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Chance the Democrat wins (98.6%)
Chance the Republican wins (1.4%)
We'll be updating our forecasts every time new data is available, every day through Nov. 6.
The Classic version of our model projects a race’s outcome by taking a weighted average of polls of a district (if available), polls of similar districts (CANTOR) and non-polling factors (fundamentals). It is then reverted toward a mean based on long-term trends in midterms and presidential approval ratings.
D+12.0
Adjusted polls
D+13.6
CANTOR
D+22.2
Fundamentals
D+15.9
Experts
D+12.8
Lite
D+17.8
Classic
D+17.1
Deluxe
<0.1
<0.1
Historical adjustment
Key
More weight
Less
We've collected two polls for the New Jersey 5th. We’re adjusting poll results in three ways: Polls of registered voters or all adults are adjusted to a likely-voter basis; older polls are adjusted based on shifts in the generic congressional ballot since the poll was conducted; and polls are adjusted for house effects (the tendency for a firm’s polls to lean toward Democrats or Republicans). Polls with larger sample sizes and those conducted by higher-quality polling agencies are given more weight, as are more recent polls.
Adjustments | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dates | pollster | sample | weight |
Gottheimer
|
Jr.
|
margin | likely voter | Time-line | House effects | Adjusted margin | |
Oct. 13-15
10/13-15
|
McLaughlin & Associates
R
|
400 | LV |
0.61
|
47% | 38% | D+9.0 | — | ![]() |
![]() |
D+15.7 |
Aug. 9-12
8/9-12
|
Tel Opinion Research
R
|
400 | RV |
0.25
|
36% | 39% | R+3.0 | 0.2 ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
D+5.8 |
Key
A = adults
RV = Registered voters
V = voters
LV = likely voters
= partisan poll
Our district similarity scores are based on demographic, geographic and political characteristics; if two districts have a score of 100, it means they are perfectly identical. These scores inform a system we use — CANTOR, or Congressional Algorithm using Neighboring Typologies to Optimize Regression — to infer what polling would say in unpolled or lightly polled districts, given what it says in similar districts.
Sim. score | Polling avg. | ||
---|---|---|---|
1 | NJ-7 | 82 | D+5.4 |
2 | NJ-11 | 72 | D+8.0 |
3 | NY-3 | 67 | — |
4 | CT-5 | 65 | — |
5 | NJ-3 | 65 | D+0.9 |
6 | PA-1 | 62 | D+0.5 |
7 | PA-6 | 61 | — |
8 | NY-1 | 60 | R+11.7 |
9 | NY-18 | 60 | — |
10 | CT-4 | 59 | — |
The Classic and Deluxe versions of our model use several non-polling factors to forecast the vote share margin in each district.
Factor | Impact | Explanation |
---|---|---|
Incumbency |
3.1
|
Josh Gottheimer has been elected to 1 term. Congress has only a 20.1% approval rating, reducing the incumbency advantage. |
District partisanship |
1.3
|
NJ-5 is 3.7 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the country overall, based on how it has voted in recent presidential and state legislative elections. It voted for Trump in 2016 and Romney in 2012. |
Incumbent's margin in last election |
5.0
|
Gottheimer won by 4.4 percentage points in 2016, defeating an incumbent. |
Generic ballot |
6.7
|
Democrats lead by an average of 8.6 percentage points in polls of the generic congressional ballot. |
Fundraising |
10.7
|
As of Oct. 17, Gottheimer had raised $4,800,000 in individual contributions (94% of all such contributions to the major-party candidates); John McCann had raised $317,000 (6%). |
Incumbent's voting record in Congress |
0.1
|
Gottheimer has voted with Democrats 78% of the time in roll-call votes in recent sessions of Congress. |
Challenger experience |
1.9
|
McCann has held elected office before. (So has Gottheimer, but this is accounted for in our incumbency calculation.) |
Scandals |
0.0
|
Neither candidate is involved in a scandal. |
Total |
D+22.2
|
The Deluxe version of our model calculates an implied margin for each race based on expert race ratings from The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato's Crystal Ball; it then adjusts that margin toward its estimate of the national political environment.
Equivalent Margin | |||
---|---|---|---|
Expert | Rating | Raw | Adjusted |
Cook Political Report | D+12.1 | D+12.7 | |
Inside Elections | D+22.3 | D+23.2 | |
Sabato's Crystal Ball | D+12.1 | D+11.7 | |
Average | D+15.5 | D+15.9 |
Nate Silver explains the methodology behind our 2018 midterms forecast. Read more …
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