The Senate Math Looks Very Good.

When I woke up and reconfirmed the numbers from last night, I smiled. And I realized at that moment that I probably know things based on some math and deeper dives that others nervous about the publicly-posted results don’t yet know. So let me attempt to give you some of the reasoning and numbers behind my good cheer this morning.

All eyes are on two Senate races in Arizona and Nevada that have yet to be called. Most news outlets are only reporting the baseline figures—what percent of vote has been tabulated and the raw numbers for each. Looking at these two races that likely will decide control of the Senate, it’s understandable why that reporting causes anxiety. After all, Sen. Mark Kelley (D-AZ) has a 5-point lead but only 76 percent of votes have been counted, and we’ve seen in other races how that lead can shrink quickly. (Georgia was a good example of this on Election Night.) And worse looking still, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) was behind her opponent by 23,000 votes as of yesterday afternoon, underscoring the media narrative that she was weak in the polls and that her base may not have turned out.

So, here’s why it’s wrong to look at just those bigger numbers. When I dive into a race where many votes are still outstanding and being counted, whether on Election Night or in the days to come, I look at three main things:

1)    Where are the remaining votes?

2)    What kind of ballots are they? 

3)    How have similar ballots been breaking?

Applying these three baseline questions, I believe it is now pretty likely that the Senate Democrats will win both Nevada and Arizona, making the run-off in Georgia a bonus round and a chance to make Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) irrelevant. Let’s dive into why that is.

Arizona

Sen. Kelly currently has a lead of 95K votes, and according to the Arizona Secretary of State, there are around 619K ballots remaining uncounted in the state. This means that to catch him, Blake Masters would have to win 57 percent of the remaining outstanding ballots, with Kelly taking just 43 percent. Is that likely to occur? Let’s apply the questions I outlined above.

Where are the remaining votes? Of the 619K ballots remaining uncounted, 407K of them are in populous Maricopa County and 159K are in Pima County, which is Kelly’s home base. In other words, 91 percent of the ballots still out there come from two counties where Democrats performed far better than they do in the rural GOP stronghold counties. This means that whatever votes come in are unlikely to swing the vote very hard toward the GOP and could even add to Kelly’s total.

What kind of ballots are they? By this I mean, are they Election Day in-person counts, mail-in ballots, or dropbox ballots, and when were they received or picked up? This winds up mattering because Democrats trust and utilize the mail and the dropbox system far more than Republicans, who tend to vote in-person on Election Day. This was especially true in Arizona, where conspiracies around dropboxes (“2000 Mules” for example) and mail-in ballots led to expensive, pointless audits run by crackpot outfits like Cyber Ninjas. They even caused armed vigilantes to “monitor” dropboxes leading up to Election Day. Important to our understanding of where things are, as of today, the ballots remaining to be counted in Arizona are definitively either late-arriving mail or dropbox ballots deposited on Election Day. The in-person Election Day ballot counting, favored by the GOP, is done. 

How have similar ballots been breaking? This is a bit tricky to determine precisely in Arizona because there may be a difference between how late mailed ballots break versus same-day dropoffs. Last night’s batch update from Maricopa County, where 62K early ballots were processed, broke for Kelly over Masters 55/43. That was bad news for Masters, who needs the remaining ballots (mailed and dropped off) to more than flip that script completely. Also, Pima County updated yesterday with another 13.5K ballots counted, and those broke for Kelly by an even wider margin of 67/31. While it’s true that late arriving early ballots went to the GOP in 2020, that may not be the case, or at least not as strongly, in 2022, given all the mistrust the GOP sowed over dropboxes and mail-in ballots. The two ballot batches from Maricopa and Pima reported last night certainly don’t help Masters and indicate a shift toward the Democrats among late arriving ballots in the state. Finally, complicating the math for the GOP is the fact that young people aged 18-29 in Arizona overwhelming voted for Kelly (76/20), and this group also tends to vote much closer to or on Election Day. In other words, a good chunk of the 619K outstanding ballots are from the youth vote, which will skew the math in Kelly’s favor.

Bottom line, it would take a very surprising result among the the remaining 619K, one that goes against everything we know about where those ballots are coming from, what kind of ballots they are, and how other later-arriving ballots have performed so far, for Masters to come from behind to win. My confidence level is therefore fairly high that Kelly will win Arizona. We should know a lot more after further batches of dropoffs and late-arriving mail-in ballots come in this evening from Maricopa and Pima counties.

Nevada

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto currently trails her challenger Adam Laxalt by 15.8K votes as of the latest overnight tallies being added. That’s a big shift from yesterday afternoon, where she trailed by 23K. While the Secretary of State’s office in Nevada is less transparent about the nature of the remaining ballots than Arizona is, election experts like Jon Ralston have assembled public statements from county level officials and determined that there are likely somewhere over 100K ballots still to be counted. Now, let’s apply my questions.

Where are the remaining votes? As with Arizona, the remaining votes are from the two most populous counties in Nevada, Clark (home of Vegas) and Washoe (home of Reno). These are considered Democratic strongholds, where the fabled “Reid machine” can turn out votes especially among the serviceworker union members. This again means that whatever votes come in from here forward are likely to add to Cortez Masto’s percentage of the count.

What kind of ballots are they? There are only Election Day dropoff ballots and mail-in ballots left to count. Both of these types of ballots are generally favorable to Democratic candidates, and Nevada has a fairly relaxed rule for counting ballots, permitting anything postmarked by November 8 to be counted through the week. A good number of voters dropped their ballots in the mail on Monday and Tuesday, which means many thousands are still arriving. 

How have similar ballots been breaking? Here’s the really good news. Last night around 10pm in Nevada, as reported by Ryan Matsumoto of FiveThirtyEight, Washoe County added a batch of mail-ins that broke by 25 points for Cortez Masto. Then a batch of Clark County mail ballots broke by 35 points for her, around 65/30 in her favor. These figures were both some 30 points better than the previously reported counts in those counties. That means the mail-ins are overwhelmingly favorable for Cortez-Masto. As Jon Ralston from The Nevada Independent noted, the Washoe mail batch was big news for Cortez Masto, turning a 5K deficit in that county into a 400-vote lead. And the Clark County mail batch that came in last night added another net 4K to her totals. If the remaining mail-in ballots continue to do as well (and there is no reason to believe that they won’t) she will win her race. In fact, as Ralston noted, she would win even if they only broke 55/35 for her, which doesn’t match what’s already happened in the ballots that have been counted.

Bottom line, we will very likely see Cortez Masto rise quickly to make up that 15K difference as the remaining are counted based on 1) where the ballots are from (Clark and Washoe counties), 2) that they are Dem-heavy mail-in ballots, and 3) that the mail-in ballots that have been counted are breaking so very heavily in her favor.

Bottom, bottom line? I predict (gulp) that we likely will win both the Arizona and Nevada senate races, giving us 50 Senate seats with a VP Harris tiebreaker vote. The trend should get confirmed by evening tonight when Maricopa and Clark counties report again, and if we see anything that doesn’t match what we’ve already seen, I’ll update this right away. If I am correct, a run-off senate race win in Georgia would then become gravy on top of our existing majority—important gravy, but gravy nonetheless.