Crystal Ball: A brief history of the Electoral College in the 21st century centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… We are in an extremely competitive era - 5/6 elex from 2000-2020 decided by less than 5 in the popular vote. Only other comparable era - 6 straight elex from 1876-1896

In re: Ohio Senate, I've got 4 counties I think we should be watching (thread) 1. Wood County (south of Toledo, home to Tim Ryan's alma mater of Bowling Green State U.). County has been a decent bellwether for the state in recent years

Crystal Ball: There are a couple of big reasons why House Republicans will be hard-pressed to match their huge numerical gains of 1994 and 2010. But they still have a path to make history if there’s a big wave this year. On House Rs’ “Drive to 35” - centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… Rs are at 213 seats right now - about 35 more than they won in the years preceding 1994 and 2010.

Also, those huge waves had a lot to do with realigning conservative districts from D to R. That isn’t the case this time.

However, still a fair number of R targets

1. Crystal Ball: New @Center4Politics - Project Home Fire report on immigration and racial/social justice attitudes. Some highlights in thread 2. Biden/Trump voters feel strongly but in opposite directions on the topic of discrimination, with Biden voters expressing concern about discrimination against minorities, while Trump voters worry that discrimination against whites will increase significantly soon

1. This morning, the @Center4Politics and a new group called Project Home Fire launched a new polling/data analytics project aimed at understanding the social, political, and psychological divides between Biden and Trump voters

centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… 2. Some of the takeaways:

There is some potential agreement on policy matters, but there are marked differences in their levels of support for some recent proposals discussed in BIF/reconciliation saga centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar…

THREAD: With the presidential results basically done, I took a look today at how the states voted relative to the nation, both in this election and since 2000

centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… First of all, there's the two-party Democratic share in each state in 2016 and 2020, sorted by best-to-worst Biden improvement (or decline, as it it in a handful of places)

Biden overperformed most in a mix of red and blue states, declined mostly in blue states plus Florida

FINAL CRYSTAL BALL RATINGS -- THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Biden 321, Trump 217

Biden restores some of the Dem Midwest strength and breaks new ground in Sun Belt FINAL SENATE RATINGS:

Dems 50, GOP 48, 2 Toss-ups (both races in Georgia, where we are expecting Jan. 5 runoffs)

FYI for watching MN-5 primary tonight - 95% of the votes cast in the 2018 primary were from Hennepin County (Minneapolis). Small sliver of district crosses into Anoka (suburbs/exurbs) and Ramsey (St. Paul) Omar won a multi-candidate primary in 2018 - she got 49% in Hennepin, about 38% in the other two counties (again, tiny number of votes in the other two)

1. Tale of two polls: CBS News/YouGov roughly 4 years apart - 45-37 Clinton 8/30-9/2 2016; 49-43 Biden 8/4-8/7 2020 2. Here are the competing crosstabs. 2016: scribd.com/document/32297… and 2020: drive.google.com/file/d/1CFgA4C… A few things stand out.

1. A thread on the CA-25 special, coming up this Tuesday. For obvious reasons, it hasn’t engendered the same amount of interest as, say, PA-18 or OH-12 last cycle 2. Part of this is that we’re in the midst of a presidential campaign, so there’s bigger fish to fry. And of course coronavirus is dominating the news

Crystal Ball: The combined top-two voting in CA House races can sometimes give us some clues for the fall. Let me take you through some of what I found (thread) centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… First of all, we made three rating changes in CA today. All of them benefited Republicans:

CA-25 special Leans D > Toss-up
Devin Nunes (R, CA-22) Likely R > Safe R
Tom McClintock (R, CA-4) Likely R > Safe R

1. I've got a broad primary overview in the Crystal Ball today, detailing the road from tonight through early June, and the marathon to the magic number of 1,991 delegates. There are eight stages as I see them. Let's take a look (thread) centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… 2. The first stage is the carve-out states of IA/NH/NV/SC. Big on PR value, but not really in delegates. Not even 4% of the total pledged delegates are awarded this month. I call this stage "The Sizzle Before the Steak"

1.The impeachment saga really reminds me of the Merrick Garland nomination. They both expose how what seem like hard limits in our governing system often are actually soft limits – or, rather, aren’t limits at all (a thread) 2.In the case of Garland, McConnell and Senate Rs grasped that there were no legal requirements for them to vote on Garland, or even hold hearings. They acted accordingly.

1. This seems like a good time to tweet a bit about my piece on the relative positioning of the states in recent presidential voting. We published last week but I was traveling, so I didn't say much about it here. 2. First of all, the charts that follow use what I call "presidential deviation" - I'd call it PVI, but the way the Cook Report calculates PVI is to average the last 2 prez elex. This just compares state performance each year compared to nation, so I called it something different

1. A thread: Let's go through my district by district piece on the House today - centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… 2. First of all, before going into Dem path to netting 24 seats and winning the majority, I think we ought to assume they'll lose at least one current seat. For illustrative purposes, going with open MN-1, a seat Trump won by 15 (Toss-up in actuality)