Presidential — (352 Clinton, 180 Trump, 6 McMullin)
Hillary Clinton will be elected as the 45th President and the first woman to hold the office. Heavy latinx turnout will lead to a margin, conservatively of 7-8% in my opinion. The polls show a tighter race than that, but the polls are not accounting for record breaking latinx turnout, nor are they expecting the share of the electorate being below 70% for white voters. Clinton’s superior ground game will pull out Ohio and the increase in latinx voters will help carry Clinton to victories in AZ, FL and NC. Donald J. Trump will lose California by historic margins, so while the margin on election night might seem in line with final polls (maybe 3-5%), by the time that all the vote is counted in California, which could take days, her margin of victory will grow larger than Barack Obama’s 7% win in 2008.
My guess at the final margin — 52%-44% with the remaining 4% shared among the third party candidates. I also have Evan McMullin pulling off the upset in Utah.
Senate (52 Dems, 48 GOP)
Democratic pickups: WI, IL, NH, PA, NC, MO
Democratic hold: NV
The race has trended away from Sen Toomey in PA, while Sen Kirk in IL and Sen Johnson in WI never had much of a shot in my opinion. Challengers Maggie Hassan in NH, and Jason Kander in MO are strong candidates who will pull out close races, while Deborah Ross gets buoyed by a surprisingly large victory for Hillary Clinton in NC.
Florida turns out to be a very close race, but I suspect Marco Rubio holds on — fingers crossed that I’m wrong. Evan Bayh’s ethics issues seem to have caught up with him, as the final Howey poll (Indian’s gold star pollster) shows Bayh down 5.
House (225 GOP, 210 Dems)
Democrats make the race for the House very interesting and come close to the 218 needed for a majority. I think they pickup 20+ seats, and end up with about 210 seats. The democrats have a small outside chance of taking back the House, but in order to do so, they would either need to win an extraordinarily high number of competitive seats, or we’ll need to see seats suddenly become competitive that were not expected to be competitive — for example, a very high latinx turnout in Texas may just put a few gerrymandered districts into play. I think an interesting question after the election, will be if the Republicans can find 218 votes to elect a Speaker.