OK, so the elections are done and Trump’s on the way out! But let’s step back a moment to evaluate. I made some election predictions last week. How did they go?
For readers: how did your election predictions work out?
Presidency
Here’s what my electoral vote map looked like:
The early call for Trump in Florida acted as a bit of a bad omen. But it turns out it’s the only state I’ve missed so far. I may end up missing North Carolina. But it looks like I’ve gone at least 48 for 50.
Not bad. But what I nailed in accuracy I may have missed in spirit. I expected Biden to win the popular vote by about 7-8 points. So far, he’s coming in much lower than that, holding only a 3-point lead. Granted, the popular vote margin may increase over the coming days. But it’s looking like Biden landed a narrower win than I expected.
Senate and House
Here’s where things really get dicey. Right now, the Senate is tied 48-48 with Republicans likely to win at last 2 of the remaining 4 seats. Democrats lead the House of Representatives 218-198.
I predicted Democrats to win 52-48 and 240-198, respectively. While it’s still possible I’m right about these predictions, it’s likely Democrats did worse than I expected.
Iowa Election Predictions
In Iowa, I called House races in IA-01, IA-02, and IA-03 for Democrats and IA-04 for Republicans. I was right about -03 and -04 and wrong about -01. -02 is still pretty close. Overall, it’s a disappointing result for Democrats. They lost at least one election they expected to win.
At the state and local level, things look even more dire for Democrats. Much like their 2018 failure, they showed that their appeal is limited to only a few parts of the state. Until they fix this problem, they’ll continue to lose statewide and in a majority of local districts.
Political Futures
Let’s end with a brief word about the future. In Iowa, the situation looks tough for Democrats. They can get better in the longer term if they build a core progressive/social democratic base. And they’ll do better as Iowa becomes more diverse. But it might take awhile before these things happen. Democrats will remain out of power in Iowa so long as they fail to broaden their appeal.
At the national level, it’s hard to tell the extent to which the Democrats’ problems with the Electoral College persist. To get that information, we need a final popular vote count at both the national and state levels. We also need to find the tipping-point state, how each state compares to the national popular vote average, and how the vote compares across demographics and election cycles. That’ll come later.
I’ll write more extensively about these issues are soon as the data roll in. It’s possible the Electoral College problems persist, but it’s also possible that Biden’s improvement with white voters and seniors mitigated some of those problems.
