I am doing a final predictions series for the November 5th general elections. If you've missed previous articles, they're listed right here: Alabama-Arkansas
(Note: I'll be doing commentary on every race for Governor & Senate regardless of level-of-competitiveness. I'll only do mentions for the House if I assume it'll be competitive in some way-if the House race isn't listed, I'm assuming an easy hold for the incumbent party)
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| Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) |
President: The biggest prize on the map, and Kamala Harris not only is a Democrat, she's a Democrat with home state advantage. She'd win either way, but that home state advantage could come in handy for Hakeem Jeffries as he tries to regain ground in the Golden State's House delegation.
Senate: Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the highest-profile members of the lower chamber during the Trump years due to leading the Trump impeachment trials, will be headed to the Senate after beating two of his colleagues in the open primary.
House: If Democrats win the House majority, they will have done so in California. By my count, there are six competitive House elections in California this year (the 3rd, 9th, 41st, & 49th will show up on lists, but let's be honest-they ain't flipping and this is more people covering their butts), with one held by the Democrats currently (Katie Porter's open 47th district), and five held by Republicans (the 13th, 22nd, 27th, 41st, & 45th). My kingdom for better polling to predict these with, but given that Biden won by 11-points in 2020 and Harris will come with a margin that matches that, I think Dave Min keeps the 47th blue even though he's run a mediocre campaign (watch this space in 2026...Dems would've been better off if Porter had just run for reelection). Of the remaining five, I think the easiest call is the 13th, which is a double-digit Biden district and Rep. John Duarte (R) is only in his first-term...I think that's enough to beat him. Reps. David Valadao and Mike Garcia are both in blue districts (even bluer than the 13th), but they are battle-tested incumbents and their opponents aren't exactly amazing challengers. I'm going to split the difference here-I think Valadao hangs on because he's so personally popular, but Garcia is here because he kept facing the same bad challenger, and will lose to George Whitesides given this environment (I'd run him again in 2026 if I was the NRCC). The final two I think lean toward the GOP, and I'm going to predict them. Michelle Steel is in a redder district than Valadao, Garcia, or Duarte, though it's one that Harris will still win, while Ken Calvert is the only one of these Republicans in a Trump district but one that Harris might flip given it now contains Palm Springs. Steel's vulnerability is entirely based on campaign gossip (there's been no polling), while Calvert has the mildest of leads in limited polling. I will predict they both hang on, though between Valadao, Calvert, & Steel, Jeffries probably will need to defeat at least one more to sleep easy in California. D+2
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| Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO) |
President: The Centennial State gets bluer every cycle, and that won't change this year. Harris should win within seconds of the state's polls closing.
House: Rep. Yadira Caraveo won in 2022 despite me not calling it for her that year (I thought the Republicans would win the new tossup district), and she drew a decent challenger this year. I have a bit of a rule, though-I don't call races against incumbents when the top-of-the-ticket is going to give it to their party's nominee. Unlike most of the districts in Colorado, this isn't moving left as fast due to the large swaths of rural counties that are being held in balance by the northern half of the district, which features the Denver suburbs. I think Harris wins here, so I'm going with Caraveo, but she'll have a tough 2026 if there's a Democrat in the White House. There's also the possibility that the 3rd could've been competitive, but that went out the window when Lauren Boebert switched districts, and Adam Frisch became one of this cycle's "he could've won, but the Republicans outsmarted him" Democrats.
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| Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) with President Obama |
President: Harris will sweep New England save for one district in Maine, and in most cases, she'll do so at the opening buzzer. Connecticut is one of those states.
Senate: Every year there's at least a couple of incumbent senators I don't realize until I'm writing this that they're up for reelection. That would be the case with Chris Murphy, and when I don't know about it, it's because they're winning reelection.
House: Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) continues to be the one seat that spells trouble for the Democrats. I'm not entirely sure why (she seems like a pretty generic Democrat to me), but she consistently under-performs the top of the ticket. Similar to Caraveo, I am not going against a non-scandalized incumbent whose presidential nominee is going to win the district, so Hayes wins, but I will be watching how much better Harris does here, given in most situations, the bottom-of-the-ticket is outrunning the vice president, and Hayes is a rare exception to that.
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| State Sen. Sarah McBride (D-DE) |
President: Because she inherited the operation from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is running her presidential campaign out of Delaware rather than her native San Francisco as would be typical. It's not in question, but they'll make sure the state is blue (albeit not quite as blue as it would've been with Biden, the rare spot that I feel like Harris will under-perform what a Biden 2024 run might've done).
Governor: Democrats royally lucked out when scandal-plagued Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long lost the primary to New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer. Meyer will extend the Democrats' winning streak in the state (no Republican has won the governor's mansion since Mike Castle in 1988).
Senate: Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester will become only the third Black woman ever elected to the US Senate (though she'll tie with another future colleague, which we'll get to in two days).
House: I don't list House races that aren't competitive for the incumbent party, but wanted to make an exception for State Sen. Sarah McBride, who will not only hold this seat for the Democrats, but she will also become the first openly transgender person to serve in the US Congress.
District of Columbia
President: The only electoral college constituency to vote blue every single time it's had the chance, that ain't stopping this year. The bigger question is whether or not the rest of the country can get a Democratic trifecta so that DC can get a voice in Congress.
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| Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL) |
President: There was once a time that Florida would occupy an entire hemming-and-hawing paragraph from me for president, but no longer. I do think this will be close, much closer than those doom-and-gloom types thought after the DeSantis/Rubio wins in 2022 (I don't think Trump takes the state by double digits), but if Harris can't nail down Georgia or North Carolina, Florida is going to Trump.
Senate: It's worth noting that the Democrats have done better in the Senate race than I initially anticipated. Sen. Rick Scott has never been popular here, winning by microscopic margins all three times, and Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has run an admirable campaign. She's still going to lose, but it's possible she's the tipping point state for the Senate, which I don't think anyone thought would happen a few months ago.
House: Reps. Jared Moskowitz & Darren Soto under-performed Joe Biden significantly in 2022, but I'm going to chalk that up to a bad cycle for them-they should be fine this year with Harris leading the ticket. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (13th), Laurel Lee (15th) and Maria Salazar (27th) are in marginal enough districts that if Trump falters completely, I'd watch their seats (especially Salazar), but given Trump's solid polling position in Florida, I think he wins all their districts and they should be fine.
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| Former President Donald Trump (R-FL) |
President: And now we get to the second of the Big 7 swing states. Of the seven, this is the one that feels the most likely to go red (in my opinion). Biden barely won it in 2020, and it's the one state that had a clear bright spot for the Republicans in 2022, sweeping all statewide races save for the US Senate race (Democrats were very lucky that it was Warnock and not Ossoff that had to stand for reelection right away). The biggest reasons that Trump should be worried are the growing Atlanta suburbs, which will be bluer this time, and that some of his lead is predicated on the assumption that Black voters are more willing to go with him than last time, which I increasingly doubt is the case. But while I felt uneasy yesterday calling Arizona for Trump because my gut says that Harris gets an upset there, I don't have the same sort of gut pangs here. If Trump can't win Georgia, he can't win any swing state. R+1
House: A mid-decade redraw did basically nothing in terms of partisanship other than entrench both sides even deeper. Part of me wishes we'd seen Sanford Bishop retire, mostly because it'd be easier to keep the 2nd in a presidential election than an open seat in 2026 (Bishop is 77 and likely doesn't have many elections left in him), but he'll be safe, and that's the most competitive seat of the bunch.
Hawaii
President: Hawaii continues to be as blue as can be, and will provide some extra padding as the West Coast is called and Democrats continue to plug numbers in their calculators adding to 270.
Senate: Mazie Hirono will win reelection, though given her age (she's 76), I believe (similar to Bishop) this would've been the right time to pick a successor.
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