Last snapshot, 2020: President, Senate, legislatures

November 3, 2020 by Sam Wang

Today’s the last day of voting. In normal years we call it Election Day. This  year, it’s the day when the vote-counting begins.

Thanks to all the early voting, polling stations are generally not busy. If you haven’t yet, go vote! Text MYVOTE to 977-79 to find your polling place.

Here are some resources for tonight:

For now, let’s use this as the main PEC comment thread.

Specific details on races and final snapshots after the jump.

President: Based on polls, the most likely single combination of states leads to an electoral-vote total of Biden 351, Trump 187. That includes assignment of Georgia, which is only Biden +1%. Biden’s Meta-Margin is +5.3%.

If Biden overperforms by 3 percentage points, his median expectation gets up to 395 electoral votes. If he underperforms by 3 points, he goes down to 309 electoral votes. See our summary maps at 270ToWin.

There is the possibility of knowing tonight who is the likely winner in four early-reporting states. Biden appears to lead in all four of them. They will give us a sense of the overall accuracy of polls this year.

New Hampshire (Biden up by 8% in polls), Florida (+3%), North Carolina (+3%), Georgia (+1%). To have a chance at winning, Trump must win Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia. If he loses any of them, a Biden win becomes virtually certain.

We may not hear about Pennsylvania (Biden +5%) tonight because of delays in counting of mail-in ballots, which started today.

Senate: If every leader in polls won, we’d end up with 54 Democrats, 46 Republicans. From a probability standpoint, some margins are close enough that the median outcome is 53 Democrats, 47 Republicans.

However, 8 Senate races have median poll margins of 3 points or less, giving a range of 50 to 57 Democratic seats.

House: The House will stay Democratic, with a possible gain of 0-15 seats.

State legislatures: There are many possibilities for changes in partisan control. Some of these are highlighted in our Redistricting Moneyball feature. Overall, there is the potential for up to 100 Congressional seats to come under bipartisan control – nearly one-fourth of the entire chamber. The Geek’s Guide gives more detail.

More detail later as the evening continues. I’ll be live-blogging, and  hope to bring in members of the PEC team. Our Electoral Innovation Lab has grown, and we have lots of people ready to pitch in!

Off to dinner…

2 Comments

Jay Bryant says:

Thanks, Sam – not just for this post but for the whole site and all the years you’ve been at it.I appreciate it very much.

Sam Wang says:

Thanks. My team and I tried to do some good this year. We had help from a lot of readers too!

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