The Bitecofer models from the Niskanen Center has pushed strongly to the Democrats for both the Presidential election and the various Senate elections in the upcoming vote.
As summarized by 270toWin, prognosticator Rachel Bitecofer has made some big changes:
- Alaska moves from Safe Republican to Toss-up;
- Arizona and Florida from Leans to Likely Democratic;
- ME-2 from Toss-up to Likely Republican;
- Nevada and New Hampshire from Likely to Safe Democratic;
- South Carolina from Safe to Likely Republican.
The Bitecofer model also has Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio as Toss-up states, maintaining that status since the previous release in July.
Rachel Bitecofer made her reputation in the 2018 mid-term elections by using a concept of “negative partisanship” to identify key ebbs and flows in voter enthusiasm. Her mid-term House elections showed that Democrats would pick up 45 seats; Democrats picked up 41.
Bitecofer currently has Biden winning 318 electoral college votes, not including the Biden-friendly toss-up states. She also has Democrats most likely to hold 51 or 52 seats in the Senate.
In this estimation, she also includes modeling concepts from Samuel Epstein, which helps to fill-out the idea of negative partisanship with more data from previous elections and information on political realignments of populations.
The “negative partisan” concept, in simple terms, looks at the number of people who would be motivated to vote against a candidate, a candidate’s leadership or a political party. This, in turn, lowers turnout among supporters of “low-enthusiasm” candidates and increases turnout for their opponent. Bitecofer sees this swinging elections sharply in Democratic favor for both the presidential and Senate elections.