Do you wake multiple times during the night obsessing about the upcoming midterm elections and the Democrats’ chances of taking back the House or the Senate? If the answer is “yes,” then here’s some updated data from statistician-extraordinaire Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight that might—at least temporarily—help you get through the night.
Hot off the presses on Tuesday, October 16, 2018, at 12:57pm, here’s Silver’s latest forecast about the probable breakdown of Democrats’ taking back the House.
According to Silver, there’s a 6 in 7 chance Democrats will win control, which translates for us non-data nerds as an 84.5% chance. Conversely, there’s a 1 in 7 chance, or a 15.5% chance, that Republicans will keep control of the House. Nate’s forecasting that Democrats have an 80% chance of gaining 19 to 62 seats and forecasts a pick up of 40+ seats.
Thank you, Nate, for today’s gift and for tonight’s (possible) restful slumber. And what about tomorrow and the day and night after and the days and nights after that? As in all things, there are no guarantees. However, Nate promises to continue to deliver his group’s most accurate forecasts up until election day.
There are still twenty-one days until the midterms, and all that we know for certain is that the world can turn upside-down in that amount of time. Anything is possible.
For today, I’m going to suspend my doubts, push aside the angst, and trust in Nate. What else have I got?
To read about Nate’s methodology, go to