2010 Election Predictions – How we rank individual races

We are now in the thick of election season. Hawaii’s primary held last Saturday concludes 2010’s primary season, and we are now seeing polling released at an accelerated pace (Louisiana’s “everything else” primary will be next Saturday, October 2, and early voting concludes tomorrow). We presently are basing our analyses on a composite of polls conducted over the last 14 days. Next month, we will compress that “look back period” to 7 days,  because as early voting begins in Ohio next week, voters will begin to make up their minds, and polls will start moving accordingly. Our rankings are based on the following criteria:

(1) Safe Democratic (dark blue on the map)/Safe Republican (dark red on the map) – either a candidate leads by 10 or more points, or a candidate has over 50% in polls;

(2) Lean Democratic (light blue on the map)/Lean Republican (light red on the map) – a candidate leads by 3-9 points;

(3) Tossup (yellow) – a candidate leads by less than 3 points;

(4) No data available/primary has not been held (gray) – In the Hawaii Senate race, polling data has not been publicly released, so we have nothing to analyze there.

(5) No Senate/gubernatorial race in 2010 for this state (black)

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John is a political consultant and blogger with JMC Enterprises with expertise in poll sample development and analysis, development of targeted voter files for phone canvassing or mail outs, campaign strategy and demographic consulting, among other things. See his site at WinWithJMC.com for more information.