FiveThirtyEight: “There are two main components to handicapping a presidential election: (i) predicting what the national popular vote will be (in other words, the political environment) and (ii) predicting how states will deviate from that baseline.”
“It’s hard for anyone to make confident forecasts about the former this early… But the second type of forecast — predicting the relative partisanship of the states — can be made with a reasonable amount of confidence, even this far out from the election. Many states are consistent in their relative partisanship from presidential election to presidential election… And the states that are less consistent — think Hawaii, which was 11 points more Democratic-leaning than the nation as a whole in 2004 but 39 points bluer in 2012 — tend to be firmly entrenched in one party’s camp, so they are safe to handicap for a different reason.”
“The problem is that this second type of prediction may be easier, but it’s also less valuable.”
Use the interactive Electoral Vote Map to test your own assumptions.
?Political Trivia
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Do you have your finger on the pulse of America?
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Four questions a day.
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A new game every day.