A Year of Excellence for Toss-Up Central

The big election night this year was last night. Say what you want about how it bodes for either party, one thing that it is very good for is this very website, Toss-Up Central. My accuracy throughout the year, and especially tonight, shows our website can compete with the most popular pundits in the field of accuracy for predicting elections. They also show there are cases where we can even be more accurate then them, such as yesternight.

Here’s a chart of all the races I forecasted compared to the actual result of them:

Yes, you saw correctly, I got 12/12 correct.

This includes the Kentucky governor race, which was miscalled by the 2 major qualitative election prediction websites (Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Cook Political Report). They thought Republican Matt Bevin would win.

I also called NC-9 correctly, a district they both had as Toss-Up on Election Day.

I even made some predictions they didn’t even make bothering. For example, I correctly predicted the partisan control of all 5 legislative chambers holding elections this year, as well as predicting Eddie Rispone would join John Bel Edwards in a runoff, when it was generally thought Abraham would be in Rispone’s place. In this race and Kentucky, defying conventional wisdom payed off for me. Conventional wisdom is right, except when it’s not. That’s my way of looking at these elections, and it’s worked well for me so far.

Speaking of the Louisiana runoff, that’s the last major election to be held this year, on the 16th of November. It looks like a Toss-Up race. If I had to pick someone right now, I’d say John Bel Edwards is probably a small favorite, but that could change by the 16th. Let’s go for a clean sweep of elections this year! If you live there, don’t forget to vote on the 16th!

While Toss-Up Central may not have the most money or connections, or be the most aesthetically pleasing website (although we’re working on that), it has proven itself to stack up to the big league pundit class.

The Implications

So what do these results mean for 2020? I’m making one ratings change in the House based off of them. NJ-2 moves from Leans Democrat to Toss-Up. 3 state legislative seats flipped from Democrat to Republican in the district, showing its rightward trend. That, plus, incumbent Jeff Van Drew is much less moderate than expected, and not a great fundraiser, we’ve got a Toss-Up race on our hands.

Beyond that, it shows that red, rural areas may not be that far out of reach in downballot races if Democrats invest in them. The reason Beshear won tonight was because he kicked butt in rural, eastern Kentucky, known as “coal country”. This area voted for Trump very heavily, often by 50 points or more, but Beshear won some counties in this area. I’d say this is due to locally popular state House speaker Rocky Adkins campaigning for Beshear. This performance bodes well for Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, because he, too, is in the political fight of his life in a deep-red state with Democrat roots. Beyond that, who knows how and where this might manifest in 2020, but it should be comforting to Democrats that campaigning in certain red states isn’t a futile effort if they can find the right formula. The chances of Democrats taking the Senate have improved marginally, as they’ll likely need to flip a red-leaning state to win the chamber.

It would be hard for Democrats to make the case they could beat Mitch McConnell on his home-turf if Bevin had won. But last night shows Democrats can still win statewide in Kentucky. Mitch McConnell is one of the nation’s most unpopular Senators, just like Bevin was one of the nation’s most unpopular Governors. The chance that he is unseated is still very small, but it has grown a bit.

Besides that, things went about as expected tonight. Republicans held on to Mississippi as expected, and Democrats flipped the Virginia legislature by expected margins in expected places, where legislative districts were redrawn to better favor Democrats anyway. I don’t think the picture for the presidential election has changed because of these results.

Thank you for taking time to read my article. If you want more, visit my home page: https://tossupcentral.com/