fair , we often use phrases like these ourselves !
— such as “ Nate Silver is giving Biden a 90 percent chance ” or “ FiveThirtyEight still gives Trump a 10 percent chance.
” We aren ’ t giving anybody anything .
Instead , as former FiveThirtyEight politics host Jody Avirgan puts it , what we ’ re doing is “ mapping uncertainty.
” In other words , if Biden leads by about 9 points in national polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points in Pennsylvania , 2 points in Florida , etc.
, how does that translate into a probability of victory ?
That ’ s what our model is trying to figure out .
What the deluge of final polls can tell us | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast And indeed — although nobody needs any reminders of this after 2016 — Trump can win .
All the election models are bullish on Biden , but they are united in that a Trump win is still plausible despite his seemingly steep deficit in polls .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ others ’ think Trump can still win is the Electoral College .
Trump has only a 3 percent chance of winning the popular vote in our model .
Other models put his chances at less than 1 percent .
It ’ s very likely that Democrats will win the popular vote for the seventh time in the last eight elections .
But while a roughly 8-point deficit in the popular vote is hard to overcome — as of this writing , at 7:30 p.m .
ET on Sunday , our model forecasts Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percentage points — a 5-point gap is a lot easier to close .
And that ’ s our current forecast in Pennsylvania : Biden wins by 4.7 points .
Note the roughly 3-point gap between the popular vote and the outcome in Pennsylvania , the most likely tipping-point state .
That ’ s similar to 2016 , when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by around 2 points but lost the tipping-point state , Wisconsin , by just a little under 1 point .
Or if you want a more sophisticated version of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often Biden is projected to win the Electoral College from various potential margins in the popular vote : If Biden wins the popular vote by 2 to 3 percentage points , the Electoral College is roughly a toss-up .
But if Biden wins the popular vote by less than 2 points , Trump is a fairly heavy favorite to win the election .
Even popular vote margins of up to 6 points are not entirely safe for Biden if his votes are distributed in exactly the wrong way .
So you can see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the popular vote shouldn ’ t make Biden feel that secure ; despite being a landslide margin , it ’ s also only a few points removed from the inflection point where the Electoral College starts to become competitive .
Biden ’ s position would simply be a whole lot safer if one of two things were true : If either the polling in Pennsylvania were like that in Wisconsin and Michigan , where he has a larger lead … or if another state such as Florida were also polling more like Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But neither of those things are true .
The gap between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan has actually grown in the waning days of the election .
And no state has emerged out of the pack of Arizona , North Carolina , Florida and Georgia to be Biden ’ s clear Plan B ( Biden is forecasted to win each state by between 1 and 3 points ) .
Arizona is probably Biden ’ s best bet in this group , but winning it would also require him to win either Nebraska @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s 2nd Congressional District to break a 269-269 Electoral College tie ; he ’ s favored in both districts but they aren ’ t sure things .
Moreover , because polling errors are somewhat correlated from state to state , if Biden loses Pennsylvania , he would no longer be a favorite in states such as Florida and Georgia — where he ’ s narrowly ahead now — because it would be a sign that Trump had outperformed his polls again .
Of course , this only goes so far : In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Midwest , but there wasn ’ t much of a polling error in Arizona .
Still , losing Pennsylvania would take Biden from favorite to underdog .
You ’ ll notice that I ’ ve mostly been focusing here on the whats and not the hows or the whys .
In other words , I ’ m describing what combinations of states could plausibly produce winning maps for Trump given the possibility of a polling error , but not describing why such a polling error might occur .
To some extent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If pollsters knew what the source of a polling error might be , they ’ d presumably try to fix it .
Many pollsters are weighting by education now , something many didn ’ t do in 2016 , and that was a big source of error that year .
Another big source of error in 2016 was the large number of undecided voters , who broke toward Trump in the Midwest .
To some extent , that one isn ’ t on the pollsters , since polls aren ’ t really supposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who say they ’ re undecided .
Nonetheless , that ’ s much less of an issue this year , because there are far fewer undecided voters .
There are , however , some new potential sources of error this year .
One of them is the huge growth in people who are voting early or by mail .
It ’ s not only that more people are using these methods , but also that — unlike in the past , when they were relatively bipartisan — Democrats are far more likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans are much more likely to vote in person on Election Day , conversely , while early in-person voting falls somewhere in between .
One issue for pollsters here could be the rate of ballot spoilage .
Because of processing delays , some mail ballots won ’ t be received by states ’ deadlines .
And voters might not complete the instructions correctly , as we ’ ve already seen in Pennsylvania with the issue of “ naked ballots ” , that is , voters forgetting to enclose their ballot in its extra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for instance , that in a certain state , the vote is divided evenly at 50-50 in a poll between Biden and Trump .
But two-thirds of Biden voters are voting by mail , whereas two-thirds of Trump ’ s supporters are voting in person , and the rate of mail ballot spoilage is 3 percent .
That would be enough for Trump to win 50.8 to 49.2 , meaning that you had a polling error of 1 or 2 points .
However , there are several mitigating factors here .
First , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side for mail ballot rejection rates ; other estimates hover at closer to 1 percent , although the number could be higher this year with so many first-time mail voters .
Second , some ballots are also spoiled during in-person voting because of errors with voting technologies ( think about hanging chads , for instance ) .
Third , there is considerable evidence that Democrats mailed in their ballots early , which could put them less at risk of spoilage .
According to the United States Elections Project , the party registration on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 24 percentage points .
But for mail ballots requested but not yet received — those that might trickle in late — the partisan gap is just 11 points in Democrats ’ favor .
Polls find that Democrats are also more likely to drop off their ballots at drop boxes , which reduces the risk a ballot is rejected .
What are the chances we ’ ll know the next president on election night ?
In addition , there ’ s something to be said for the idea that it ’ s worthwhile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone has already voted , they ’ re 100 percent likely to vote ( and 98 or 99 percent likely to have their vote counted , depending on the rate of ballot spoilage ) .
What about someone who says they ’ re planning to vote on Election Day but hasn ’ t done so yet ?
They ’ re certainly not 100 percent likely to vote .
Something could come up on Election Day — they get stuck late at work , they blow out a tire , they feel sick , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think their candidate is losing .
Indeed , even some of the people that pollsters deem to be the most likely voters don ’ t wind up voting .
If 2 percent of mail voters have their votes rejected , but 5 percent of “ likely ” Election Day voters don ’ t wind up voting , then polls could underestimate Democrats .
Wait , wasn ’ t this supposed to be a post about how Trump could beat his polls ?
Well , the point is just that mail voting creates additional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s easy to imagine how that could help out Trump or Biden .
Another potential source of anxiety for pollsters is the Hispanic vote .
Polls show Trump having made significant gains relative to 2016 with Hispanic voters — and to a lesser extent with Black voters , especially Black men .
This is not enough to offset gains that Biden has made with white voters , however , including white voters both with and without a college degree .
But are these changes real ?
Both white voters and Hispanic voters without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reach on the phone .
It can also be hard to get a representative sample — if , for example , you don ’ t get enough Cuban American voters in Florida , or if you aren ’ t reaching enough Hispanic Americans who primarily speak Spanish .
Hispanic voters and white voters without a college degree can also work somewhat at cross-purposes to one another when you ’ re weighting a poll , because while white voters without a college degree are more Republican than whites with a college degree , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Overall , I don ’ t particularly think there is any reason to distrust the polls here .
If anything , polls have tended to underestimate Democratic support in recent elections in states such as Nevada that had a large number of Hispanic voters .
Still , suppose that Trump ’ s growth in Hispanic support is real , while Biden ’ s gains among white voters without a college degree are not , for whatever reason .
That could lead to a rough night for Biden : The lack of white non-college @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mediocre performance among Hispanics could keep Arizona and Florida in Trump ’ s column .
Maybe Biden would eke out a win in Georgia or North Carolina , but that ’ s a much narrower path then he ’ d planned on .
And what about those “ shy ” Trump voters ?
There ’ s no particularly good evidence that Trump voters are likely to conceal their intentions to pollsters .
Nor — if we want to expand the sample size a bit — is there any reason to believe that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their polls in other countries .
Conversely , there is quite a bit of evidence that most of Biden ’ s polling gains relative to Clinton come from vote-switchers , rather than from an expectation of higher Democratic turnout .
If a respondent tells a pollster that they voted for Trump in 2016 but will be voting for Biden this year — and there aren ’ t a lot of those people , but a few make a big difference — it ’ s hard to consider them a “ shy ” Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t completely crazy .
Social desirability bias — not wanting to provide an answer you think the person on the other side of the line won ’ t like — has been a problem in some other polling contexts .
The point is that even if you mostly aren ’ t worried about “ shy ” Trump voters — or think it ’ s equally likely that there are “ shy ” Biden voters !
— that ’ s different than being 100 percent sure that the theory isn ’ t true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to account for how 10 percent chances happen , we have to accept that sometimes it ’ s because our assumptions are wrong .
Finally , there are the factors our model doesn ’ t try to account for , such as the many , many things we ’ re tracking on our election administration blog : attempts to disqualify various groups of ballots , voter intimidation , polling-place irregularities , and so forth .
Plus , there ’ s a good chance that Trump will try to declare a premature victory .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort out the heat from the light here .
But it may sometimes be worth putting magnitudes on things .
Problems at one polling place are not going to have nearly as much of an impact as a Republican attempt to throw out 120,000 ballots cast in Texas ’ s Harris County , for instance .
Yet , as much of an affront to democracy as that would be , even that would still only amount to around 1 percent of the vote in one state .
Let ’ s up the ante @ @ @ @ @ @ @ send alternative slates of electors to the Electoral College ?
Now , that could have a really big impact , although it ’ s not clear how likely it is .
It ’ s also worth recognizing that there is another side to this , too .
There is — long overdue in my view — far more attention paid to voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement than there used to be .
( We ’ ve certainly made a big effort to put far more resources into those stories at FiveThirtyEight . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to vote than it has been in the past ?
It depends on the state , but in most states , the answer is no .
According to the Brennan Center ’ s annual reports , recent years have seen more efforts to expand voting rights than to restrict them .
And the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an expansion of voting options , some temporary and some permanent .
If it ’ s still too hard to vote for disadvantaged groups — but it ’ s easier than it used to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increase in turnout for Democrats relative to past elections .
The FiveThirtyEight model does try to account for changes to voting laws in each state ; that ’ s part of the reason why it ’ s relatively bearish on Biden in Texas , for example , which has some of the strictest laws in the country .
So when I say that there are certain things outside the scope of the model — well , the truth is a little bit messier than that .
One reason that we make relatively conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distributions , is to account for “ unknown unknowns.
” Here ’ s what it seems safe to say , though .
In an election that is very close , a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court is likely to side with Trump .
Our model shows a 4 percent chance of an election that winds up with one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points , close enough to trigger a recount .
If you want to round up Trump ’ s odds slightly by assuming he wins the lion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cases , plus most of the 0.5 percent of the time that the election ends up in an Electoral College tie , I wouldn ’ t strenuously object to that .
Mostly , though , I ’ d just be worried about the meltdown that could occur if a recount or a tie comes up .
The odds are against it , but the stakes are awfully high .
Will millions of dollars on TV ads make a difference in the race for the presidency ?

It’s tempting to write this story in the form of narrative fiction: “On a frigid early December morning in Washington, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that disputed mail ballots in Pennsylvania—” You know, that kind of thing. But given the stakes in this election, I think it’s important to be prosaic and sober-minded instead.
[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]
So let’s state a few basic facts: The reasons that President Trump’s chances in our forecast are about 10 percent and not zero:
As in 2016, Trump could potentially benefit from the Electoral College. Projected margins in the tipping-point states are considerably tighter than the margins in the national popular vote.
More specifically, Joe Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania — the most likely tipping-point state, according to our forecast — is solid but not spectacular: about 5 points in our polling average.
Without Pennsylvania, Biden does have some paths to victory, but there’s no one alternative state he can feel especially secure about.
While a lot of theories about why Trump can win (e.g., those about “shy” Trump voters) are probably wrong, systematic polling errors do occur, and it’s hard to predict them ahead of time or to anticipate the reasons in advance.
There is some chance that Trump could “win” illegitimately. To a large extent, these scenarios are beyond the scope of our forecast.
There’s also some chance of a recount (about 4 percent) or an Electoral College tie (around 0.5 percent), according to our forecast.
Before we proceed further, a short philosophical note. I hate it when people use phrases — to be fair, we often use phrases like these ourselves! — such as “Nate Silver is giving Biden a 90 percent chance” or “FiveThirtyEight still gives Trump a 10 percent chance.” We aren’t giving anybody anything. Instead, as former FiveThirtyEight politics host Jody Avirgan puts it, what we’re doing is “mapping uncertainty.” In other words, if Biden leads by about 9 points in national polls, 8 points in Wisconsin, 5 points in Pennsylvania, 2 points in Florida, etc., how does that translate into a probability of victory? That’s what our model is trying to figure out.
What the deluge of final polls can tell us | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast
And indeed — although nobody needs any reminders of this after 2016 — Trump can win. All the election models are bullish on Biden, but they are united in that a Trump win is still plausible despite his seemingly steep deficit in polls.
A huge part of why our model and others’ think Trump can still win is the Electoral College. Trump has only a 3 percent chance of winning the popular vote in our model. Other models put his chances at less than 1 percent. It’s very likely that Democrats will win the popular vote for the seventh time in the last eight elections.
But while a roughly 8-point deficit in the popular vote is hard to overcome — as of this writing, at 7:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, our model forecasts Biden to win the popular vote by 7.8 percentage points — a 5-point gap is a lot easier to close. And that’s our current forecast in Pennsylvania: Biden wins by 4.7 points. Note the roughly 3-point gap between the popular vote and the outcome in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping-point state. That’s similar to 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by around 2 points but lost the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, by just a little under 1 point.
Or if you want a more sophisticated version of this, we can look at how often Biden is projected to win the Electoral College from various potential margins in the popular vote:
Biden needs a popular vote cushion Probability of winning the Electoral College based on various popular vote outcomes, according to the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast as of Nov. 1 Popular vote margin Trump Biden 269-269 tie Biden +6 to +7 <1% >99% <1% Biden +5 to +6 3 97 <1 Biden +4 to +5 10 89 2 Biden +3 to +4 30 67 3 Biden +2 to +3 57 41 2 Biden +1 to +2 75 23 2 TIE to Biden +1 89 10 1 TIE to Trump +1 98 2 <1 Trump +1 to +2 >99 <1 <1
If Biden wins the popular vote by 2 to 3 percentage points, the Electoral College is roughly a toss-up. But if Biden wins the popular vote by less than 2 points, Trump is a fairly heavy favorite to win the election. Even popular vote margins of up to 6 points are not entirely safe for Biden if his votes are distributed in exactly the wrong way. So you can see why an 8- or 9-point lead in the popular vote shouldn’t make Biden feel that secure; despite being a landslide margin, it’s also only a few points removed from the inflection point where the Electoral College starts to become competitive.
Biden’s position would simply be a whole lot safer if one of two things were true: If either the polling in Pennsylvania were like that in Wisconsin and Michigan, where he has a larger lead … or if another state such as Florida were also polling more like Pennsylvania to give Biden a clear Plan B. But neither of those things are true. The gap between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan has actually grown in the waning days of the election. And no state has emerged out of the pack of Arizona, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia to be Biden’s clear Plan B (Biden is forecasted to win each state by between 1 and 3 points). Arizona is probably Biden’s best bet in this group, but winning it would also require him to win either Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District or Maine’s 2nd Congressional District to break a 269-269 Electoral College tie; he’s favored in both districts but they aren’t sure things.
Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania is narrow Forecasted vote share margins for Biden, according to the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast as of Nov. 1 State margin New Mexico +12.8 Virginia +12.1 Colorado +12.0 Maine +11.9 New Hampshire +10.4 Minnesota +9.0 Michigan +8.2 Wisconsin +7.7 Nevada +5.9 Pennsylvania +4.8 Arizona +2.9 Florida +2.1 North Carolina +1.9 Georgia +0.8 Ohio -0.0 Texas -1.8 Iowa -1.9
Moreover, because polling errors are somewhat correlated from state to state, if Biden loses Pennsylvania, he would no longer be a favorite in states such as Florida and Georgia — where he’s narrowly ahead now — because it would be a sign that Trump had outperformed his polls again. Of course, this only goes so far: In 2016, Trump massively outperformed his polls in the Midwest, but there wasn’t much of a polling error in Arizona. Still, losing Pennsylvania would take Biden from favorite to underdog.
Pennsylvania will tell us a lot Biden’s chances of winning if he wins or loses Pennsylvania, according to the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast as of Nov. 1 Biden’s chances of winning State If he wins Pennsylvania… If he loses Pennsylvania… Minnesota >99% 76% Michigan >99 73 Wisconsin 98 66 Maine 95 63 Nevada 92 57 New Hampshire 95 53 Arizona 76 38 Florida 74 27 Georgia 63 23 North Carolina 74 18 Texas 41 10 Iowa 43 6 Ohio 58 4
You’ll notice that I’ve mostly been focusing here on the whats and not the hows or the whys. In other words, I’m describing what combinations of states could plausibly produce winning maps for Trump given the possibility of a polling error, but not describing why such a polling error might occur.
To some extent, that’s on purpose. If pollsters knew what the source of a polling error might be, they’d presumably try to fix it. Many pollsters are weighting by education now, something many didn’t do in 2016, and that was a big source of error that year. Another big source of error in 2016 was the large number of undecided voters, who broke toward Trump in the Midwest. To some extent, that one isn’t on the pollsters, since polls aren’t really supposed to try to predict the vote of people who say they’re undecided. Nonetheless, that’s much less of an issue this year, because there are far fewer undecided voters.
There are, however, some new potential sources of error this year. One of them is the huge growth in people who are voting early or by mail. It’s not only that more people are using these methods, but also that — unlike in the past, when they were relatively bipartisan — Democrats are far more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. Republicans are much more likely to vote in person on Election Day, conversely, while early in-person voting falls somewhere in between.
One issue for pollsters here could be the rate of ballot spoilage. Because of processing delays, some mail ballots won’t be received by states’ deadlines. And voters might not complete the instructions correctly, as we’ve already seen in Pennsylvania with the issue of “naked ballots”, that is, voters forgetting to enclose their ballot in its extra, secrecy envelope.
So imagine, for instance, that in a certain state, the vote is divided evenly at 50-50 in a poll between Biden and Trump. But two-thirds of Biden voters are voting by mail, whereas two-thirds of Trump’s supporters are voting in person, and the rate of mail ballot spoilage is 3 percent. That would be enough for Trump to win 50.8 to 49.2, meaning that you had a polling error of 1 or 2 points.
However, there are several mitigating factors here. First, 3 percent is probably on the high side for mail ballot rejection rates; other estimates hover at closer to 1 percent, although the number could be higher this year with so many first-time mail voters. Second, some ballots are also spoiled during in-person voting because of errors with voting technologies (think about hanging chads, for instance). Third, there is considerable evidence that Democrats mailed in their ballots early, which could put them less at risk of spoilage. According to the United States Elections Project, the party registration on mail ballots received so far favors Democrats by 24 percentage points. But for mail ballots requested but not yet received — those that might trickle in late — the partisan gap is just 11 points in Democrats’ favor. Polls find that Democrats are also more likely to drop off their ballots at drop boxes, which reduces the risk a ballot is rejected.
What are the chances we’ll know the next president on election night?
In addition, there’s something to be said for the idea that it’s worthwhile to lock in a vote. If someone has already voted, they’re 100 percent likely to vote (and 98 or 99 percent likely to have their vote counted, depending on the rate of ballot spoilage). What about someone who says they’re planning to vote on Election Day but hasn’t done so yet? They’re certainly not 100 percent likely to vote. Something could come up on Election Day — they get stuck late at work, they blow out a tire, they feel sick, they don’t bother because they think their candidate is losing. Indeed, even some of the people that pollsters deem to be the most likely voters don’t wind up voting. If 2 percent of mail voters have their votes rejected, but 5 percent of “likely” Election Day voters don’t wind up voting, then polls could underestimate Democrats.
Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a post about how Trump could beat his polls? Well, the point is just that mail voting creates additional uncertainty this year, and it’s easy to imagine how that could help out Trump or Biden.
Another potential source of anxiety for pollsters is the Hispanic vote. Polls show Trump having made significant gains relative to 2016 with Hispanic voters — and to a lesser extent with Black voters, especially Black men. This is not enough to offset gains that Biden has made with white voters, however, including white voters both with and without a college degree.
But are these changes real? Both white voters and Hispanic voters without a college degree can be hard groups to reach on the phone. It can also be hard to get a representative sample — if, for example, you don’t get enough Cuban American voters in Florida, or if you aren’t reaching enough Hispanic Americans who primarily speak Spanish. Hispanic voters and white voters without a college degree can also work somewhat at cross-purposes to one another when you’re weighting a poll, because while white voters without a college degree are more Republican than whites with a college degree, the opposite is true for Hispanics.
Overall, I don’t particularly think there is any reason to distrust the polls here. If anything, polls have tended to underestimate Democratic support in recent elections in states such as Nevada that had a large number of Hispanic voters. Still, suppose that Trump’s growth in Hispanic support is real, while Biden’s gains among white voters without a college degree are not, for whatever reason. That could lead to a rough night for Biden: The lack of white non-college support could cost him Pennsylvania, while a mediocre performance among Hispanics could keep Arizona and Florida in Trump’s column. Maybe Biden would eke out a win in Georgia or North Carolina, but that’s a much narrower path then he’d planned on.
And what about those “shy” Trump voters? There’s no particularly good evidence that Trump voters are likely to conceal their intentions to pollsters. Nor — if we want to expand the sample size a bit — is there any reason to believe that nationalist or right-wing parties tend to beat their polls in other countries.
Conversely, there is quite a bit of evidence that most of Biden’s polling gains relative to Clinton come from vote-switchers, rather than from an expectation of higher Democratic turnout. If a respondent tells a pollster that they voted for Trump in 2016 but will be voting for Biden this year — and there aren’t a lot of those people, but a few make a big difference — it’s hard to consider them a “shy” Trump voter.
Still, the theory isn’t completely crazy. Social desirability bias — not wanting to provide an answer you think the person on the other side of the line won’t like — has been a problem in some other polling contexts. The point is that even if you mostly aren’t worried about “shy” Trump voters — or think it’s equally likely that there are “shy” Biden voters! — that’s different than being 100 percent sure that the theory isn’t true. And if we’re trying to account for how 10 percent chances happen, we have to accept that sometimes it’s because our assumptions are wrong.
Finally, there are the factors our model doesn’t try to account for, such as the many, many things we’re tracking on our election administration blog: attempts to disqualify various groups of ballots, voter intimidation, polling-place irregularities, and so forth. Plus, there’s a good chance that Trump will try to declare a premature victory.
It isn’t terribly easy to sort out the heat from the light here. But it may sometimes be worth putting magnitudes on things. Problems at one polling place are not going to have nearly as much of an impact as a Republican attempt to throw out 120,000 ballots cast in Texas’s Harris County, for instance. Yet, as much of an affront to democracy as that would be, even that would still only amount to around 1 percent of the vote in one state. Let’s up the ante: What about Republican legislatures trying to send alternative slates of electors to the Electoral College? Now, that could have a really big impact, although it’s not clear how likely it is.
It’s also worth recognizing that there is another side to this, too. There is — long overdue in my view — far more attention paid to voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement than there used to be. (We’ve certainly made a big effort to put far more resources into those stories at FiveThirtyEight.)
But … is it actually harder now to vote than it has been in the past? It depends on the state, but in most states, the answer is no. According to the Brennan Center’s annual reports, recent years have seen more efforts to expand voting rights than to restrict them. And the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an expansion of voting options, some temporary and some permanent. If it’s still too hard to vote for disadvantaged groups — but it’s easier than it used to be — that could lead to a net increase in turnout for Democrats relative to past elections. The FiveThirtyEight model does try to account for changes to voting laws in each state; that’s part of the reason why it’s relatively bearish on Biden in Texas, for example, which has some of the strictest laws in the country.
So when I say that there are certain things outside the scope of the model — well, the truth is a little bit messier than that. One reason that we make relatively conservative assumptions, such as by using fat-tailed distributions, is to account for “unknown unknowns.”
Here’s what it seems safe to say, though. In an election that is very close, a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court is likely to side with Trump. Our model shows a 4 percent chance of an election that winds up with one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points, close enough to trigger a recount. If you want to round up Trump’s odds slightly by assuming he wins the lion’s share of those 4 percent of cases, plus most of the 0.5 percent of the time that the election ends up in an Electoral College tie, I wouldn’t strenuously object to that. Mostly, though, I’d just be worried about the meltdown that could occur if a recount or a tie comes up. The odds are against it, but the stakes are awfully high.
Will millions of dollars on TV ads make a difference in the race for the presidency?


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-03--What’s It Like To Vote At A Stadium?

What’s It Like To Vote At A Stadium?

It ’ s a familiar sight in Boston in mid-October : a line of people , many decked out in Red Sox gear , stretched down Jersey Street , waiting to pass through Gate A and enter historic Fenway Park .
But this year , they weren ’ t going to see a baseball game .
They were going to vote .
The Red Sox were one of dozens of sports teams to offer up their home stadiums as polling places for this election .
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing polling sites to relocate from cramped spaces like fire stations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sports facilities have emerged as excellent alternatives ( if not without controversy in some cases ) .
Their massive size means they can process tons of voters at once and still leave space for social distancing , and some of them are even outdoors , which lowers the risk of transmitting the virus .
Plus , they ’ re just a cool place to vote — especially for fans who haven ’ t been able to see their favorite teams in person this year .
The demand to vote at Fenway was sky-high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voting , a Red Sox staffer said the line wrapped around nearly the entire park , from Jersey Street to Van Ness Street to Ipswich Street to Lansdowne Street , and even later in the day , voters were waiting 45 minutes to get in .
Nevertheless , one family of Red Sox season ticket holders told me how happy they were just to have a chance to visit Fenway this year .
And voter Kate McElhiney said she went out of her way to vote at Fenway , which is on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home .
McElhiney told me she wanted to vote at Fenway partly because of the novelty , but also partly because she considered the cavernous , well-ventilated concourse the safest environment in which to vote .
While the pandemic may have created the demand for stadium polling places , it was the summer ’ s racial-justice demonstrations that inspired teams to supply them .
As Black Lives Matter protests swept the country in early June , the Atlanta Hawks were the first team in any league to volunteer their home court , State @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Unfortunately — but fortunately for early voting — our facility was not hosting any games , ” Amy Phuong , the Hawks ’ vice president of government relations , told FiveThirtyEight .
“ So [ CEO Steve Koonin ] had an idea : With everyone out there lending their voices , what better way to lend our voice ?
” Bekah Salwasser , executive director of the Red Sox Foundation , agreed with that sentiment .
“ We know people around the country — for many months , through protests or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ And we believe that one of the best ways to make definitive change as an individual and as a civilian in this country is by voting.
” Player activism played a huge role , especially in basketball .
In late August , NBA players ( led by the Milwaukee Bucks ) staged a wildcat strike in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake , and the movement was joined by players in the WNBA , MLB , MLS and NHL .
The NBA strike ended two days later after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agreed to convert its arenas into polling places wherever possible , leading to several more facilities being approved as polling sites .
In total , at least 39 major-league sports facilities are being used as voting locations this fall — including 31 that are open for voting today , Election Day .
The list includes 11 NHL arenas , 10 NFL stadiums , five MLB ballparks and five WNBA arenas .
But the NBA leads the way , with 17 of its 28 domestic arenas converted into polling places .
While that falls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strike of full participation , some other arenas are encouraging civic participation or assisting election officials in other ways .
The Oklahoma City Thunder held voter-registration drives inside the Chesapeake Energy Arena ; election workers were trained at the Detroit Pistons ’ Little Caesars Arena ; ballots will be counted inside the Memphis Grizzlies ’ FedExForum .
And while the Chase Center in San Francisco isn ’ t a polling place , other Golden State Warriors facilities are , and there is a ballot drop-off location outside the Chase Center itself .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could .
Ultimately , it ’ s not up to teams to decide whether their arenas become polling places — it ’ s up to election authorities .
( According to Salwasser and Phuong , Fenway and State Farm Arena both had to meet certain criteria before they were approved as polling places ; for instance , the Boston Election Department conducted a site visit of Fenway . )
And sometimes , a local government declined a team ’ s offers — much to the chagrin of the team .
For example , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Miami-Dade County rejected their invitation to make AmericanAirlines Arena an early-voting site , instead opting for a smaller space at a nearby museum .
The Miami Herald later revealed that county Mayor Carlos Gimenez , the Republican candidate for Florida ’ s 26th Congressional District , intervened to prevent election officials from choosing the arena .
And in Milwaukee , the Bucks ’ Fiserv Forum and the Brewers ’ Miller Park had already been announced as early-voting locations when the Milwaukee Election Commission abruptly dropped those plans , citing concerns that votes there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Bucks senior vice president , told FiveThirtyEight that the team was disappointed by the decision and had been looking forward to giving people in Milwaukee , especially people of color , an accessible place to vote .
But “ we also know it was the right decision , ” Lasry said .
“ We want there to be no doubt every ballot cast is legitimate and don ’ t want anyone ’ s voices to be taken away.
” And the team was still able to chip in by hosting voter-registration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serving as polling places , voters are being treated to a voting experience like no other .
At State Farm Arena , the Hawks set up three distinct voting areas , including one where voters entered through the giant “ Atlanta ” letters , were checked in amid the “ Hawk Walk ” concessions area and voted at machines set up throughout the 100-level concourse and arena floor .
Altogether , the arena housed more than 300 voting machines ; according to Phuong , that ’ s more than any other early-voting location @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the entire country .
She added that nearly 300 Hawks employees were helping out by filling roles as varied as greeting voters and serving as poll workers alongside county employees .
At Fenway , almost 100 Red Sox front-office staffers and day-of-game workers volunteered to help manage the crowds , while City of Boston poll workers handled the actual check-in and check-out processes .
First , just inside Gate A , voters confirmed with a poll worker that they were registered in Boston .
Then it was a short walk up a ramp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 29-31 , where a second check-in desk sat ready to hand the voter one of 37 different ballots , depending on where in Boston they lived and what races they were eligible to vote in .
Voters marked their ballots at booths set up in front of a mural of Ted Williams and a Samuel Adams bar .
Then , after they dropped them into a ballot-collection box in front of a concession stand that normally sells soft serve ice cream , came the cherry on top : stickers reading , “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chance to climb up into the grandstand and see the field .

It’s a familiar sight in Boston in mid-October: a line of people, many decked out in Red Sox gear, stretched down Jersey Street, waiting to pass through Gate A and enter historic Fenway Park. But this year, they weren’t going to see a baseball game. They were going to vote.
The Red Sox were one of dozens of sports teams to offer up their home stadiums as polling places for this election. With the coronavirus pandemic forcing polling sites to relocate from cramped spaces like fire stations or high-risk locations like nursing homes, sports facilities have emerged as excellent alternatives (if not without controversy in some cases). Their massive size means they can process tons of voters at once and still leave space for social distancing, and some of them are even outdoors, which lowers the risk of transmitting the virus.
Plus, they’re just a cool place to vote — especially for fans who haven’t been able to see their favorite teams in person this year. The demand to vote at Fenway was sky-high; on the first morning of early voting, a Red Sox staffer said the line wrapped around nearly the entire park, from Jersey Street to Van Ness Street to Ipswich Street to Lansdowne Street, and even later in the day, voters were waiting 45 minutes to get in. Nevertheless, one family of Red Sox season ticket holders told me how happy they were just to have a chance to visit Fenway this year. And voter Kate McElhiney said she went out of her way to vote at Fenway, which is on the other side of town from her Dorchester home. McElhiney told me she wanted to vote at Fenway partly because of the novelty, but also partly because she considered the cavernous, well-ventilated concourse the safest environment in which to vote.
While the pandemic may have created the demand for stadium polling places, it was the summer’s racial-justice demonstrations that inspired teams to supply them. As Black Lives Matter protests swept the country in early June, the Atlanta Hawks were the first team in any league to volunteer their home court, State Farm Arena, as a polling place. “Unfortunately — but fortunately for early voting — our facility was not hosting any games,” Amy Phuong, the Hawks’ vice president of government relations, told FiveThirtyEight. “So [CEO Steve Koonin] had an idea: With everyone out there lending their voices, what better way to lend our voice?”
Bekah Salwasser, executive director of the Red Sox Foundation, agreed with that sentiment. “We know people around the country — for many months, through protests or demonstrations — want change,” she said. “And we believe that one of the best ways to make definitive change as an individual and as a civilian in this country is by voting.”
Player activism played a huge role, especially in basketball. In late August, NBA players (led by the Milwaukee Bucks) staged a wildcat strike in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, and the movement was joined by players in the WNBA, MLB, MLS and NHL. The NBA strike ended two days later after, among other things, the league agreed to convert its arenas into polling places wherever possible, leading to several more facilities being approved as polling sites.
In total, at least 39 major-league sports facilities are being used as voting locations this fall — including 31 that are open for voting today, Election Day. The list includes 11 NHL arenas, 10 NFL stadiums, five MLB ballparks and five WNBA arenas.
You can vote at a sports arena in many cities MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and WNBA stadiums used as polling places for the 2020 election Open For… Venue Team Early Voting Election Day Amalie Arena Tampa Bay Lightning ✓ American Airlines Center Dallas Mavericks, Stars ✓ ✓ Amway Center Orlando Magic ✓ Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum Phoenix Mercury ✓ ✓ Arrowhead Stadium Kansas City Chiefs ✓ AT&T Center San Antonio Spurs ✓ ✓ Ball Arena Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche ✓ ✓ Bank of America Stadium Carolina Panthers ✓ Bankers Life Fieldhouse Indiana Pacers, Fever ✓ Barclays Center Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty ✓ ✓ Capital One Arena Washington Wizards, Capitals ✓ ✓ CenturyLink Field Seattle Seahawks ✓ ✓ Dodger Stadium Los Angeles Dodgers ✓ ✓ Entertainment and Sports Arena Washington Mystics ✓ ✓ FedEx Field Washington Football Team ✓ Fenway Park Boston Red Sox ✓ Gila River Arena Arizona Coyotes ✓ ✓ Golden 1 Center Sacramento Kings ✓ ✓ Honda Center Anaheim Ducks ✓ ✓ Lambeau Field Green Bay Packers ✓ Levi’s Stadium San Francisco 49ers ✓ ✓ Lucas Oil Stadium Indianapolis Colts ✓ ✓ Madison Square Garden New York Knicks, Rangers ✓ ✓ Nationals Park Washington Nationals ✓ ✓ NRG Stadium Houston Texans ✓ ✓ Oakland Coliseum Oakland Athletics ✓ ✓ Oriole Park at Camden Yards Baltimore Orioles ✓ ✓ PPG Paints Arena Pittsburgh Penguins ✓ Prudential Center New Jersey Devils ✓ Raymond James Stadium Tampa Bay Buccaneers ✓ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse Cleveland Cavaliers ✓ Smoothie King Center New Orleans Pelicans ✓ SoFi Stadium Los Angeles Rams, Chargers ✓ ✓ Spectrum Center Charlotte Hornets ✓ Staples Center Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks ✓ ✓ State Farm Arena Atlanta Hawks ✓ Toyota Center Houston Rockets ✓ ✓ United Center Chicago Bulls, Blackhawks ✓ Vivint Smart Home Arena Utah Jazz ✓ Sources: News reports, team websites
But the NBA leads the way, with 17 of its 28 domestic arenas converted into polling places. While that falls short of the goal set after the strike of full participation, some other arenas are encouraging civic participation or assisting election officials in other ways. The Oklahoma City Thunder held voter-registration drives inside the Chesapeake Energy Arena; election workers were trained at the Detroit Pistons’ Little Caesars Arena; ballots will be counted inside the Memphis Grizzlies’ FedExForum. And while the Chase Center in San Francisco isn’t a polling place, other Golden State Warriors facilities are, and there is a ballot drop-off location outside the Chase Center itself.
Even more venues would be participating if they could. Ultimately, it’s not up to teams to decide whether their arenas become polling places — it’s up to election authorities. (According to Salwasser and Phuong, Fenway and State Farm Arena both had to meet certain criteria before they were approved as polling places; for instance, the Boston Election Department conducted a site visit of Fenway.) And sometimes, a local government declined a team’s offers — much to the chagrin of the team. For example, the Miami Heat were not pleased when Miami-Dade County rejected their invitation to make AmericanAirlines Arena an early-voting site, instead opting for a smaller space at a nearby museum. The Miami Herald later revealed that county Mayor Carlos Gimenez, the Republican candidate for Florida’s 26th Congressional District, intervened to prevent election officials from choosing the arena.
And in Milwaukee, the Bucks’ Fiserv Forum and the Brewers’ Miller Park had already been announced as early-voting locations when the Milwaukee Election Commission abruptly dropped those plans, citing concerns that votes there could be legally challenged. Alex Lasry, a Bucks senior vice president, told FiveThirtyEight that the team was disappointed by the decision and had been looking forward to giving people in Milwaukee, especially people of color, an accessible place to vote. But “we also know it was the right decision,” Lasry said. “We want there to be no doubt every ballot cast is legitimate and don’t want anyone’s voices to be taken away.” And the team was still able to chip in by hosting voter-registration drives.
At the stadiums that are serving as polling places, voters are being treated to a voting experience like no other. At State Farm Arena, the Hawks set up three distinct voting areas, including one where voters entered through the giant “Atlanta” letters, were checked in amid the “Hawk Walk” concessions area and voted at machines set up throughout the 100-level concourse and arena floor. Altogether, the arena housed more than 300 voting machines; according to Phuong, that’s more than any other early-voting location in Georgia and, she believes, the entire country. She added that nearly 300 Hawks employees were helping out by filling roles as varied as greeting voters and serving as poll workers alongside county employees.
At Fenway, almost 100 Red Sox front-office staffers and day-of-game workers volunteered to help manage the crowds, while City of Boston poll workers handled the actual check-in and check-out processes. First, just inside Gate A, voters confirmed with a poll worker that they were registered in Boston. Then it was a short walk up a ramp to the third-base concourse below grandstand sections 29-31, where a second check-in desk sat ready to hand the voter one of 37 different ballots, depending on where in Boston they lived and what races they were eligible to vote in.
Voters marked their ballots at booths set up in front of a mural of Ted Williams and a Samuel Adams bar. Then, after they dropped them into a ballot-collection box in front of a concession stand that normally sells soft serve ice cream, came the cherry on top: stickers reading, “I voted at Fenway Park” and a chance to climb up into the grandstand and see the field.
Santul Nerkar contributed research.
What the election map will look like if there’s a 2016-sized polling error
CORRECTION (Nov. 5, 2020, 10:30 a.m.): The table in this article listed Lucas Oil Stadium as open for voting on Election Day but failed to note its status as an early-voting location. County election officials decided on Oct. 30 to allow voting at the Indianapolis Colts’ stadium starting Oct. 31.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-03--Be Wary Of Exit Polls This Year (Well, And All Years)

A pandemic and the increase in mail-in voting have made exit polls even less reliable this year .
Podcast host @ @ @ @ @ editor Laura Bronner and elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich about how exit polls will be conducted @ @ @ @ @ them .

Be Wary Of Exit Polls This Year (Well, And All Years)
A pandemic and the increase in mail-in voting have made exit polls even less reliable this year. Podcast host Galen Druke chats with quantitative editor Laura Bronner and elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich about how exit polls will be conducted and what to make of them.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-03--Final Forecast: Democrats Are Clear Favorites To Maintain Control Of The House

In 2018 , Democrats took back the House thanks to a blue wave that ran right through America ’ s suburbs .
Now the question is , can they hold onto that majority ?
The answer is probably yes , as Democrats are clear favorites , according to the final version of FiveThirtyEight ’ s House forecast , which gives them a 97 in 100 chance of winning control of the House .
Overall , the House contest appears to have significantly less drama than either the race for the presidency or the Senate , both of which are far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seats to the GOP ’ s 201 seats , with retiring Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash the lone third-party member in the chamber .
So to win back the House , Republicans need a net gain of 17 seats to achieve a majority of 218 , which is one reason why their odds of taking back the chamber are so low ( 3 in 100 ) .
That ’ s a lot of House seats in a presidential cycle , as a party has only gained that many twice in the past 10 presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason why Democrats are favored to keep control of the House — as well as maybe win the White House and even the Senate — is that the electoral environment looks quite good for their party .
If we look at the polling average from our congressional generic ballot tracker , which includes all polls that ask respondents whether they plan to vote for the Democrat or Republican in their local congressional race , Democrats lead by 7.3 percentage points .
That margin speaks to a strong national environment for Democrats and isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8.7-point edge Democrats had heading into the 2018 midterm elections .
And as the chart below shows , this lead hasn ’ t fluctuated much over the past year .
What this has meant practically is that the overall electoral environment has boosted the chances of House Democrats , but most notably it ’ s given a leg up to those who captured Republican seats in 2018 and are now seeking reelection .
Of the 41 Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 — not counting one who resigned and another who switched parties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 4 shot of holding onto their seat .
This despite the fact that President Trump carried 20 of those 41 seats when he won in 2016 .
These conditions , along with strong Democratic fundraising and mediocre Republican candidate recruitment in many key races , have left a pretty short list of Democratic incumbents who are in serious danger of defeat , as the table below shows .
In other words , these seemingly more competitive seats are , for the most part , not necessarily that close , which limits the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority .
Nevertheless , a handful of Democratic incumbents are in jeopardy of losing .
In fact , the most vulnerable incumbent from either party is Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota , who has about a 1 in 5 chance of winning reelection in a seat that Trump won by 31 points four years ago , according to Daily Kos Elections .
Beyond Peterson , five other Democrats fall into the “ toss-up ” range in our forecast : Reps. Kendra Horn of Oklahoma , TJ Cox of California , Max Rose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of New Mexico and Ben McAdams of Utah .
Of that quintet , Cox is the outlier because he ’ s the only one running in a seat that is pretty Democratic-leaning at the presidential level — Trump lost it by 16 points in 2016 — whereas the others all hold seats Trump won by at least 7 points .
But Cox ’ s seat is probably one of the better candidate recruitment situations for the GOP , as ex-Rep. David Valadao , who Cox defeated by less than 1 point in 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Aside from the strength of their incumbents , Democrats have also benefited from the sheer number of Republican retirements this year .
Not to mention , some GOP primary challenges that resulted in some incumbents losing renomination .
Although the incumbency advantage is not nearly as strong as it once was , open seats tend to be harder for the incumbent party to retain , and the disproportionate number of Republican exits from the House has left some vulnerable turf for them to defend .
As the table below shows , this means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 17 open seats where neither party is a safe bet .
While Democrats are only outright favorites in three GOP-held seats , that trio account for half of the six seats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 that Republicans still control ( GOP incumbents are running in the other three ) .
Two are near-certain Democratic pickups thanks to North Carolina ’ s court-ordered redistricting , which made those seats much more Democratic-leaning and precipitated the retirements of two Republican incumbents .
And Republican Rep. Will Hurd ’ s retirement in Texas ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost by 3 points in 2016 , has given Democratic nominee Gina Ortiz Jones a clear edge there .
Additionally , Democrats are roughly even bets to win a number of other open Republican-held districts , including suburban seats like Indiana ’ s 5th Congressional District around Indianapolis and New York ’ s 2nd Congressional District on Long Island , both left open by retirements .
They also have a shot at winning GOP-controlled seats where the incumbent lost renomination , such as Virginia ’ s 5th Congressional District and Colorado ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more , only one Democratic-held open seat — Iowa ’ s 2nd Congressional District — is at all in play , and the Democrats have nearly a 9 in 10 chance of keeping it .
Lastly , Democrats are also in an enviable position because they stand to defeat some Republican incumbents in competitive contests , too .
Whereas only 13 Democratic incumbents seeking reelection have less than a 3 in 4 chance of winning reelection , slightly more Republicans — 14 — are in the same position .
Still , the one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their incumbents is a clear underdog , as the table below shows .
So most of these races might be a bit of a reach for Democrats hoping to pad their margins .
GOP Rep. Mike Garcia , who won a special election earlier this year to fill a vacancy in California ’ s 25th Congressional District , heads into the election as the most at-risk Republican incumbent .
But along with Garcia are four others in toss-up contests : Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey , Scott Perry of Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bacon of Nebraska .
Van Drew won as a Democrat in 2018 but switched parties after voting against impeaching Trump , probably thinking he ’ d have an easier time as a Republican in a district that backed Trump by about 5 points in 2016 , but the race is super close and he ’ s been outraised by Democrat Amy Kennedy — yes , part of that Kennedy family .
Bacon , meanwhile , is defending a seat that could also matter a great deal in the presidential race because Nebraska apportions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ congressional districts , and its 2nd Congressional District is somewhat more likely to vote for Biden than Trump .
Bottom line : Democrats have benefited from an overall Democratic-leaning national environment , in addition to a number of strong Democratic incumbents , a sizable number of competitive Republican-held open seats and some vulnerable GOP officeholders .
There ’ s no fuzziness here in what our forecast says : Democrats are in a very strong position to maintain control of the House .
We ’ ll see how it plays out once the votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be one of the more unsurprising outcomes in this election .

In 2018, Democrats took back the House thanks to a blue wave that ran right through America’s suburbs. Now the question is, can they hold onto that majority?
The answer is probably yes, as Democrats are clear favorites, according to the final version of FiveThirtyEight’s House forecast, which gives them a 97 in 100 chance of winning control of the House.
Overall, the House contest appears to have significantly less drama than either the race for the presidency or the Senate, both of which are far more competitive. Democrats currently control 233 seats to the GOP’s 201 seats, with retiring Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash the lone third-party member in the chamber. So to win back the House, Republicans need a net gain of 17 seats to achieve a majority of 218, which is one reason why their odds of taking back the chamber are so low (3 in 100). That’s a lot of House seats in a presidential cycle, as a party has only gained that many twice in the past 10 presidential elections.
Be Wary Of Exit Polls This Year (Well, And All Years) | FiveThirtyEight
But perhaps the even bigger reason why Democrats are favored to keep control of the House — as well as maybe win the White House and even the Senate — is that the electoral environment looks quite good for their party. If we look at the polling average from our congressional generic ballot tracker, which includes all polls that ask respondents whether they plan to vote for the Democrat or Republican in their local congressional race, Democrats lead by 7.3 percentage points. That margin speaks to a strong national environment for Democrats and isn’t that far off from the 8.7-point edge Democrats had heading into the 2018 midterm elections. And as the chart below shows, this lead hasn’t fluctuated much over the past year.
What this has meant practically is that the overall electoral environment has boosted the chances of House Democrats, but most notably it’s given a leg up to those who captured Republican seats in 2018 and are now seeking reelection. Of the 41 Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 — not counting one who resigned and another who switched parties — 30 have at least a 3 in 4 shot of holding onto their seat. This despite the fact that President Trump carried 20 of those 41 seats when he won in 2016. These conditions, along with strong Democratic fundraising and mediocre Republican candidate recruitment in many key races, have left a pretty short list of Democratic incumbents who are in serious danger of defeat, as the table below shows.
Most House Democrats in competitive races have good odds Democratic House incumbents who are seeking reelection and have less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast District Incumbent Flipped GOP seat in 2018 Chance of winning Rating MN-07 Collin Peterson 19% Likely R OK-05 Kendra Horn ✓ 51 Toss-up NM-02 Xochitl Torres Small ✓ 55 Toss-up UT-04 Ben McAdams ✓ 56 Toss-up CA-21 TJ Cox ✓ 58 Toss-up NY-11 Max Rose ✓ 58 Toss-up SC-01 Joe Cunningham ✓ 64 Lean D CA-48 Harley Rouda ✓ 68 Lean D NV-04 Steven Horsford 72 Lean D NY-22 Anthony Brindisi ✓ 73 Lean D CA-39 Gil Cisneros ✓ 74 Lean D GA-06 Lucy McBath ✓ 74 Lean D TX-07 Lizzie Pannill Fletcher ✓ 75 Lean D NJ-07 Tom Malinowki ✓ 76 Likely D OR-04 Peter DeFazio 78 Likely D VA-07 Abigail Spanberger ✓ 79 Likely D FL-27 Donna Shalala ✓ 81 Likely D FL-26 Debbie Mucarsel-Powell ✓ 82 Likely D NV-03 Susie Lee 83 Likely D NH-01 Chris Pappas 84 Likely D TX-32 Colin Allred ✓ 84 Likely D WI-03 Ron Kind 84 Likely D IA-03 Cindy Axne ✓ 84 Likely D IL-06 Sean Casten ✓ 87 Likely D VA-02 Elaine Luria ✓ 87 Likely D IL-14 Lauren Underwood ✓ 87 Likely D IA-01 Abby Finkenauer ✓ 87 Likely D AZ-01 Tom O’Halleran 88 Likely D PA-17 Conor Lamb ✓ 89 Likely D CA-10 Josh Harder ✓ 92 Likely D PA-08 Matt Cartwright 92 Likely D MI-11 Haley Stevens ✓ 93 Likely D NJ-03 Andy Kim ✓ 93 Likely D MN-02 Angie Craig ✓ 93 Likely D CA-45 Katie Porter ✓ 94 Likely D NC-01 G.K. Butterfield 94 Likely D MI-08 Elissa Slotkin ✓ 94 Likely D NY-19 Antonio Delgado ✓ 94 Likely D
In other words, these seemingly more competitive seats are, for the most part, not necessarily that close, which limits the GOP’s path back to a majority. Nevertheless, a handful of Democratic incumbents are in jeopardy of losing. In fact, the most vulnerable incumbent from either party is Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who has about a 1 in 5 chance of winning reelection in a seat that Trump won by 31 points four years ago, according to Daily Kos Elections. Beyond Peterson, five other Democrats fall into the “toss-up” range in our forecast: Reps. Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, TJ Cox of California, Max Rose of New York, Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico and Ben McAdams of Utah. Of that quintet, Cox is the outlier because he’s the only one running in a seat that is pretty Democratic-leaning at the presidential level — Trump lost it by 16 points in 2016 — whereas the others all hold seats Trump won by at least 7 points. But Cox’s seat is probably one of the better candidate recruitment situations for the GOP, as ex-Rep. David Valadao, who Cox defeated by less than 1 point in 2018, is back for a rematch.
Aside from the strength of their incumbents, Democrats have also benefited from the sheer number of Republican retirements this year. Not to mention, some GOP primary challenges that resulted in some incumbents losing renomination. Although the incumbency advantage is not nearly as strong as it once was, open seats tend to be harder for the incumbent party to retain, and the disproportionate number of Republican exits from the House has left some vulnerable turf for them to defend. As the table below shows, this means Republicans are defending almost all of the 17 open seats where neither party is a safe bet.
Republicans are defending more competitive open seats Democratic chances of victory in open House seats where the incumbent party has less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast District Incumbent Party Dem. chances Rating NC-02 R 100% Safe D NC-06 R 100 Safe D IA-02 D 88 Likely D TX-23 R 74 Lean D NY-02 R 57 Toss-up IN-05 R 50 Toss-up VA-05 R 49 Toss-up TX-24 R 48 Toss-up MI-03 L 44 Toss-up GA-07 R 43 Toss-up CO-03 R 39 Lean R TX-22 R 32 Lean R NC-11 R 27 Lean R MT-AL R 23 Likely R FL-15 R 19 Likely R KS-02 R 9 Likely R CA-50 R 5 Likely R
While Democrats are only outright favorites in three GOP-held seats, that trio account for half of the six seats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 that Republicans still control (GOP incumbents are running in the other three). Two are near-certain Democratic pickups thanks to North Carolina’s court-ordered redistricting, which made those seats much more Democratic-leaning and precipitated the retirements of two Republican incumbents. And Republican Rep. Will Hurd’s retirement in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, which Trump lost by 3 points in 2016, has given Democratic nominee Gina Ortiz Jones a clear edge there. Additionally, Democrats are roughly even bets to win a number of other open Republican-held districts, including suburban seats like Indiana’s 5th Congressional District around Indianapolis and New York’s 2nd Congressional District on Long Island, both left open by retirements. They also have a shot at winning GOP-controlled seats where the incumbent lost renomination, such as Virginia’s 5th Congressional District and Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. What’s more, only one Democratic-held open seat — Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District — is at all in play, and the Democrats have nearly a 9 in 10 chance of keeping it.
Lastly, Democrats are also in an enviable position because they stand to defeat some Republican incumbents in competitive contests, too. Whereas only 13 Democratic incumbents seeking reelection have less than a 3 in 4 chance of winning reelection, slightly more Republicans — 14 — are in the same position. Still, the one silver lining for Republicans is that none of their incumbents is a clear underdog, as the table below shows. So most of these races might be a bit of a reach for Democrats hoping to pad their margins.
House Republicans whose seats aren’t “safe” Republican House incumbents who are seeking reelection and have less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast District Incumbent Chance of winning Rating CA-25 Mike Garcia 45% Toss-up NJ-02 Jeff Van Drew 50 Toss-up PA-10 Scott Perry 52 Toss-up AZ-06 David Schweikert 57 Toss-up OH-01 Steve Chabot 58 Toss-up MN-01 Jim Hagedorn 60 Lean R NE-02 Don Bacon 60 Lean R IL-13 Rodney Davis 63 Lean R NY-24 John Katko 64 Lean R NC-08 Richard Hudson 66 Lean R AR-02 French Hill 66 Lean R MO-02 Ann Wagner 69 Lean R TX-21 Chip Roy 71 Lean R MI-06 Fred Upton 71 Lean R AK-AL Don Young 79 Likely R WA-03 Jaime Herrera Beutler 82 Likely R PA-01 Brian Fitzpatrick 84 Likely R KY-06 Andy Barr 85 Likely R NY-01 Lee Zeldin 86 Likely R TX-25 Roger Williams 89 Likely R NC-09 Dan Bishop 90 Likely R MI-07 Tim Walberg 90 Likely R FL-16 Vern Buchanan 90 Likely R TX-03 Van Tayor 90 Likely R OH-10 Mike Turner 91 Likely R TX-10 Michael McCaul 92 Likely R TX-06 Ron Wright 92 Likely R FL-18 Brian Mast 93 Likely R VA-01 Rob Wittman 93 Likely R CA-42 Ken Calvert 93 Likely R TX-31 John Carter 94 Likely R OH-12 Troy Balderson 94 Likely R MN-08 Pete Stauber 95 Likely R
GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, who won a special election earlier this year to fill a vacancy in California’s 25th Congressional District, heads into the election as the most at-risk Republican incumbent. But along with Garcia are four others in toss-up contests: Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, David Schweikert of Arizona and Don Bacon of Nebraska. Van Drew won as a Democrat in 2018 but switched parties after voting against impeaching Trump, probably thinking he’d have an easier time as a Republican in a district that backed Trump by about 5 points in 2016, but the race is super close and he’s been outraised by Democrat Amy Kennedy — yes, part of that Kennedy family. Bacon, meanwhile, is defending a seat that could also matter a great deal in the presidential race because Nebraska apportions one electoral vote to each of its congressional districts, and its 2nd Congressional District is somewhat more likely to vote for Biden than Trump.
Bottom line: Democrats have benefited from an overall Democratic-leaning national environment, in addition to a number of strong Democratic incumbents, a sizable number of competitive Republican-held open seats and some vulnerable GOP officeholders. There’s no fuzziness here in what our forecast says: Democrats are in a very strong position to maintain control of the House. We’ll see how it plays out once the votes are counted, but a Democratic hold would be one of the more unsurprising outcomes in this election.