Rate Montana for Senate

[ElectionsGuy]

I think it'll end up Daines +5-10. Of course anybody who doesn't believe it's a pure toss-up is laughed at or mocked. It's going to be very delicious to see if that actually ends up the case. I could be wrong and revise if we get closer to election day, but given history I don't think it makes sense for Daines to lose unless it's a blue tidal wave.

There's an obligatory "Bullock =/ Bredesen" comment but it's actually going to be interesting to see how much Bullock can overperform relative to Bredesen. Contra to the narrative spun after the election, Bredesen was a very strong candidate. He just couldn't pull it off in staunchly Republican Tennesee. Bullock will need to overperform Biden by a 15 point margin to match Bredesen's overperformance of Clinton (9 point margin to match the R house vote in 2018), which may mean outright winning.

[ElectionsGuy]

I think it'll end up Daines +5-10. Of course anybody who doesn't believe it's a pure toss-up is laughed at or mocked. It's going to be very delicious to see if that actually ends up the case. I could be wrong and revise if we get closer to election day, but given history I don't think it makes sense for Daines to lose unless it's a blue tidal wave.

There's an obligatory "Bullock =/ Bredesen" comment but it's actually going to be interesting to see how much Bullock can overperform relative to Bredesen. Contra to the narrative spun after the election, Bredesen was a very strong candidate. He just couldn't pull it off in staunchly Republican Tennesee. Bullock will need to overperform Biden by a 15 point margin to match Bredesen's overperformance of Clinton (9 point margin to match the R house vote in 2018), which may mean outright winning.

Democrats haven’t won a senate race in TN for about 30 years.

What’s the track record in Montana in that time period?

Completely irrelevant. There were loads of people on here convinced Bredesen was going to win, many polls that had him up even outside the margin of error. I was one of very few people along with IceSpear stressing that it was a tease and it was always at least Lean R (I had it at Likely R). It won't matter with this one though, people will be convinced until the very end that Montana is "different" and therefore any comparisons or contrasts are not valid. We'll just have to wait until after the election.

I can play at this game too though When was the last time a Republican incumbent lost re-election in a state as red as Montana? It hasn't happened since 2008, when Ted Stevens lost his seat for obvious reasons. Daines is not even unpopular he's just unremarkable.

[ElectionsGuy]

I think it'll end up Daines +5-10. Of course anybody who doesn't believe it's a pure toss-up is laughed at or mocked. It's going to be very delicious to see if that actually ends up the case. I could be wrong and revise if we get closer to election day, but given history I don't think it makes sense for Daines to lose unless it's a blue tidal wave.

There's an obligatory "Bullock =/ Bredesen" comment but it's actually going to be interesting to see how much Bullock can overperform relative to Bredesen. Contra to the narrative spun after the election, Bredesen was a very strong candidate. He just couldn't pull it off in staunchly Republican Tennesee. Bullock will need to overperform Biden by a 15 point margin to match Bredesen's overperformance of Clinton (9 point margin to match the R house vote in 2018), which may mean outright winning.

Daines won by 10 POINTS. Bullock did 1 point better than Bredesen in a state that is better for Democrats. I was right the entire time! This forum was convinced this was a toss-up race and that it was super different from other red state senate races in the past, with the help of MT Treasurer mocking and demeaning those that said this wasn't going to be a toss-up.

For the record the poll here was 56% Bullock 44% Daines just in case it's a poll that doesn't have a time limit and people start voting for Daines.

[ElectionsGuy]

Daines won by 10 POINTS. Bullock did 1 point better than Bredesen in a state that is better for Democrats. I was right the entire time! This forum was convinced this was a toss-up race and that it was super different from other red state senate races in the past, with the help of MT Treasurer mocking and demeaning those that said this wasn't going to be a toss-up.

First of all, there are still some votes left to be counted, so his margin will probably shrink a little. Second, Daines and the Republicans also had to put in A TON of effort to win this convincingly, so it’s not like this was a seat that he always could/should have taken for granted. I get that you’re on your ‘I was right, everyone else was wrong/delusional/in a bubble’ rampage right now, though, so I’ll leave it at that (I’m not actually going to bump/mock some of your ridiculous predictions/insults because, believe it or not, I have better things to do).

I’m actually really glad we’ll probably end up holding the Senate (depending on how the two GA runoffs go). Check out my ‘delusional’ final Atlas Senate prediction.

Sure, but it's still going to be a larger margin than even I thought (Daines +7). Not only were you wrong about the Senate races in your state and Kansas, but you were also badly off on the presidential margin in those states too. It wasn't just one thing, it was your whole foundation of the blue wave that didn't happen.

My 'ridiculous' predictions? You're not going to bump them because you're not going to find much! And when I'm wrong, I admit it. Like I'll admit I was too bullish for Republicans on Georgia, and in certain house seats (like I got NJ-03 badly wrong) but I was also too Dem friendly in many house seats like NY-11, TX-23, and both Miami-Dade seats and underestimtaed Trump's margin in Florida and Texas. That's the thing, I'm not the Republican predicting hack you had assumed I was, if anything now you have a record of more consistently overestimating Democrats, and very much so in red states. I don't know what weird quirk you have but you're oddly pessimistic for a party you want to win.

I don't know how you can be so wrong about how this election was going to go for such a long period of time, overly confident since early in the year openly displaying your hatred for me for not predicting like you do and criticizing polls that were obviously bunk, and then respond like you're above the criticism. You can have you're predictions - but you're condescendingly sarcastic posting style towards others who differ is what needs to be held accountable. You have lost any credibility you once had, and no one should listen to a word you say until you stop your toxic posting style. Just admit you were wrong, instead of continuing down this road of coming up with excuses and strawmanning other people's viewpoints. 

[ElectionsGuy]

^Being lectured on ‘condescending’ and ‘toxic’ posting style from you is quite something considering how you’ve behaved in the last 24 hours and even well before the election.

Also:

Yeah, of all my screw-ups this year, KS-SEN (I had Bollier losing, but thought it would be relatively close) and Miami-Dade County (didn’t foresee the dramatic swing at the presidential level and thought Ds would hold easily FL-26 and FL-27) were probably the biggest ones.

Feel free to mock this prediction as long as you want.

I’ll gladly admit that I was wrong about several races and you can bump hundreds of my posts/predictions and ridicule them if it makes you feel better. I could mock you for predicting that GA was ‘Likely R’, that Trump would win reelection (he may still, but it’s very, very unlikely), that Tester would win by high single digits (you predicted this a few months before the 2018 election and were just as wrong about that race as I was about this year's Senate race), but again, I don’t care.

Also, my ‘pessimism’ about red states has more to do with warranted concerns after a series of Republican underperformances (including in 2018, when the party underperformed the partisan baseline of most states rather dramatically, which you conveniently seem to ignore) and a general tendency to keep my expectations/faith in voters as low as possible. I was mostly wrong on the margins, not so much on the overall winner.

Once again, you're straw-manning. I'm not just going to randomly pick out every prediction you've made and ridicule it, I don't have time for that either. There's a reason I'm specifically going after you and not everybody else who got it wrong - you were extremely convinced you were right, and were awfully condescending to those who didn't think like you do. You convey your election analysis through mockery of others.  I don't care if the rest of the forum takes your side or not or like how you post, this IS toxic, and you should take this election as a slap in the face to your overbearing confidence. If I'm being toxic by calling it out... then so be it. I'm done hiding criticism to be more well-liked or whatever.

I seem to ignore? I took some of the trends from 2018 into the equation for my thinking in 2020, but I didn't let it dominate my predictions. Midterm elections have never had significant predictive value on the upcoming presidential election. They are almost always better for the party not in the White House. I thought 2018 was going to be a Dem wave before the election and I expected Republicans to not perform well. I thought if anything, my prediction in 2018 was going to be too Republican because parties tend to overperform their polling in wave elections. That didn't happen in 2018. The only thing that backed up the idea that 2020 was going to be a 2018 repeat was the polling. The primary turnout didn't back it up, the party registrations didn't back it up, special elections didn't back it up, search trends didn't back it up. It was not wise to believe that 2020 was going to be as good as 2018 for Democrats.

And one other thing - predicting Tester by 9 (which I don't remember, but I'll take your word for it) and saying Georgia was Likely R... were not my final predictions. I'm not going to point out a bad prediction if you changed your mind. I'm not even going to point out a bad prediction from somebody who didn't engage in the morally superior way you do. Xing made a bad prediction this year but he's generally respectful. What I'm pointing out is that these were your predictions up until the very end. And yes, Daines did say it was a toss-up constantly (I saw the ads) but it's foolish to take a politician's words as truthful for a prediction, even if that's what he actually thinks. Biden used Trafalgar's Michigan polls to say they were down to fundraise, I don't exactly believe Biden himself actually thought he was down in Michigan.