Election Eve

Three things are certain to happen tomorrow:

First, the GOP will make gains in the House. Second, the GOP will make gains the Senate. Third, the GOP will make gains in partisan control of governorships. The uncertainty, then, is how large the gains will be for the Republican Party.

I've compiled a few links for you to take a look at through the course of the day before the polls close. As usual, you should also check the major news outlets for Election Day campaign coverage.

As the results come in tomorrow night, check out this post to determine how big the gains are likely to be for the Republicans. Fivethirtyeight developed a ranking for each congressional district to indicate how big the gains for the GOP will be based on the election results in that district. For example, the table indicates that if TX-23 congressional district switches from Democrat Ciro Rodriguez to Republican Francisco Canseco, the Republicans will be winning a gain of roughly 54 seats. Another example would be that the table indicates that if the Republican wins in Hawaii's First congressional district, the Republicans would be expected to make a gain of at least 68 seats. On the other hand, if the Democrat Salazar can manage to hang on in Colorado's Third congressional district, the Republicans will have trouble winning more than 29 seats in the House. In other words, from the blog:

"What you should be looking for is whether Republicans are consistently winning seats with magic numbers in the 60s, 70s, 80s or higher. If so, they could be in for a very big night. Conversely, if Democrats are holding onto seats with magic numbers in the teens, 20s, or 30s, that means they are overperforming their forecasts and could hold the House."


The magic number appears in the bottom left-hand corner of the tables.

The exams are graded and will be returned in class on Wednesday.

I'll be posting other interesting election information. From today's class, here is a link to Intrade: http://www.intrade.com/ and a link to Gallup's generic ballot information: http://www.gallup.com/poll/144125/Republicans-Appear-Poised-Win-Big-Tuesday.aspx

For those of you volunteering on campaigns, best of luck tomorrow. The rest of us will have to wait to see how it all plays out.