By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Between now and November, we’ll see lots of forecasts of the likely midterms outcome expressed as probabilities. A site called Race to the White House, for example, has a regularly updated model that currently gives Democrats a 74.4 percent chance of flipping the House and a 56.9 percent chance of flipping the Senate. Prediction markets spit out projections expressed as probabilities as well. Kalshi, for example, currently gives Democrats an 83.4 percent chance of controlling the House after November but only a 45.4 percent chance of controlling the Senate.
Each projection has an underside in which there is a realistic if limited possibility of things going awry. We learned that after the big nerd fight in 2016, when it was a badge of honor for some handicappers (e.g., Nate Silver) to have pointed out that Donald Trump really did have a chance of winning the election, despite the odds running in the other direction.
