Some Political Projections

It's Election Day 2010, and while in the alternate universe of Sorkinland it would be time for President Santos' reelection (according to Twitter against former Speaker Jeff Haffley (follow them all right here.)

As I majored in Political Communications, I have some vague knowledge of politics. Also I watch some cable news and read fivethirtyeight. So I'm making predictions. Because I can.

GOVERNORSHIPS

The governorship count itself is irrelevent. At no point do the 50 governors get together and vote on anything. So you probably don't even know that the count is currently 26-24 in favor of the Democrats. This will shift, probably significantly. More interesting to me is the 4 most populated states. New York, Florida, Texas, and California all have gubernatorial elections today. Texas is the only race where the incumbent, Republican Rick Perry is running, and he will likely win. In New York, Andrew Cuomo will likely be the third Democratic governor in three years. In Florida and California, however, it is quite possible that in spite of the likely national GOP surge, these governorships will shift from the Republicans to the Democrats. In California, Jerry Brown seems like a lock to rewin the top spot, while Florida has been back and forth all cycle. If the Democrats can pull these two off, it may show that the cycle is truly more anti-incumbent than anti-Democrat. I'm guessing this happens.

THE HOUSE

Republicans will take back the House. I feel fairly confident predicting that. I feel much less confident guessing how many seats they win. I think it will actually be underwhelming. So while the GOP will take the requesite 39 seats to give the nation its first orange speaker of the house, my guess here is 42 wins.

THE SENATE

This is an odd Senate campaign year. There are 37 elections, including 17 which do not feature an elected incumbent on the ballot. There are unelected incumbents (Colorado, New York's Special); replacements not running for election (Delaware, West Virginia, Florida, Illinois); retirements (New Hampshire, Connecticut, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, Kansas, Kentucky); and primary losers- those who just lost (Utah), those who switched parties then lost (Pennsylvania), and those who lost and ran potentially successful write-in campaigns (Alaska).

And so, here are my picks. Winners are bold, incumbents have asterisks, italicized were appointed. Florida and Alaska have 3 legitimate candidates, so all have been included. A note on Alaska- I think Murkowski pulls through, but not for several weeks. Democrat McAdams will come in 2nd, and challenges will take place over what spellings of Murkowski will count.

As a note, the cases I would not be surprised if I were wrong on are Alaska (for McAdams, not Miller), Florida (for Crist, not Meek), Wisconsin (all polls are showing Feingold losing so I went with it, but its a liberal state and he's well liked. It doesn't really make sense), and West Virginia (this race has been weird all along). On the other hand I feel oddly confident with Illinois, California, Washington, and Nevada. While I feel Reid will win, I do think he will be forced to give up his majority leader title. And my guess is it goes to Sen. Schumer.

All this would lead to a 55-45 majority in the Senate for the Democrats.

State	Democrat	Republican	Independent
AL	Barnes	Shelby*
AK	McAdams	Miller	Murkowski*
AZ	Glassman	McCain*
AR	Lincoln*	Boozman
CA	Boxer*	Fiorina
CO	Bennet*	Buck
CT	Blumenthal	McMahon
DE	Coons	O'Donnell
FL	Meek	Rubio	Crist
GA	Thurmond	Isakson
HI	Inouye*	Cavasso
ID	Sullivan	Crapo*
IL	Giannoulias	Kirk
IN	Ellsworth	Coats
IA	Conlin	Grassley*
KS	Johnston	Moran
KY	Coway	Paul
LA	Melancon	Vitter*
MD	Mikulski*	Wargotz
MO	Carnahan	Blunt
NV	Reid*	Angle
NH	Hodes	Ayotte
NY	Schumer*	Townsend
NY*	Gillibrand*	DioGuardi
NC	Marshall	Burr*
ND	Potter	Hoeven
OH	Fisher	Portman
OK	Rogers	Coburn*
OR	Wyden*	Huffman
PA	Sestak	Toomey
SC	Greene	DeMint*
SD	unopposed	Thune*
UT	Granato	Lee
VT	Leahy*	Britton
WA	Murray*	Rossi
WI	Feingold*	Johnson
WV	Manchin	Raese