OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
The November mid-term elections are drawing near and polls are scrambling to predict whether Republicans or Democrats will come out in the majority.
This is a crucial election.
With all 435 seats in the House of Representatives up for election and as of August, 32 Democrats and 19 Republicans have announced that they will be retiring.
34 of the 100 Senate seats are on the ballot.
And, 36 out of 50 states will elect Governors.
As of now, the Democrat’s majority is slim in Congress.
The Senate is a 50-50 split, with Vice-President holding the tie-breaking vote, which gives Democrats the majority.
And the House is up for grabs.
The immense problems that the country has faced since the Biden administration took over, rising prices on just about everything, the war in Ukraine, the southern border crisis, and other issues have given Republicans a leg up and Republican hopes are to win back the Congress.
In July, polls suggested that Republicans would seize control of the upper chamber.
On Aug. 18, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that there was “a greater likelihood that the House flips than the Senate.”
As late as August 12, Politico stated that the Republican hopes looked solid, with the Senate “Leaning Republican” and the House “Likely Republican.”
The same Politico report predicted that most Governors would be Democrat.
In mid August, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke at a business luncheon in Kentucky where he predicted that Republicans have a “50-50” chane of regaining a majority in the Senate this November, and also predicting the Senate would remain closely divided.
“We’ve got a 50-50 Senate right now,” McConnell said. “We’ve got a 50-50 nation. And I think the outcome is likely to be very very close either way.”
McConnell, who has been called a RINO, seems to be straddling the middle and hedging his bets.
His comments at the luncheon come after he received condemnation from former President Donald Trump over his remarks that “candidate quality” was a critical factor in Senate races, and McConnell seemed to downplay the chances of his party to flip the Senate.
In the last week, The New York Post reported that the GOP is still favored to take back the House, but with a smaller majority than previously stated.
The Post reported that the Senate is still a tossup.
The Democrats have been out-fundraising the Republicans.
It has been reported that GOP candidates find themselves outspent by Democrats regarding ads.
In a recent call between GOP donors and senior party officials, a recording of which was obtained by Politico, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel pleaded with donors for money to win against Democrats. “Please help us invest in these Senate races specifically,” she said.
So Republicans are massively hitting the fundraising, and their financial tide is reportedly turning.
Now a new poll paints a less optimistic picture , McConnell included.
While the poll states that more American disapprove than approve of current President Joe Biden, there are some new numbers today regarding the mid=term races.
Democrats have a 65% chance to retain or increase their majority in November’s midterm elections, according to new modeling by FiveThirtyEight.
The model showed Democrats maintaining their 50-seat Senate caucus as the most likely outcome, which – with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote – would give them the majority. It cuts against conservative hopes that this year’s midterm election will be a “red wave” for Republican candidates.
The figure represents a 15-point increase in Democrats’ chances in less than a month and as Election Day, Nov. 8, is less than ten weeks away.
FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver ascribed Democrats’ strong odds to the poor quality of Republican candidates, many of whom have never held elected office before and are running their first campaign.
In a follow-up post, he specifically cited Arizona’s Blake Masters, Georgia’s Herschel Walker, New Hampshire’s Donald Bolduc and Pennsylvania’s Mehmet Oz as GOP candidates who are in a weak position to win against either incumbent senators or other elected officials.
The model, released on Aug. 26, used a computerized test to simulate each Senate election 40,000 times, based on an average of existing poll data drawn from credible polling companies.
The model’s individual predictions of Senate races appeared to buttress this hypothesis.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, incumbent Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman had a 75% chance of defeating Oz based on polling data projections.
Similar likelihoods were yielded for other Democratic incumbents, including Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire (78%) and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona (71%).
The model yielded some good news for Republicans, however; in Georgia, incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock leads Walker by less than 1 percentage point in odds of victory.
In Florida, for instance, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has an 85% chance of winning reelection against Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida.
Neither the Republican National Committee nor McConnell’s office responded to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, Daily Caller reports.
Source: The Republic Brief