The Monkey Cage’s political scientists forecast the House and Senate races.
By John Sides, Kennedy Elliott, Matt Nelson and Peter Pezon, Published: Nov. 4, 2014
How did we do?
Election forecasting models from The Washington Post, the New York Times and Five Thirty-Eight are predicting nearly the same winners, just with varying degrees of confidence. There will be other, more sophisticated ways to compare the forecasts, but these comparisons provide an initial assessment of how the models fared.
Election result, 33 races confirmed
Washington Post’s prediction
New York Times’ prediction
Five Thirty-Eight’s prediction
Chance of Democratic win
Chance of Republican win
100%
50%
100%
NOTE: * denotes special elections. Predictions from the three groups were recorded at 1 p.m. ET Nov. 4, 2014.
Final 2014 Monkey Cage predictions
| Chance of winning: | |
| Qualification score*: | |
| Funds raised**: | |
| Share of vote, last election:*** |
| Chance of winning: | |
| Qualification score*: | |
| Funds raised**: | |
| Share of vote, last election:*** |
Like most forecasting models, Election Lab uses the past to predict the future. To predict House and Senate elections in 2014, we draw on the elections from 1980-2012. We first look at how well key factors were related to outcomes in those past elections. Then, we gather information about those same factors for 2014. Assuming that these factors will be related to election outcomes in 2014 in the same way they were from 1980 to 2012, we can make a prediction about who will win each race. Read more about our methodology.
NOTE: Between Oct. 23 and Nov. 4, the Election Lab forecast did not update for several congressional districts. This has been corrected and the updated forecasts have been published.