The Tennessee primary was held on Thursday August 7.   

US Senate:    Second term incumbent Lamar Alexander held off tea party challenger Joe Carr and several other candidates.  On the Democratic side, Attorney Gordon Ball narrowly edged attorney Terry Adams to win the nomination.   Senator Alexander is heavily favored to win re-election in November.  

Governor:   As expected, incumbent Bill Haslam (R) cruised to a primary victory, while Charles Brown held off three challengers on the Democratic side.   Haslam is a prohibitive favorite to be re-elected.

US House:   All vote totals can be seen here.   The composition of Tennessee's congressional House delegation is not expected to change in November.  All 9 seats (7 Republicans and 2 Democrats) are rated as safe for the incumbent party.    As of this writing, TN-04 incumbent Scott DesJarlais holds an exceptionally narrow 33 vote lead over State Senator Jim Tracy for the Republican nomination.   No winner has been declared as of yet.

The new 270toWin Senate election simulator assesses the likelihood of Senate control based on the probabilities in each race.    As guidance for users, we start with the average of the probabilities calculated by the respective New York Times and Washington Post Senate forecast models.    

The real value-add here is that users can adjust those probabilities as they see fit, with each adjustment recalculating the overall probability.     There is also an option to run single simulations, similar to a popular presidential feature we have on the site.

Like other 270toWin features, the goal here is to actively engage users by providing tools to enable them to make their own election forecasts.   

We've recently added poll pages for Senate, House & Governor 2014 elections.

Mike Bostock of the New York Times has created an interactive map that allows one to visualize all the Congressional Districts adjacent to the one selected. We decided to dig into the data behind this map to see what interesting nuggets of information there might be.   Those are presented below.   The next time any of our readers appears on Jeopardy, and the category Adjacent Congressional Districts is used, he or she will be well prepared...

• Four Congressional Districts in the Continental US are adjacent to every other District in their state, but none outside the state.   These are:  AR-02, CT-03, NM-01 and OR-05. Considering all 50 states, both Hawaii Districts qualify as well.

• An additional 190 Districts are adjacent to one or more, but not all Districts in their state and none outside the state.
• No Districts, excluding the seven states with one At-Large District, are only adjacent to districts outside their state.   (Alaska's District is not adjacent to any others).
• The remaining 232 Districts are adjacent to Districts both inside and outside their state.

Districts adjacent to the fewest Districts:

• In the continental US, the only District adjacent to a single other District is NY-26.   This District, which includes Buffalo, is surrounded by NY-27 and Canada.

• 18 Districts are linked to two others:  FL-13, FL-16, FL-19, FL-21, FL-26, LA-02, ME-01, NE-02, NM-01, NV-01, NY-20, NY-25, OH-03, PA-14, SC-01, TX-16, TX-34 and UT-04.
  • Of these, all are linked to two districts in the same state except for ME-01, NE-02 and TX-16, which are each linked to one in-state and one in an adjacent state.

Districts adjacent to the most Districts and states:

• Four Districts are adjacent to 11 others:
  • AZ-04:          Five Districts in AZ, three in CA, two in NV and one in UT.
  • CA-04:          Ten in CA and one in NV.  (Note that CA-08, with the green dot, is adjacent to both AZ-04 and CA-04).
  • MO-06:         Three in MO , two in IA, two in IL, two in KS and two in NE.
  • OH-06:         Five in OH, three in WV, two in PA and one in KY.
  • Eight districts are adjacent to ten others:   AZ-01, CA-08, CO-04, FL-17, IL-16, KY-04, MD-01 and TX-04.
  • NE-03 is the only District adjacent to Districts in seven states (CO, IA, KS, MO, NE, SD and WY).
  • CO-04, SD-AL and WY-AL are adjacent to those in six states.

 Love thy Neighbor?

• 23 Democratic seats are surrounded by only Republican-held Districts, led by AL-7 with seven.
• Only two Republicans are surrounded by all Democrats, both in New York.   NY-11 has eight adjacent Democrats, while NY-02 has three.
• 45 Democrats are surrounded by blue, led by MA-02 with nine.
• 48 Republicans are surrounded by red, led by TX-04 with ten.

While it may come as a surprise since Election Day was about two months ago, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were not officially re-elected until today (January 4), when the electoral vote results of each state (certified by the Electors) were read and tabulated in Congress.    There were no surprises:  The final tally was Obama 332, Romney 206 for President;  Biden 332, Ryan 206 for Vice-President.     For those interested in the process of getting from the vote on Election Day to today, this article from the National Archives website provides a high-level summary.     That narrative specifies January 6th as the date for the count in Congress; we're assuming it was changed to today because the 6th is a Sunday.

The final popular vote totals were 65,899,660 for Obama-Biden (51.1%) and 60,932,152 (47.2%) for Romney-Ryan.   Visit our states area to see the 2012 popular vote percentages, and compare those to the prior 4 elections.  (Note that the very bottom part of these pages are not yet updated for 2012.) **  

In the weeks ahead, we'll be updating the site (and our iPad App) to let you start creating and sharing 2016 electoral maps.    Since both parties will have new nominees, the updates will allow you to create specific Democratic and Republican match-ups. **

America's Electoral Map Contest:  There were 34,342 valid entries to the contest,  15,856 entrants (one entry per day was allowed) and 5,534 unique map configurations uploaded.   The most commonly submitted map was the correct map, and was submitted 2,307 times.    The first three of these perfect entries came within an hour of the start of the contest.   In the end, this election didn't deliver any major surprises, so we expected to have quite a few perfect guesses.    In addition to the first perfect map winner, we'll be randomly selecting 3 entries this week from the remaining group of perfect entries, as per the official rules.     If any of these selections are deemed not eligible to receive a prize, a substitute winner will be selected and notified.   For those that don't win, please see the official rules for how to request a list of winners.

2012 Results:    We'll be updating the site over the next couple months to reflect the final 2012 presidential election results.  These are not technically official until the Electors vote and the states submit their popular vote totals in December.  We'll also begin to set the map and site up for those of you that want to begin to look ahead to 2016.

Update October 24, 2012:   We've created a new Electoral College Tie Finder that will let you play around with any combination of 11 battleground states. We're planning to add 2nd District in Maine and Nebraska (one electoral vote each) to this in the next couple days, as what limited polling there is shows both are pretty competitive.

Update September, 2012: The post below was originally written in advance of the 2008 election. We've updated the relevant dates for the 2012 election. Separately, a few people have asked which candidate would win the presidency should the vote go to the House. Based on a review of the current race ratings underlying our 2012 House Elections Map, Republicans would have control in 26 states, Democrats 11. The remaining 13 states are too close to tell. Note that this is based on 'safe' and 'likely' races being allocated to a party. If this were to play out, Romney would have the advantage in a tie scenario.

What are the most likely ties? For those curious about actual tie combinations for 2012, there are 32 of them if we assume 11 battleground states (FL, PA, OH, MI, NC, VA, WI, CO, NV, IA, NH). Some don't think MI and PA are true battlegrounds. We'll let the voters decide, but just for purposes of the example, if we remove those, we are left with 5 tie scenarios. Finally, if we give NC to Romney and WI to Obama, we're left with 7 states (FL, OH, VA, CO, NV, IA, NH) and a 247-206 Obama lead. If it plays out this way, there are two tie scenarios remaining. In the first, Romney wins all but VA and CO. In the second, he wins all but OH and NH. You can use the 'Road to 270' feature, which appears below the map on the home page, to see all tie scenarios associated with your own election forecast.

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Another close election may be coming up in November. It is not difficult to create a realistic scenario where the electoral map on election night is 269-269. What then?

As our site URL says, it takes "270 to Win". If neither candidate gets a majority of the Electoral Votes, the election for President is decided in the House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote. Senators would elect the Vice-President.

It is important to note that an apparent tie on election night does not mean that there is actually a tie. The actual Electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December (December 17, 2012) to cast their votes. Only about half the states have laws requiring their Electors to vote for the popular vote winner. It is possible that an Elector could cast his or her vote for another person. As long as that vote wasn’t for the other major candidate in the race, this wouldn’t be an issue --- neither candidate would have 270. However, imagine a scenario where a single Elector in a single state switched their vote to the other party --- the vote would be 270 -268. While very unlikely, it has happened before (most recently in 1968, although the election that year wasn’t close).If you thought the 2000 election was controversial, this outcome just might bring the Electoral College system to its knees.

More than likely, the election would remain undecided after the Electors voted.The new Congress meets in joint session on January 6, 2013 to count the electoral votes (this count happens whether the election is close or not). If neither candidate has reached 270 Electoral Votes, then the House and Senate take over and elect the President and Vice-President, respectively.

UPDATE 6/22: Based on some feedback, we may not have made this point clearly enough: It is the new Congress, that is inaugurated the first week of January, 2013, that will have the responsibility of breaking any ties.

Below the electoral map on our site, there's a feature you may have seen called "The Road to 270". This feature calculates the number of 'critical path' combinations to 270 that remain for either party based on the undecided states in your map, as well as any possible tie combinations. It updates automatically each time you change the status of a state.

By critical path, we mean those combinations that are available to cross the required 270 electoral votes threshold. To take a simple example, let's say Obama has 262 electoral votes on your map, and the only two undecided states are Virginia (13 electoral votes) and New Hampshire (4 electoral votes). While there are two overall combinations there (VA or VA+NH), only one of them is relevant to our goal of 270.  Put another way, if you were managing the Obama campaign in this scenario, how much resource would you devote to winning New Hampshire?

The new features include the following:

• Must Win for 270: Displayed separately, these are any states that, if lost, would give the other candidate to 269 or more electoral votes. Therefore any states in this category will be required in every critical path to 270.

• Not Needed for 270: Displayed separately, these are states that are not required in any critical path, like New Hampshire in the earlier example.

• Filtering: For all the states not fitting into one of the above two categories, we now display the number of combinations that include that state.  You can check one or more states to filter to only those paths that include all the checked states.

• Totals:  The total electoral votes associated with each combination are shown

• Probability:  The combinations are ordered by probability of occurring (based on polling averages).   Note that probability doesn't necessarily mean "probable".  For example, if Obama has 268 electoral votes on your map, and the states remaining are Montana and Kentucky, Montana will appear higher than Kentucky on the list, but we're talking about "improbable" in the case of Montana, and "extremely unlikely" in the case of Kentucky. Note also that when dozens of combinations remain, with multiple states in a combination, almost any single specific path is going to have a low probability, particularly if it involves toss-up states.

The Road to 270 also calculates tie scenarios that are possible with your map. Every remaining state is involved in a tie scenario, of course. The Ties page shows each possible tie scenario and how the states break out between Obama and Romney. These tie scenarios are not in any particular order at this time.

The Road to 270 feature appears when 12 or fewer states remain undecided on your map and neither candidate has reached 270 electoral votes.

We've relaunched  "The Probability of 270" to the interactive electoral college map page. This feature works in tandem with your maps, as you create them, to tell you the probability that either candidate will reach 270 electoral votes based on the remaining states undecided on your map. The calculated probabilities for each state are derived primarily from current state by state polls, basically using the same methodology that underlies the 2012 election simulator  (which is also live for 2012). Therefore, it is subject to many of the same limitations as that tool, which you can read about on the simulator page.

You'll find The Probability of 270 underneath The Road to 270, both of which are below the interactive map. As a reminder, The Road to 270 calculates every critical path to 270 electoral votes remaining for each of the candidates. Both of these features will appear with 12 or fewer states remaining undecided on your map, where neither candidate has 270 and will dynamically update every time you change the status of one of the states in the map.

For background on this, see this Swing States Update post. The current toss up map is here; 10 states remain in the toss up category based on the criteria of being listed as a toss up by one or more of 4 professional pundits.

NBC and Cook Political have made some race ratings changes this week.   Those that impact the toss up states are shown in the accompanying table.   Seven states are now seen as toss ups by all these groups:  Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia. Iowa and New Hampshire are new this time.   There's a difference of opinion on North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.