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State-Level Forecasts of U.S. Senate Elections

Election forecasting, as a science with models to be tested, got its start in political science 20 years ago (Lewis-Beck and Rice 1984; Rosenstone 1983). When the enterprise began, it was not popular. Forecasts, while entertaining, were not held to be serious research. As high-quality models with accurate forecasts were published in leading journals (see review in Lewis-Beck and Rice 1992), forecasting achieved more respect in the discipline. The 1996 presidential election was a high point. Forecasters formulated models that accurately predicted, well in advance, the presidential winner's vote share (Campbell and Garand 2000). This encouraged forecasters to ply their trade for new elections, and in 2000 scholars again met media demands to predict the presidential vote. On the front page of the Washington Post in May, one forecaster predicted a Gore victory and was quoted as saying, “It's not even going to be close” (Kaiser 2000). In the end, most of the 2000 forecasts greatly overestimated Gore's share of the vote.