Headlines I didn’t expect to see. Republicans pulling money out of defending NC senate seat because they are trailing bigly in polls, and shifting it to Kansas?
From Nate Silver’s model:
The shift in financial resources makes sense to me.
It looks very bad for Republicans…but there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
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It’s actually normal for things to look bad for the ruling party in a midterm, and assisted by gerrymandering shenanigans and the luck of which Senate sets are up for election, the outcome in terms of seat-shift will probably not be that unusual a midterm outcome.
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Nate Silver’s current odds of the D’s taking the senate is 71%, with an expected seat count of 52. That’s not the 60 needed to overcome cloture concerns, that’s only a one-seat margin on votes when Fetterman decides to side with the Rs, and Nate gave Hillary a 76% chance of winning on Election Day 2016.
It’s premature to start celebrating victory. It’s premature to start celebrating the demise of the current iteration of the GOP.
Betting markets shifted considerably on Sept 15. What happened then?
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/2026-us-senate-election-prediction-markets/
I don’t remember if there was any particular election-related news around then, but just looking at the charts on all the Senate races on Nate Silver’s website:
- There were changes in the trajectory for several races around then
- There were more poll results started being reported around then
- Iowa polling flipped to having the D ahead instead of the R.
It’s possible that the first two points might just be an artifact of how more-ordinary people tend not to start paying attention to election politics, who’s running, etc. until Labor Day, and mid-September is the right time for the first set of poll results that could capture that.
It’s also possible that the post-Labor Day effect is what caused Iowa to start polling blue, and that was enough to make a difference among the bookies.
Both of those hypotheses are just my speculating, not actual knowledge.
Yeah, looking at his charts, Iowa and Nebraska flipped around then. Kansas has since tightened. I wonder how far-fetched 52 seats is, in order to Fetterman-proof it (that’s assuming one of the newly-elected isn’t another Fetterman)?
Gas prices surged past $4 in a lot of those states during September.
Again, from Nate Silver’s website:
52 or more seems plausible…but so does 51 or less. (51 is the first blue bar)
Broadly speaking, we’re probably talking about a coin toss.
Barring election shenanigans, the D’s are almost certain to get the House, which should be sufficient to constrain some kinds of silliness coming from Washington, and to have a shot at partially restoring a check-and-balance.
But we’re not out of the woods when it comes to Presidential appointments or getting more of a possible check on the our Glorious Leader’s power.
(FWIW, Nate’s model puts the odds of getting to the cloture hurdle of 60 at 0.1% (0.01% for a Fettermanproof margin of 61). Getting to the 67 needed to convict after impeachment is impossible. He also has R’s getting to 60 as being impossible, if that helps…but a 0.3% chance of getting to 59.)
I do have to admit, however, the unsolicited 
text messages I’ve received today from D’s fundraising is on the verge of having me reverse my decision to vote straight D this year and next.
(Only once have I ever cast a vote for a major party candidate in a general election. I said I was going to suspend that practice because between now and 2028, my vote is probably most useful in contributing the the gap between D and R vote totals for “send a message” reasons. I just hope the D’s don’t hear the wrong message from that decision…)
It’s pretty easy to block the text numbers as spam.
I do that. The problem is that they’re coming from multiple campaigns/numbers.
32% now
Well, I just filled in my absentee ballot.
As I threatened, I marked all the D ovals.
I feel…unclean.
At least it’s a little easier given that the only actual third party candidate is a Green running for congress (although the Working Family Party and the Independent Party continue their practice of mostly cross-nominating major party candidates).
I think the Libertarian Party may have finally lost its automatic ballot access in CT. They’ve been less “strong” in CT than in other states, but I think the LP train wreck of 2024 might have finally done them in here.
I can do this again next November (I think we’re up for municipal elections?), but I will note that I didn’t promise anything about 2028. I’ll evaluate what’s going on with the train wreck of American politics two years from now, and react accordingly. (There’s nearly zero chance that anything on the ballot will be competitive anyway.)
Not sure why. Nothing will get done at any level of government that will cause you financial pain, since tRump will veto any legislation. We might get five impeachments, to break the old record for a sitting president.
I will likely also be holding my nose and voting straight D at least at the state level.
I like not being in NY because it’s an example of why one party rule is bad. I didn’t say I wanted one party rule in the other direction though, which is basically what has been happening in OH in the last decade at least. Hopefully we can go back to being a battleground again. Things are better when there’s gridlock and both parties have to sing for their supper.
tl;dr: In federal and state elections, only once in my life have I voted for a major party candidate on a major party line. I don’t like either of the major parties, even though right now it’s blatantly obvious which is the lesser evil.
FWIW here is my currently in abeyance voting strategy
- If there is a candidate I actually like, I will vote for them.
- Else, if it is a plausibly competitive race, I will vote for the lesser evil
- Else, I will vote for the least objectionable third party candidate that is not a major party cross-nomination
- Else, I will vote for the lesser evil major party candidate on the minor party line, if that is an option
- Else, I will vote against the incumbent
- Else, I will vote Republican, because Andrew Jackson.
I concede the last line is silly, but I can hold an ancestral grudge, and the decision-tree has never needed to go down that far. And there is a loose logical link, because I tend to vote in R primaries more than D primaries. (I temporarily update my voter registration ahead of primaries, so I can vote in whichever primary my vote is most useful. For CT state races, D primaries are usually noncompetitive. I voted in the R primary in 24 to vote against Trump, the D primary in 20 to vote for Biden, and the R primary in 16 to vote against Cruz.)
The one exception to the above was a Senate race in CT that was competitive, and where I thought I had such strong issues with the candidates. There were no third-party options other than their being cross-nominated. I was so disgusted that, on the basis that I could do a better job than either of them, I actually did the paperwork so that I could write in my own name without invalidating my ballot.
In retrospect, I was reacting to the tone of the campaigns, rather than the candidates themselves. But, getting interviewed by an independent paper that made a point of interviewing all the official write-in options was cool, and presumably that’s why I did get more than 2 votes.
For municipal elections in the town where I currently live, the strategy doesn’t hold up. The town council and school board have 9 seats, parties may run 5 candidates, we get to cast 5 votes, so the election amounts to “which R loses”. Most other elected offices are similar – e.g. two registrars of voters, vote once.
With how much of a clown show political commercials are here right now, maybe I should just write in Vermin Supreme for every position