A Range of Possibilities

Jonathan Bernstein: “While plenty of people are already voting, there’s still five weeks to election day, and raw polling results five weeks out are hardly the last word in predictions. It’s certainly possible that trends towards the Democrats will continue all through October; it’s also possible that the Republicans have just endured a particularly harsh stretch, and that there will be at least some reversion to more normal partisan balance. The FiftyPlusOne prediction model, for example, has a median estimate of only – only! – 52 Democratic Senate seats.”

“The big point here is that there’s still a pretty large range of plausible outcomes, including some that at this point would be pretty disappointing for Democrats. But also that the upside for Republicans now seems more likely be retaining control with 50 possibly even 51 seats, which is not only awful for them compared to what things looked like a year ago but also worse than it looked even a few weeks ago. And the upside for Democrats? It’s just silly looking at this point. Which doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”