Get more FiveThirtyEight
- Terms of Use
- Privacy Policy
- Your California Privacy Rights
- Children's Online Privacy Policy
- Interest-Based Ads
© 2018 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.
Chance the Democrat wins (6.5%)
Chance the Republican wins (93.5%)
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.
R+8.4
Adjusted polls
R+16.3
CANTOR
R+9.6
Fundamentals
R+24.1
Experts
R+11.6
Lite
R+9.5
Classic
R+14.4
Deluxe
<0.1
<0.1
Historical adjustment
Key
More weight
Less
We've collected two polls for the Pennsylvania 11th. 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 | King | Smucker | margin | likely voter | Time-line | House effects | Adjusted margin | |
Oct. 21-22 10/21-22 | Susquehanna Polling & Research, Inc. | 311 | LV | 0.78 | 46% | 50% | R+4.0 | — | <0.1 | 2.4 | R+6.4 |
Sep. 12-13 9/12-13 | Public Policy Polling D | 552 | V | 0.42 | 35% | 44% | R+9.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 1.9 | R+11.1 |
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. | ||
---|---|---|---|
PA-14 | 75 | — | |
OH-5 | 74 | — | |
PA-9 | 72 | R+23.4 | |
OH-8 | 71 | — | |
IL-16 | 70 | R+14.6 | |
OH-2 | 70 | R+13.6 | |
IL-18 | 68 | — | |
IN-9 | 67 | R+7.6 | |
OH-7 | 66 | R+12.2 | |
IN-4 | 63 | — |
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 | 0.9 | Lloyd K. Smucker has been elected to 1 term. Congress has only a 20.1% approval rating, reducing the incumbency advantage. Pennsylvania underwent redistricting and there is 70% overlap between Smucker's old and new district. |
District partisanship | 10.0 | PA-11 is 27.3 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 | 13.9 | Smucker won by 10.9 percentage points in 2016 in an open-seat race. However, Pennsylvania has since undergone redistricting. Smucker's district is now considerably more Republican. |
Generic ballot | 7.0 | Democrats lead by an average of 8.6 percentage points in polls of the generic congressional ballot. |
Fundraising | 7.4 | As of Oct. 17, Jess King had raised $1,557,000 in individual contributions (79% of all such contributions to the major-party candidates); Smucker had raised $418,000 (21%). |
Incumbent's voting record in Congress | 1.6 | Smucker has voted with Republicans 84% of the time in roll-call votes in recent sessions of Congress. |
Challenger experience | 0.7 | King has never held elected office. |
Scandals | 0.0 | Neither candidate is involved in a scandal. |
Total | R+9.6 |
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 | R+24.5 | R+23.9 | |
Inside Elections | R+24.5 | R+23.6 | |
Sabato's Crystal Ball | R+24.5 | R+24.9 | |
Average | R+24.5 | R+24.1 |
Nate Silver explains the methodology behind our 2018 midterms forecast. Read more …
Comments