Election News

We've updated the Interactive Electoral College Tie Finder for the 2020 race.  It shows all possible 269-269 ties for a given group of undecided locations (states and/or Maine/Nebraska districts).  

11 states, as well as Nebraska's 2nd district were decided by less than a 5% popular vote margin in 2016. There are 64 possible ties based on that group of locations. An additional seven locations were decided by approximately 5-10% that year.  

Use the tool to look at what ties are possible based on any combination* of these 19 locations.  Over time, we'll update the locations in the tie finder as needed based on how the 2020 race evolves.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker will run for president in 2020.  Booker made the announcement on Friday morning, timed to the first day of Black History Month.

I’m running for president. Join me on this journey. https://t.co/fEDqOVIfwh pic.twitter.com/h1FTPUYRzo

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) February 1, 2019

Booker, who will be 50 in April, has been in the U.S. Senate for about six years. He won a special election in October, 2013 to complete the term of Frank Lautenberg, who had died earlier that year. In 2014, he was elected to a full six-year term. Prior to serving in the Senate, Booker was a two-term mayor of Newark.

Booker is the 6th Democrat to formally join the 2020 field, with another three having formed exploratory committees, a step just short of an official announcement.

The Washington Examiner reports "top Republicans in Texas are sounding the alarm about 2020, warning President Trump could lose the usually reliably red state unless he devotes resources and attention to it typically reserved for electoral battlegrounds."

Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter won here by about 3% in 1976. Trump won the state by nine points in 2016. While not particularly close, it was the smallest GOP margin since Bob Dole's five point win here in 1996.

Could Trump win reelection if he were to lose Texas and its 38 electoral votes? Probably not, unless this was strictly a regional issue and he was able to offset it by building upon his 2016 realignment of the electoral map. That year, he flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that hadn't voted Democratic in a generation. In addition, he narrowly lost Minnesota, New Hampshire and Maine's at-large electoral votes.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will not seek the Democratic nomination in 2020, it was reported Tuesday. Garcetti, who easily won a 2nd term as the city's mayor in 2017 was one of several mayors considering a 2020 bid.  South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg launched an exploratory committee last week. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has yet to decide if he will enter the race.  No mayor has ever moved directly from that office to the presidency.

The updated Democratic list:

Former West Virginia State. Sen. Richard Ojeda has ended his bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination. Ojeda had concluded that the campaign wasn't winnable. The move comes less than two weeks after Ojeda resigned his seat in the West Virginia Senate so that he could pursue the presidential run.

Ojeda made his announcement via a Facebook post. He is the first announced Democrat to withdraw.

The 2020 House Interactive Map is now live.  Use it to create and share your forecast for the 2020 House elections.

In the table below the interactive map, view the incumbent for each seat, along with their margin of victory in 2018. Compare that to the margins in the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. 

The table defaults to all races seen as competitive in 2020, based on initial ratings by Sabato's Crystal Ball. As you pan/zoom on the map, the table will update to show all seats visible in the map area. To view all districts in a specific state, choose it in the drop-down menu below the seat counter.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has set May 21 as the date for a special election to fill a vacancy in the state's congressional delegation. The date coincides with the state's primary election.  Former Rep. Tom Marino's last day in office was yesterday (Jan. 23rd). The GOP congressman had announced his plan to resign last week.

Donald Trump won this rural Pennsylvania district by over 35% in 2016, with Marino winning a fifth term by over 30% this past November. The seat is very likely to remain in GOP hands.

Democrat Pete Buttigieg (it's pronounced Boot-edge-edge) is forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential bid. He made the announcement via video Wednesday morning.

A New Generation of Leadership from Pete for America on Vimeo.

California Senator Kamala Harris launched her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on Monday. Harris, who is the 2nd* African American Senator in U.S. history, made the announcement Monday on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Before joining the Senate, Harris was her state's first female Attorney General.

Harris becomes the 5th Democrat to formally announce a 2020 run. Two of her Senate colleagues, Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) have created exploratory committees, which basically means they are running but are saving the 'formal' launch for a later date. 

The Map Color Palette, which was added to the congressional and gubernatorial interactive maps in 2018, is now available on the 2020 Electoral Map. The palette is located to the right of the electoral map, and includes options for tilt Democratic, tilt Republican and 3rd party.

Changing State(s) on the Map

Use -/+ buttons in the color palette area to display the ratings options you want to use. This can be changed at any time. As before, you can click a state repeatedly to change its rating. What's new here is that the rotation will only cycle through the ratings visible in the palette. So, if you only want to do a safe/toss-up map, there's no longer a need to cycle through all the other colors.