Evaluate your 2020/2021 Prediction Record

[KaiserDave]

So a few months out of the most recent election, I think we've all had a good amount of time to settle down and get a good real look at the data and evaluate it more objectively against our previous predictions.

So, grade yourself! How good were your predictions!


2020 Presidential Election:
I was prettyyy prettyyy accurate if I do say so myself. My Atlas prediction got every state correct, and was remarkably accurate with the amount of % as well. I did think Biden was going to win NC as the day approaches, but the map doesn't say that! On a smaller level, it was less accurate. I thought Biden was going to win WI/PA/MI by about ~4% more across the board. I also thought he'd do better in Texas, Arizona, and Georgia (but I correctly predicted the results in each). I didn't see the big Trump win Florida coming, but I didn't believe Biden was actually going to win it. On the popular vote I was far less accurate, I assumed Biden would have a lot more empty calorie votes and would win the PV by more like 7-8% rather than 4.5%. If you told me Biden won by 4.5% in the PV, I wouldn't guess he'd get 306 electoral votes. I'd give myself a A-.

2020/2021 U.S. Senate Elections*:
Not so great here. While I predicted a 50/50 Senate with VP Harris as the tiebreaker, my predictions on individual races were not accurate. I thought Sara Gideon would win narrowly, Cunningham as well, and I thought Montana would be razor close, and South Carolina within about 3 points as well. I thought Kelly was going to do better, and I thought Iowa and Alaska would both be closer. I thought Peters would win by around 4-5 as opposed to ~1.5%, and generally across the board by margin predictions were not good at all. In Georgia, I thought both would go to runoffs, but I predicted Perdue and Loeffler would both win, though this was mostly expectations setting. In truth I had no idea what was going to happen. I'd give myself a C-.

2020 U.S. House Elections:
I didn't really pay attention to individual house races this cycle, whereas I did pay a lot in 2018. On the whole I thought Democrats would gain 5-10 seats. This was obviously entirely incorrect. I thought Democrats would win the House vote by about 7, this didn't happen. I thought incumbents like Joe Cunningham, Gil Cisneros, Harley Rouda, and T.J. Cox would all be re-elected with ease. In fact with those four. I never really considered the idea that they could actually lose. So, not very good. However on the local level, I correctly predicted Max Rose would lose despite polls showing otherwise. I never really thought he would win re-election. On the whole, not very good. I'll give myself a D.

2020 U.S. Gubernatorial Elections:
There weren't many gubernatorial elections this year, but I predicted them all correctly. I thought Montana would be closer (think 5-6 points), but I was mostly in denial about New Jersey Greg being inevitable. I was pleasantly surprised by the scale of Phil Scott's landslide, and otherwise was generally correct. I'll give myself an B+, but this isn't very impressive.

What do you give yourself?

*My Atlas Senate prediction wasn't updated since February 2020, it's not relevant

[UncleSam]

My 2020 predictions were quite close, nailing every presidential state result and senate result outside of the state of Georgia. Unfortunately in Georgia I was just 100% completely dead wrong and thought Rs would sweep things ‘because it wasn’t there yet’. Oops.

I’m the house I was a little too optimistic for Ds, predicting a net R gain of 3-5. In my defense the only reason this didn’t happen is that Rs won literally all of the close races, but still being off by ~10 isn’t ideal but isn’t the worst.

I don’t even think I had Governor predictions though I expected Rs to win Montana, which I think was the only seriously contested race?

In 2018 I was too pessimistic for Ds, predicting house gains of 25-30 and Ds losing WV and MT in the senate (though I did call the rest of their wins). I did always think Rs would win FL and not just because of memes.

In 2016 I was off by three states, specifically the upper Midwest. I also expected Ayotte to win and Johnson to lose. I wasn’t following house or governor races at that point.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It doesn't matter the Insurrectionists on Jan 6th, took WC females away from their hubby Evangelicals, more WC females are gonna vote blue now on due to fact Fox news continue the Trump lie that he won the Election, they are watching CSPAN now

[If my soul was made of stone]

I got conned into the Soybeangate hype for a hot minute. Not too proud of that one.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Presidency: B-. I got the NPV off but using universal swing in my model, I actually got the map - GA entirely correct, and picked up on things like MN voting several points to the left of the rust belt, or CO voting to the left of NM, or NV trending rightwards.

Senate: My model did better than I did, predicting partisanship would ultimately prevail in KS, SC, MT, ect (though it ended up prevailing even more than the model). Overall, the composition was about correct (51-49 vs 50-50), but ME ended up being really wrong, same with NC where I felt pretty good for a while Tillis would lose. I also had little hope about GA, especially the Special, because of the runoffs. B

House: D. Early on in the cycle, my House predictions were actually pretty close to the final results, predicting a relatively close call, but I jumped onto the Atlas sugar high of tenelyzing possibilities by about August and ended up doing terrible.

[MargieCat]

My prediction was almost correct for the presidential race. I thought NC would flip and GA would go to Trump.

Some polling a couple months out had Biden winning Florida. I never once believed that was happening. I felt very strongly that Florida was going to Trump and thought that Bloomberg wasted 100 million there.

For the senate races, I thought Gideon and Cunningham were going to win. I thought Greenfield would win until I saw the last Selzer poll.

By election day, I predicted a 50/50 senate.

I didn't expect Ossoff and Warnock to win before election the November election.

I was bullish and thought they would win the runoffs. I was told by some on this very board that it was wishful thinking. But I've learned to never count out Stacey Abrams.

[here2view]

Presidency: I predicted a 335—203 Biden win. I had Biden winning Florida, ME-02, and North Carolina, with Trump winning Georgia. Overall, not too bad, so I'll say B+

Senate: Like other posters, I predicted a 50—50 Senate delegation but my path to this was off. I had Democrats winning Maine and North Carolina, and Republicans winning both seats in Georgia. So, correct end result but some incorrect guesses along the way. B—

House: This was by far my worst. I bought too much into the narrative that Democrats would have a mini-2018 gain due to the environment, ignoring the impact that with Trump on the ballot, it may change some House races. I had Democrats winning 245—190, so I was off by 23. This is a D— and the only thing that prevents it from being an F is if the Republicans actually took the House.

Overall I'd say a C+/B— at best considering I roughly had the Presidency correct and had the Senate composition down. House was bad though.

[JMT]

I didn't attempt to predict margins in each state, but I did attempt to predict final results:

President: I did pretty well here. I predicted a 322 - 216 Biden win. I got every contest correct with the exception of North Carolina and ME-02 (I had Biden winning both).

Senate: I guessed the Senate would be controlled by Democrats 51-49. While that's not far off from the final number (50-50), my path to getting there wasn't all too accurate. I correctly predicted flips in AZ and CO for Democrats, and AL for Republicans (like most people did), but I also thought NC, ME, and IA would flip to Democrats. And despite predicting a Biden win in Georgia, I really thought Perdue and Loeffler would win.

House: I didn't try to predict each House race, but I bought into the idea that Democrats would either hold roughly the same number of seats, or possibly expand their majority (although I didn't think they'd expand the majority by a lot, given some Democrats would lose reelection which would cancel out some Democratic gains). Some of the Democratic losses weren't entirely surprising (E.g. I always thought Peterson was doomed, and I thought Max Rose would probably lose), but others I was shocked by (E.g. the three California and two Florida Democratic defeats). The fact that 13 house democrats lost reelection, and Democrats only had one "true flip" in GA-07 (NC-02 and NC-06 were redrawn) led to my prediction being way off.

Governor: I accurately predicted the final results for every race here. I was confident that Gianforte would flip Montana rather comfortably, and didn't really buy into the notion that Missouri was competitive. I was surprised that Roy Cooper only narrowly hung on (I thought he would win by a lot), and was shocked to see that Phil Scott won by over 40 points (I knew Scott would win, but I didn't think Zuckerman would do THAT poorly).

So overall, lessons learned:
- Susan Collins is way more popular in Maine than I anticipated. I thought she'd lose, never mind win by over 8 points.
- Iowa is a lot more red than I thought. I had Trump winning here, but I thought Greenfield would also win. I now think Iowa is probably off the table for Democrats, at least for statewide federal races (for now at least).
- Georgia really is a swing state (or maybe even a blue leaning state now?). I did think Biden would win in Georgia with a plurality, but I was not all all convinced Ossoff and Warnock could win a majority of the vote in either November or a runoff. I didn't think Georgia "was there yet" and also thought voters would vote for Perdue and Loeffler as a "check" against the Biden administration. I was wrong.
- It will be real tough for Democrats to hold the House in 2022. Of course, we have to see how redistricting turns out, but I think Democrats are likely underdogs to hold the House.

[JoeInator]

Presidency: I predicted Biden would win 351-187 with about a 7% PV margin. I got everything right except for FL, NC, and ME-02. I'd give myself a B on the Presidential level.

Senate: I predicted the Democrats would take the Senate, but 53-47 instead of 50-50. I thought Dems would flip NC, ME (lol in hindsight), and IA (even bigger lol in hindsight). Despite this, I give myself a C because I predicted a Democratic majority and that Ossoff and Warnock would win in runoffs.

House: I predicted the House composition would stay about the same (237 Dems to 198  for the GOP). Again I give myself a C because the Dems held on to the House and I wasn't as wrong as I could've been.

Overall I give myself a B-/C+, which isn't too bad since it was the first time I've made predictions for all 3 at once.

[Tekken_Guy]

Presidency: I was quite bullish on Biden here. I thought Biden had a good shot at 413 EVs. Only 106 off. I knew it wasn't happening if the PV was within 4 points (I was expecting more of an 8 point win), though in that case I thought Biden would win NC but not GA, though I still thought Trump would hold on to FL in a close race. The Rust Belt Trio and Arizona I thought were going to track with the national environment. Nevada was the only state I thought Trump had any chance of flipping from 2016.

Senate: My 8-point prediction also made the senate races off. In the 413 scenario, I would have expected Ossoff to get over 50 and both Ernst and Daines to lose (I never thought Cornyn, Marshall, Sullivan, or Graham were ever likely to lose). A close race I thought would lead to a 50-50, but with ME and NC flipping and both GA seats staying R. AL and CO were obvious flips and I never once expected the incumbents to hang on there. AZ and MI I expected to go to Dems, but didn't rule out an upset in if Trump was doing well.

House: I was really off the most here. Dems lost a lot of seats and had no real gains to make up for it besides GA-7 and  the redrawn NC seats. I thought Peterson was going to lose no matter what, but felt the other Dem incumbents all had good chances of holding on. All of my higher-end tier 1 seats flipped (OK-5, NY-11, and NM-2), which I thought were the only other incumbents in any real danger of losing in a landslide Biden win environment (and anything worse than that and they're toast), but the lower-end of the first tier (i.e. SC-1, IA-1, UT-4) also fell; those were seat I thought were safe in a Biden landslide but highly competitive in a narrow Biden win and guaranteed to flip if Trump was winning again. The biggest surprises IMO were the flips in FL and CA. Gimenez and Valadao I believed had a shot at flipping those seats in a close Biden win; but Salazar, Kim, and Steel I thought had no chance at winning unless Trump was getting re-elected.

[beesley]

I did make a prediction, but not on Atlas:

Presidency: I did think Biden would win by about the EV margin he did - I never thought Trump would lose OH, IA or TX. I predicted Biden would win all the states he did except for GA, but the extent to which that was an accurate prediction or a built in lean towards the Republicans.

Senate: I was a bit off in the Senate races. Again, I didn't think TX, KS, AK, IA, MT or SC would go blue. Again I was wrong about Georgia, I thought even if it got to a runoff, the GOP would win, and in Perdue's case I expected him to win outright. I was also wrong about ME like many.

House: Here, I was too bullish for Dems rather than the GOP. I thought the GOP would gain a handful of seats, including the two in IA, MN-07, OK-05, NM-02 and CA-21, but I never expected them to gain two seats in FL, two in Orange County, or SC-01 and UT-04. I thought the Dems would also gain TX-24 and that CT-05 would be closer.

Governor: In short, I was right!

I give myself a B+ since I owe my good predictions to being more generous to the GOP, rather than an actually accurate prediction in some cases, such as in GA.

[MoreThanPolitics]

Presidency: I almost nailed the EV totals (I predicted Biden 305-233), only missing North Carolina and Georgia. I totally underestimated the leftward swings in the Atlanta suburbs! A solid B+.

Senate: Ugh, what a disaster. Missed NC, both GA races and ME, although no one saw Collins will win re-election. This also proved that Maine polls this cycle are absolute garbage! C-, luckily I changed IA back to R at the last minute, otherwise I will give myself a D.

House: Missed CA-21, CA-25, CA-39, CA-48, FL-26, FL-27, IA-1, IA-2, MO-2, ME-2, NY-11, NY-22, OK-5, PA-10, SC-1, TX-10, TX-23, TX-24 and UT-4. I underestimated GOP's huge gain among minorities and the lack of split voting in the suburbs. C

Governor: Not too shabby, since I got all the races correct. However, I severely underestimated the GOP's vote share in WV and VT. I thought both of them would get high-50s, but the two ended up getting almost 70%! B+  

Overall, I'll give myself a B- or C+.

[AGA]

Presidency: Got two states wrong, FL and NC. I thought that Biden would win the PV by 7 points. Mediocre prediction.

Senate: Absolute dog****. Four states, ME, NC, and both GA races, were wrong. Although if it's any consolation, I did predict a tied Senate.

Governor: Every state right, but this was pretty easy. I did get some percentages wrong, so nothing impressive.

House: Was too lazy to make a prediction.

[It’s so Joever]

Presidential: D
Yeah I was wrong, and me being less wrong than Atlas optimists isn’t much consolation. The PV was close to what I expected.

Senate: C
I was wrong about Michigan (lol), Maine, North Carolina, and GA Regaulr. I actually did predict that GA special would go to a runoff and that Warnock would win. I did not think GA regular would be runoff.

House: F
I thought Democrats would have a net gain of seats because of a few failed gerrymanders...I also thought house Dems would outrun Biden and not vice versa...yikes.

2021: B
Pretty good, I was actually optimistic and thought both Dems had a decent shot. It’s a B because I thought Ossoff would do better than Warnock.

[KaiserDave]

Thank you all for honest evaluations! All the big hot take folks should join in!

[Progressive Pessimist]

President: I was right about Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, NE-2, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin flipping to Biden. I was very wrong about the margins in them (other than NE-2 which I actually nailed as Biden+6) because I was under the impression of a Biden+7 environment. So that also meant that my predictions of Florida and North Carolina flipping too was deeply incorrect. I give myself a D+.

Senate: I was overly optimistic about Maine and North Carolina and overly pessimistic about the Georgia runoffs. They sort of cancel out since I was right about every other Senate election. I'll go with a C-.

House: I predicted a Republican net gain of five seats. I was also foolish for thinking that. I really thought that the Democrats would have won almost as many seats as I expected them to lose. Again, I was under the impression of a Biden+7 environment with coattails. This is probably where I was the most wrong even though I did correctly predict some of the Republicans' flips, namely OK-5, NY-11, MN-7, and SC-1. Of course, those were fairly obvious. But even then, those were cancelled out by my underestimating of Andy Kim and Jared Golden. D-.

Governor: I nailed all of these though. I got every single one correct. Again, these wasn't very difficult to predict though. Still an A+.

[turfmoor]

Presidency: Not amazing, I thought Biden was the favourite in Florida + NC, Iowa was a solid tossup (lol) and Georgia wasn’t there yet. In the end my pre-pandemic prediction of the Rust Belt three and Arizona ended up being closer to the end result but I trusted in the polls too much. D at best.

Senate: I was driving the struggle bus here as well. I was confidently wrong about Maine, NC and both Georgia races, and I thought Iowa and Montana would be much closer (although still R wins). I never bought into Kentucky, SC, Texas, Kansas or Alabama going Democrat and I got the 50/50 composition right so a low C.

House: Mixed. I thought given the house vote polls averaged around D+6 it was unlikely the Dems would gain much that they couldn’t in 2018. At the same time, I thought incumbency would carry over most of the vulnerable Dems, apart from Rose, Horn and Peterson. Ultimately I thought the potential pickups would mean a slight net Dem gain, so in the end a low C.

Overall, I overestimated the Democrats everywhere but Georgia so a D.

[Canis]

President B+
Missed 3 states pretty much the ones that most people missed tho just NC FL and GA
Senate C-
I did horrible lol missed MT ME NC and IA and a lot of percentages were wrong
House B  
Can't really give me a good rating cause I didn't make a map but I predicted Rs would gain some seats I didn't expect them to narrow the majority as much as they did
Governor A
Predicted every race right but it was pretty easy to do though I missed a few percentages but besides that, I did perfectly.
2021 Runoffs A
Predicted Ossoff and Warnock would win and that Warnock would outperform Ossoff but I thought the results would be within a percentage.
Overall'd give me a B
I did decent in the presidential pretty bad for the senate and good in the governor and runoffs but those were pretty easy to predict because of how few races their were to rate.