Two days remain until Election Day in the United States. I’ve done the math, but I’m still crossing my fingers and wishing on every star I can find.

In addition to the Presidential election, there are 35 U.S. Senate races, 435 U.S. House races, 11 Governor’s races, 5,876 races in 86 state legislative chambers in 44 states, an abundance of state and local races for judges, commissioners, sheriffs, school boards, etc., and a slew of state and local ballot initiatives.

While many local elections aren’t of massive concern outside of their jurisdictions, this year’s state legislative races can have national implications. The newly elected state governments will be redrawing voting districts across the U.S. in our one-a-decade gerrymandering circus.

I’ll personally be watching the returns all night on 11/3, flipping between several national and local TV news channels while surfing multiple websites. Each of the major outlets will be providing their own spins as the night progresses – some based on analytics, some based on opinions, none with any chance of being 100% correct. While the probability that everything will be decided the evening of 11/3 is quite low, the consensus of various perspectives by the end of the night could at least give us a decent idea how close things are, how long we’ll be dealing with the aftermath, and how painful the experience will be.

There’s a lot to follow but, since many races simply aren’t that competitive, we can narrow our focus quite a bit.

Below is the national version of my 2020 elections “cheat sheet” with the states and races that I’ll be most closely following. I’m not addressing any U.S. House races since, barring any massive miscalculations, the U.S. House should remain under Democratic control.

Click the table for a larger version; use the browser’s back button to return here.

• Polls Close:  This is the latest time (CST) that polls close in the states that I’ll be following. Some states stagger their closings across time zones but initial results will mostly be withheld until the whole state is closed. Each state will report results in their own unique ways. See below.
• State:  These are the 17 states that I’ll personally be monitoring for at least one reason as noted herein.
• 11/3 Results:  This is my oversimplified take on the amount of total votes that will be counted by midnight on 11/3.
  • Almost All:  Only a virtual tie at midnight should take longer to resolve.
  • Most:  If the results are within a couple of percentage points at midnight, things could change as the final votes are counted.
  • Incomplete:  It’s unlikely that elections will be called by midnight, regardless of the reported results at that point.
• Probable Timing Shifts:  This is my very oversimplified take on how the state’s results may shift as votes are counted over time. It is based on when and how absentee, mail-in, early, and same-day voting results are counted and reported in each state. The probable D & R timing biases are noted as “Initial”, “Late”, and “>11/3”. For example, a D/R/D shift means that the first reported votes will likely favor Democrats, Republican will be favored in votes counted late on 11/3, and Democrats will be favored in votes tabulated after 11/3.
• Electors:  The number of Electoral votes that are up for grabs in the state.
• Electoral College:  My analytic categorization of the state, matching my 10/20 post – except for Texas. I moved Texas from Safe D to Likely D not because my model says it actually changed. It’s purely wishful thinking on my part. The two Split states aren’t winner-take-all and, since every Electoral vote could count at this point, my model has Maine with 3 Safe D & 1 Likely D and Nebraska with 4 Safe R & 1 Likely D.
• U.S. Senate:  While I haven’t changed any projections from my 10/20 post, I will be watching several races that may be pretty close. In Georgia, for example, both Senate seats are on the ballot and both are worth watching. (I’ll frankly also be hoping for true miracles in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas with excellent Democratic candidates defeating McConnell, Graham, and Cornyn. Those wins, however, are unlikely at best.)
• State Senate:  These are the state upper chambers that could flip control.
• State House:  These are the state lower chambers that could flip control.

Of particular concern are those states that will have incomplete counts (for various reasons) until after 11/3 but that could have an early bias towards Republicans.  This include Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada – all states that are likely to vote Democratic when all of the votes are finally counted.  Trump and Company, however, have made it quite clear that they intend to go to court to stop counting votes if they’re ahead and appear to be in trouble.  Indeed, they’re already in court in multiple states (Texas included) trying to invalidate votes that have already been cast and/or votes that are processed after 11/3 – even if postmarked by 11/3 in accordance with state laws.

The possibility of having our President and control of the U.S. Senate determined by one Supreme Court justice who has been newly rammed onto the court by Republicans isn’t just a nightmare.  It’s a real possibility.

The best hope for Democrats is a blowout – taking all of the Likely D states by large margins and picking off a couple of the Likely R states.  I don’t see it, but I’ll definitely be wishing for it.

I was revising the analytics behind my prior post when two things quickly stopped me.  First, it was quite apparent that not much has changed based on my model.  Second, I was boring the crap out of myself.

While I consider myself a political junkie, even I am SO READY for this election to be over:

• I’m tired of constant campaign emails literally begging for my money.  I’ve donated a lot of money to many campaigns… and I’m done.
• I’m tired of people telling me to vote.  I voted the morning of the first day of early voting in Texas.
• I’m tired of people telling me that everything is going to be fine.  I seriously doubt it.
• I’m tired of people telling me that the end of the world is near.  Okay, maybe, but let’s just get it over with already.
• I’m tired of swing state polls.  No one has any clue how to build a valid polling sample in today’s world and thus every one of these polls could be absolute garbage.
• I’m tired of national polls.  For the love of God, why is anyone still conducting these?
• I’m tired of pundits, pollsters, politicians, anchors, campaign operatives, and bloggers (yeah, me included) touting the accuracy of their mathematical models and/or gut feelings.  No one knows a damn thing and everyone is just throwing darts in the dark.

I’m ready to move on.

Of course, until the election is actually over, it’s just not a good idea to look too far beyond it.  I’m not superstitious, but ya’ know, … just in case.

While election returns are being tabulated and litigated, I may comment on the associated vote-counting and brief-filing processes.  I suspect it could get quite ugly in the days (weeks?) following the election and a close Electoral College could well be decided, once again, by the Supreme Court along party lines.  While I’ll hold good thoughts for an early, decisive Trump defeat, any posts that assume a Biden victory will have to wait until, well, Biden is victorious.  And, no, I won’t even acknowledge the possibility of an alternative outcome.

Post-election, I could happily return to discussions of important political issues rather than just raw politics. I would enjoy thinking about the composition of a Biden cabinet, how some significant Trump-induced damage could be quickly undone, how Democrats should respond to the GOP’s Supreme Court power-grab, why preparations for the 2022 and 2024 elections need to start on November 4, etc.

In the very near term, I could certainly opine on the considerable chaos that a defeated Trump could inflict on our nation between 11/3 and 1/20.  That 78-day “transition” period could well prove to be the toughest test yet of American democracy – particularly with a newly stacked Supreme Court backing up a lame duck President who would undoubtedly pursue a scorched earth, Trump-first response to a forced retirement.

But I digress.

Despite the paralyzing fatigue, the only topic deserving of any focus at this moment is the winning of elections.  That includes winning the Presidency with enough of a margin that no legal avenues are open to effectively challenge the results.  It includes winning the Senate by even a small margin.  It includes retaining a majority in the House.  Finally, as a Texan, it also includes winning the Texas State House.

If Democrats don’t win, our national nightmares continue.

Note, by the way, that I still don’t consider myself a Democrat.  I remain an independent who is so anti-Trump that I guess I do look an awful lot like a Democrat.  However, I pray for the day when Republicans find their way back to their small-government, deficit-adverse, world-leader, morality-focused roots.  Our government works best when we pursue compromises between sane, opposing viewpoints.  However, the Party of Trump is not the Republican party of Rockefeller, Reagan, nor either Bush.  The current bastardization must be extinguished and rebuilt from scratch.

I personally voted for Biden without reservation – despite the fact that a few of his policies send chills up my spine.  I can thus understand if some lifelong Republicans cannot bring themselves to vote for any Democrat.  I can respect someone who casts a third-party vote or simply refrains from voting in this election.  However, I cannot understand how any educated, politically-aware, moral person could vote FOR Trump.  He does not deserve to be the President of the United States and he will destroy our country if he is re-elected.

Yes, I’m tired.  But I’ll fight through the fatigue and I encourage others to do the same.

Change is imperative.

It’s the final stretch.  The bottom of the ninth.  The last lap.  The closing chapter.  The happy ending.  Or insert your own culmination idiom here.

Anyway, since we’re only two weeks away from Election Day, I revisited my election models for the Electoral College, the Senate, and the House.

Fair warning:  My analysis yields slightly different results than I’ve been reading elsewhere.  While I certainly find no fault with the more professional models used by others (538, Cook, Sabato, Politico, etc.), my mathematical models somehow seem to reflect my non-mathematical outlook – which, at the moment, resides somewhere between a default pessimism and a very cautious optimism.  That said, my models take into account weighted polling data, but also consider the each state’s voting history, party control in each state, state demographics, 2018 election data, and few other factors.

Presidential Election

Here’s my current landscape map of the 2020 Electoral College (using 270toWin‘s build-your-own map feature):

While things have definitely moved in Democrats’ direction since I published my initial 2020 landscape post way back in December of 2018, the movement hasn’t been massive.  My current analysis says that forty states are now baked.  Biden has 217 solid Electoral votes (dark blue) to Trump’s 182 (dark red).  Sure, some models show a few of those states (e.g. Texas, Kansas, Ohio) are still within reach for Biden.  My model says otherwise.

Of the remaining ten in-play states, Biden is likely to win six of them (light blue) and Trump is likely to win the other four (light red). That split would give Biden a 290/248 win in the Electoral College.

All ten of these states, however, could move into the other camp – with varying probabilities of doing so within the next two weeks.  Pennsylvania and Florida appear to be the states on each side most likely to move.

The good news?  If my model holds, Biden wins.  The win is largely the “Middle America” strategy I discussed in a February 2019 post with a focus on winning the Great Lakes states that currently lean toward Biden.  Note that even if Biden loses any one of his “likely” states, he’d still be just over the threshold of the required 270 Electoral votes.  Conversely, Trump needs to not only hold all four of his “likely” states, he needs to move at least two Biden states to his column.

The bad news?  Nothing is over.  Trump could still win or could at least get close enough that the election results get thrown into the courts and/or the House – which wouldn’t end well for anyone.  A Biden blowout is possible, but it looks unlikely to me.  A close Electoral College split is the more probable outcome.

U.S. Senate

I don’t understand the rosy predictions I see everywhere for Senate Democrats.  Yes, Democrats will see a net gain of seats and things may be very slightly better for Democrats than they were when I discussed the Senate last month.

However, my model currently has the most probable outcome to be a 50/50 split – with the winning VP casting the deciding Senate votes.  That wouldn’t be at all pretty regardless of the VP.

Democrats should flip Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina; Republicans will likely flip Alabama.  That D+3 net is the 50/50 split.

The best path Republicans have to retain their majority is to pull out a win in North Carolina – which is only recently a possibility after the NC Democratic candidate insisted on pulling out something himself.  That’s right.  Democrats could actually lose the Senate because one guy couldn’t keep his pants on.  How 2020 is that?

The best paths Democrats have to secure a majority are through Iowa and/or Montana.  Both are within reach but both are far from sure things.

The other races on some radars as potential R-to-D flips (South Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, Texas, and both Georgia races) just ain’t happening in my model.  In this regard, I sincerely hope that my model is wrong.

U.S. House

I didn’t need to do the math here, but I did.  Democrats will easily retain control of the U.S. House.  In fact, they’re likely to see a small net gain of 5-8 seats.

You know the wheels are off and quickly rolling away from your political cart when you entrust your campaign’s “October Surprise” to Rudy Giuliani.

Let’s recap.

In July of 2019, Trump called the Ukrainian President to pressure him for “a favor” by launching an investigation into Joe Biden – Trump’s then-presumptive 2020 rival.  Of course, that seriously improper conversation prompted impeachment proceedings that produced the politically predictable result.  Still, one would think that Trump would want to move on from that particular narrative.  One would be wrong.

Trump had made the call hoping that an investigation would prove that Biden abused his position as Vice President to push for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated Burisma – an energy company on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter, served from 2014 to 2019.  The facts, however, have never supported an allegation of improper influence.

In 2015, Biden did indeed threaten to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine unless the prosecutor was fired.  That wasn’t a secret.  In fact, the firing had long been publicly sought by numerous officials – from the U.S, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank – due to corruption charges.  Furthermore, there was no active investigation into Burisma when the prosecutor was finally fired in 2016.

When Trump’s Ukrainian government approach fizzled, a GOP-led Senate committee devoted a ton of U.S. government resources to produce a political hit piece in September that even Republicans thought was over the top.  So, when that report landed like a wet dog, Giuliani gleefully stepped into what the dog left behind.

And here’s where it gets fun.

The New York Post published a story this week based on Giuliani’s “research” claiming that Hunter left his laptop at a repair shop but never came back for it.  You know… as one does.  The repair shop owner frighteningly made a copy of the hard drive which somehow made its way to Giuliani.  Giuliani, in turn, claimed it contained a “smoking gun” email from a Burisma exec who thanked Hunter for the “opportunity to meet your father.”

So.  Let’s ignore the fact that the presumed chain of events with the laptop reads like a cheap espionage novel.  Let’s also ignore the fact that the Post is a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch (who also owns Fox News) and that the story’s reporter is a former producer for Sean Hannity.  Let’s further ignore the fact that this soap opera has all the markings of a poorly executed Russian hack.  And let’s finally ignore the fact that Trump’s own intelligence analysts warned him in September that Giuliani was a targeted pawn in a Russian disinformation effort directed at influencing the November elections.

Here’s what the political pundits on all sides are missing:

No one gives a shit.

Most Americans couldn’t find Ukraine on a map even if you spotted them Eastern Europe.  Most Americans are worried about their own jobs and not the job of some obscure prosecutor from Kiev.  Most Americans aren’t focused on catching Hunter Biden for something that happened years ago; they’re focused on not catching COVID-19 now.  Most Americans think Rudy Giuliani is the punchline of a bad joke.  Hell, even his daughter is voting for Biden.

So why was Hunter given a position on the Burisma board in the first place?  The answer, of course, is that his Dad was the Vice President of the United States.  Duh.  So what?  If anyone thinks that many board members of most major companies don’t have their positions because of their names and/or their contacts, they don’t understand how corporate boards work.  Even if Hunter did introduce his father to a Burisma exec (which is itself questionable), an introduction is far from evidence of anything improper.

Look.  I’m not complaining.  But if this is the best the GOP can do, I’m a bit embarrassed for them.  And I’m even more embarrassed for the Russians.

Since I last wrote about the 2020 Senate races, much has changed and I suspect more changes are in store.  The full extent of the backlash over the GOP’s rush to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat isn’t yet known.  At the moment, though, control of the chamber appears to be a toss-up.

Democrats need a net gain of three Senate seats if Biden/Harris wins or a net gain of four seats if Trump/Pence wins.  While I unfortunately need to assume that Democrats will lose the Alabama seat, all other Democratic incumbents now appear to be in pretty good shape.  Thus, Democrats need to flip five GOP seats to guarantee a Senate majority.

Based on my analysis, Democrats are currently favored to flip three seats that Lean D.  Another three seats are Toss-Ups and Democrats need to flip at least two of them.  Thus, these six races are where Democratic focus (i.e. money) could best be applied now.  I’ll expand on the money issue in my next post.

I’ve also identified an additional four races which I currently consider to be Stretch goals but which might also be deserving of some attention.  While these are longer shots, throwing money at Democrats running against such people as Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham just feels good.  I also suspect that some of these races may soon move into the Toss-Up category.

Beyond the above ten races, I note a few other races that some consider to be in-play, but that aren’t yet “practically” in-play from my perspective. Within this group, I’d love to suggest a stronger defense of the relatively safe Democratic seats and a stronger offense to take the relatively safe Republican seats.  However, money needs to be spent where it can do the most good.

The races are presented here in my current order of importance using the same structure and methodology as previously discussed.  Click on the table below to display a larger version; hit the back button to return here.

Dear Senate Republicans:

A true American icon has died.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a passionate and brilliant defender of our Constitution.  As only the second woman to ever serve as a Supreme Court justice, she leaves behind a 27-year record of both majority opinions and powerful dissents that will be quoted as long as our democracy lives.

I know RBG wasn’t your favorite jurist.  But she was sincere.  And she was funny.  And she was a good person.  She was great friends with Antonin Scalia – who probably was your favorite jurist – and they highly respected one another.  That should mean something to you.

While it’s sad that discussions have turned away so quickly from her amazing life and toward the nasty process of replacing her on the Court, it’s not unexpected.  Since we’re here, though, I’ll take a moment to discuss the politics.

I know that McConnell was crystal clear when he said immediately after Scalia’s death ten months before the 2016 presidential election:  “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

I am also quite aware that McConnell has no problem at all flushing any pretense of principle down the drain in order to replace Ginsburg less than two months before the 2020 presidential election.  I just wish he’d be honest about a purely political power play.  His logical gymnastics to justify the switch are embarrassing.

I’ve already seen a ton of opinion pieces addressing all sorts of Senate process questions – how long does it take to get a nomination through the Senate, do you have time to do it before the election, can you do it after the election in a lame-duck session, would enough of you be willing to rush a vote, does the math change if Kelly beats McSally and he takes the Arizona Senate seat immediately since that’s a special election, etc.

I guess this inside baseball is moderately interesting, but I fully understand the bottom line:  At least 50 of you will fall in line behind Trump and McConnell, with a Pence tie-breaker if necessary, to do whatever you damn well want to do on whatever timeline you so choose.  You could technically seat Rudy Giuliani on the Supreme Court by the end of today if you wanted to.  You could seat a new justice an hour before a Biden inauguration.  And you would.  I know you would.  There’s nothing that can stop you.

In 2016, your decision to not even give Merrick Garland a hearing put the selection of a replacement for a very conservative Supreme Court justice firmly in the hands of the next President.  I still don’t understand why you didn’t give Garland a hearing and then just voted against him.  It would have produced exactly the same result without the political baggage.  In any case, however, the open seat was undoubtedly a factor in many voters’ choice of Trump over Clinton.  It’s even reasonable to contend that this was a deciding factor since a Clinton-appointed jurist would have surely swung the balance of the Supreme Court.

However, 2020 is not 2016 and this open seat is not the 2020 campaign “game changer” that some of you are calling it.  Or at least it’s not the game changer that you think it is.

You want to fill Ginsberg’s seat before the election?  Go ahead.  Make my day.  You’ll guarantee a 2020 blow-out loss for your party.  Replace the premier liberal on the Court with a conservative and both Democrats and independents will be galvanized to an extent that you can’t even imagine.  On the other hand, numerous Republicans will become complacent about voting for your party since they will have already won their solid conservative Supreme Court majority.

You want to fill the seat after the election in a lame-duck session if you lose either the White House or the Senate?  Dandy.  You’ll put a nail in your party’s coffin for decades.  2022 will be all about that vote.

Fill the seat before January and the voices of reason in the Democratic party will be silenced and the Senate filibuster will be tanked as soon as they have control.  You can all just go home since your votes won’t matter at all on anything.  Oh, and by the way, your Supreme Court majority will be short-lived when Democrats simply expand the Court.  Most Democrats don’t support an expansion but, if you force the issue, almost all of them will.

I rather hate giving you political advice, but you really have only one decent option.

You can indeed make the election about the Supreme Court – but only if there’s still an open seat.  Sure, only an idiot would have assumed that RBG’s seat would not have been vacated during the next President’s term anyway.  But let’s be candid here:  You have a lot of idiots in your party.  Making the election about filling an actual open seat probably helps you more than it helps Democrats.  It will bring out more voters in both parties – but my guess is that there are more Republican votes to be had in this scenario.

So here’s the possible outcomes of delaying a confirmation until January:

1. It could help you win both the Presidency and the Senate – in which case you could then seat whomever you want.  You win.
2. It could help you win either the Presidency or the Senate – in which case you could at least guarantee a moderate justice to replace a liberal.  You still win.
3. It could have no impact and you could still lose both the Presidency and the Senate.  Democrats would get to name a liberal replacement for a liberal and the Supreme Court balance would be unchanged.  However, your 2022 campaign issue to take back the Senate would be delivered to you with a cherry on top.  You eventually win.

You’re welcome.

Of course, I fully expect all of you to tell me what I can do with my advice.  You want to take your opponent’s Queen even if it means you’ll lose the game.  Cool.  I’ll get back to mourning and save my “I told you so” for another day.

The cast of “The Princess Bride” is reuniting for a virtual table read of the script, followed by a cast Q&A, to raise money for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Here’s just three reasons that I’ll be donating and tuning in:

1. The 1987 movie is one of my all-time favorites.
2. Wisconsin is a critical 2020 swing state with 10 Electoral College votes.
3. Ted Cruz is big fan of the movie and absolutely HATES the idea of the fundraiser.

Donate any amount you want to sign up for the event and mark your calendars for 6pm CT on Sunday, September 13^th!

Fezzik: “Why do you wear a mask?”
Westley: “I think everyone will be wearing them in the near future.”