Over the last few weeks, new Senate polling has come out of Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. SwingSeat, The Weekly Standard’s Daily Senate Forecast, has taken that data in and come up with new race-by-race probabilities. Here’s the latest update:
ARIZONA: Gravis Marketing recently released a poll showing Krysten Sinema leading Martha McSally by four points. That’s not a bad number for McSally. Sinema led McSally by eight points in a recent Emerson poll as well as a recent CBS/YouGov Survey. And Marist put Sinema ahead by 11 points. So a four-point lead seems like an improvement for McSally.
But SwingSeat’s estimate for the race didn’t change much: It still has Sinema as a 4-to-1 favorite. That’s because SwingSeat already has a decent idea of what public opinion looks like, and it’s trying not to overreact to one data point. Marist, Emerson and YouGov all recent polled the race and gave Sinema a high single digit (in Marist’s case, double digit) lead. When we’re this far from Election Day, SwingSeat takes a long view of polling, so it’s integrating the new Gravis poll into an already existing picture. If we get more data that suggests that the race is closer, SwingSeat’s estimate will move more.
One final note: Right now SwingSeat assumes that McSally will be the GOP nominee in Arizona. She’s been leading in primary polls, but primary polls are often off and it’s possible that Kelli Ward or even Joe Arpaio would become the nominee. If that were to happen, the model’s Arizona estimate would likely lurch left. Gravis showed Sinema leading Ward by nine and Arpaio by 19 and McSally outperforms both in the RCP average.
I tend to think the model is too Democratic in Arizona, so I’m hesitant to say any move to the left is right. But I also think that a Ward or Arpaio nomination would hurt Republican chances. Ward has some baggage, and Arpaio has boatloads of it. McSally may not be a perfect candidate, but she currently appears to be the strongest of the three (with Ward also clearly being stronger than Arpaio). So if Ward or Arpaio gets the nomination, your estimate of that race probably should move left.
NEVADA: Gravis also recently released a poll that puts Democratic representative Jacky Rosen ahead of Republican senator Dean Heller by four points. SwingSeat has given Democrats a small edge in Nevada every day since its original publication, and this poll further reinforces that picture. Rosen has a 64-percent win probability according to SwingSeat. That’s a bit higher than what I’d instinctively say, but it doesn’t strike me as crazy. Nevada voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, 2018 looks like it’ll be a strongly Democratic year and the power of incumbency (which is working in Heller’s favor) has diminished in recent cycles.
This race is also a case where SwingSeat is a bit sensitive to new information. We’ve had less polling in Arizona than Nevada (and it’s much less recent) so SwingSeat puts more weight on new data. This will be less of a problem when we’re closer to the election and polls are more plentiful. But early model watchers should keep that fact in the back of their mind as they look at these forecasts.
TEXAS: Ted Cruz is probably going to be fine. The model recently ate newly released polls from Baselice and Gravis, and neither of them changed much. The Baselice poll was in the field in May, so it was less influential than more recent polls. Gravis, on the other hand, was more recent and put Cruz ahead by nine. Together, the data in Texas suggests that Cruz’s win probability is a bit over 80 percent.
That’s not a guarantee. Trump had worse odds than that at various points in both the NYT Upshot and FiveThirtyEight presidential forecasts in 2016. But this number makes sense. Cruz is an incumbent running in a state that (despite a leftward step in 2016) is still red. Both polling and fundamentals seem to suggest that Cruz is the favorite in this race.
OTHER NEW DATA POINTS—PENNSVALNIA AND VIRGINIA: Suffolk recently gave incumbent Democratic senator Bob Casey Jr. a 15-point lead in Pennsylvania. A big lead for Casey makes sense : Pennsylvania is purple, and Democrats have a real advantages in that race (e.g. an incumbent, strong national level numbers, a midterm where they’re running against an unpopular president, etc.).
And, according to Quinnipiac, Corey Stewart is running 18 points behind incumbent Democratic senator Tim Kaine. Before the Virginia Primary, Republicans worried that Stewart’s problematic past and Trump-y style would play poorly in a state where Clinton’s 2016 margin was larger than Obama’s 2012 margin. It’s still early, but the Quinnipiac poll suggests those concerns were not misplaced. SwingSeat has Stewart losing in all but 3.6 percent of simulations.
(Important note: Axios/SurveyMonkey released a poll of multiple senate races on Tuesday. That data will be integrated into tomorrow’s forecast. Stay up to date by checking the SwingSeat main page)
THAT’S A LOT OF POLLING NEWS—WHY IS THE TOPLINE NUMBER STILL 69 PERCENT?
SwingSeat’s topline is still basically unchanged from when it was debuted in June. There are a few reasons for that.
First, most of the polls we’ve seen so far have reinforced our existing ideas about races. Ted Cruz still looks solid in Texas. In Arizona, Krysten Sinema has a real lead for now. The race is close in Florida. Republicans probably won’t knock off Democratic incumbents in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Ohio. I could go on, but the basic idea is clear—not a lot of what we’ve seen over the last few weeks has surprised SwingSeat.
Second, we haven’t seen a ton of new polling in under-polled races. I always appreciate getting more polls in Florida, Texas and Arizona. But SwingSeat is a lot less sure of its estimates in states like Montana, Indiana, or North Dakota where there aren’t many polls and the polls we do have are often old. If we got new information in some of the under-polled states, the model would move more.
Finally (and most importantly) the new data doesn’t change the 30,000-foot picture in the senate. Republicans have a lot of targets in this map, and Democrats simply don’t. It’s possible to imagine cases where Democrats improve their margins across the board, hold all (or almost all) of their seats, take a couple more and manage to take over the chamber. In fact, SwingSeat imagines a lot of scenarios that are like that.
But there are also a lot of scenarios where the GOP manages to grab a seat or two or maybe hold off the Democrats in a key state they’re defending. Democrats need to pitch a near-perfect game to hold the senate. That’s possible in a year that’s this Democratic. But the GOP only needs to get a few things right to hold the chamber—SwingSeat understands that and thinks the GOP has a real advantage.
