Thursday, October 30, 2014 :::
I'm not, at this point in my life, particularly interested in staying up late on election night obsessing over returns; on top of that, I live on the east coast, and it gets late early here. Something could perhaps change between now and Tuesday, but right now I'm providing my rubric for next Tuesday night:
- If Kentucky goes to the same party as either North Carolina or New Hampshire, that party will control the Senate.
- If a winner (not a run-off) is declared in Georgia, the new Senator from Georgia will be in the majority party in the Senate.
- Iowa, Colorado, and Alaska all close their polls after (or at least very close to) my bedtime, and my staying up late at night will do very little to affect the outcome in any of those states.
Update (Monday, 11:20 EST): Kentucky no longer even seems to be on the table; a McConnell loss at this point would be more seismic than anything I'm really considering above. I'm increasingly thinking it's unlikely that news sources will be "declaring" control of the Senate before I wake up Wednesday morning. If Kansas, Georgia, or North Carolina is called for the Republican, that would probably do it; if Democrats win Iowa and Colorado, that would probably do it for them. I think the best bet for a timely declaration is that voters in Georgia gravitate toward the major party candidates (or, more particularly, toward one of them or the other). I'm sure there's less correlation between senate races than between different states' electoral college races in a Presidential year, but I'd still be surprised to see someone exceed 50% in Georgia by enough of a margin for it to be called within hours of polls' closing and see enough other states break toward the other party to determine control of the Senate.
::: posted by dWj at 11:19 AM
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