538 Model Debut: 64% Chance of Republican Majority; R+7 Most Likely

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IL, NJ, and SD seem a little less competitive than that.

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Guys, if you add up the individual probabilities, the model is projecting R+9.

I think you missed the fact that GA, KY, and KS are currently Republican held seats.

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Guys, if you add up the individual probabilities, the model is projecting R+9.

I think you missed the fact that GA, KY, and KS are currently Republican held seats.

No, because WV and MT aren't even on the list. What he/she meant was that the model shows Republicans having a greater than 50% chance in 9 states: WV, SD, MT, AR, AK, LA, NC, CO, and IA. Gauss is correct in pointing out that it doesn't actually mean the model is predicting 9 seats though.

Odds are certainly against Republicans winning all of Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina, and Alaska.

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Barring some big changes in several different races, 2014 may be the year when Silver loses his shine. Looking back, each national cycle he has covered has been relatively one-sided and not as many individual races were truly close; his "none here and one there" track-record of inaccuracies may fall apart. As it stands and as it has stood for many months, there's a good chance that:

• several Senate races could be very close to 50/50 (two-way model)
• the national PV could be very close to 50/50
• the composition of the Senate may end up being 50/50

That makes his whole probability angle risky in terms of correctly identifying who will win (I don't care if the method provides a technical cop-out for him: people listen to him because they expect his probabilities are going to be the result).

He didn't do so great with the 2012 Senate elections. He predicted 52.5 Democrats, it ended up being 55 Democrats. He had 92.5% odds that Rick Berg was going to be elected.