Quick Election Prediction Time

It looks like it's about time to go on record with predictions about the election tomorrow.  Given the volume of campaign information, it's impossible to go through and analyze each race individually, unless your Larry Sabato, Charlie Cook or Jim Geraghty.  Unfortunately,  I'm a data mining guy and would love to do those deep analyses, full time if I could.  But I digress.

Here are my prognostications for the GOP pickups this cycle.  THE GOP is going to be picking up 9 seats in the Senate, with a faint chance still, of making up 10 and getting control of the Senate.  As much as I want to say 10, Manchin's numbers have climbed over the latter part of the race in West Virginia, and there's no counter-burst of  advertising from Raese.  At least nothing that seems to have made an impact.  Hopefully there's a Raese blitz going on today.  To me that's the race to watch.  If it swings for Raese, it's possible that Washington and perhaps even California are still winnable.

GOP Winners from the on-the-bubble Senate races - Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Mark Kirk in Colorado (if he doesn't get Frankened afterwards), Ken Buck in Colorado, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Dino Rossi in Washington. That still leaves Raese as the swing.  There are also some really dark horse challenges from Fiorina in California and McMahon in Connecticut, but that requires more wave than likely exists.  Still, I'm hopeful.

In the House I'm predicting a gain of 61 seats.  My inclination is to go higher but I don't want to get caught up in any false optimism.  People like Cook and Sabato are predicting in the mid-50's.  That's a pretty big wave. Jim Geraghty is suggesting a net gain of 70 seats, and he names names. I hope he's right.  But I am trying to stay cautious in light of the lower numbers out there.

For governorships RealClearPolitics is predicting a GOP pickup of 6. Rasmussen's polling is here. I'm leaning towards 9 again.  This is an important cycle for those races and a big pick-up will be a big boost for the GOP.

Remember to vote tomorrow.  Every vote counts - or at least it should.