Orange County, CA was one of the focal points for Democratic gains in the House this year. Long a bastion of Republicanism in California, Hillary Clinton carried it by 9% in 2016. Downballot, however, the… Read More
2018 Election Forecasting Simulator- Senate Update
Last week, we unveiled the beta release of our 2018 Election Forecasting Simulator. We’ve now enabled Senate functionality, giving you the ability to re-allocate money in the most visible races of the year. Can you… Read More
What was the Democratic ceiling in the House?
When we introduced the 2018 Election Forecasting Simulator yesterday, we included several different scenarios to play around with. Today we’re taking a look at one in particular, which maximizes the expected number of Democratic victories… Read More
Introducing the Øptimus 2018 Election Forecasting Simulator!
Though election season, Republican and Democratic strategists in national organizations like the NRCC, DCCC, Campaign Leadership Fund, and House Majority PAC spend considerable time planning out which races to allocate money into to maximize their… Read More
Georgia Secretary of State Runoff: Post-mortem
Last night, Georgia had it’s final statewide election of the year. In November, State Rep. Brad Raffensperger (R) finished with 49.1% to ex-Rep. John Barrow’s (D) 48.7% for Secretary of State. The balance went to… Read More
2018 Midterm Forecasting model analysis- How well did we do?
UPDATE: The post below has been updated to reflect the Democratic flip of CA-21 and the results of the Mississippi special election. It is now up-to-date as of November 29th. Introduction The following document presents… Read More
RACE CALL RETRACTION IN CA-21
Decision Desk HQ is retracting the call we made in the CA-21 race. On election night we called the race for incumbent Congressman David Valadao over Democratic challenger T.J. Cox. Valadao finished election night with… Read More
Uncalled Races Update
As of this writing, DDHQ has not called four House contests: CALIFORNIA-39 GEORGIA-07 TEXAS-23 UTAH-04 California’s 39th remains uncalled due to the outstanding vote count. Republican Young Kim sported a lead on election night, but… Read More
Øptimus Election Modeling Preliminary Recap
Now that Election Day is “over” (minus California and a few close races), we have a preliminary look at how our legislative model has performed. The following analysis only includes races that have been called,… Read More
Øptimus Legislative Model: Update November 5, 2018
On the eve of Election Day, there is a high likelihood of split chamber control of Congress once the dust settles. In the past week, the national environment shifted from D+7.9 to D+7.1 while presidential… Read More