Happy Election Day: my final "predictions"

Who do I think will be the next President of the United States?

We have finally reached the end of the shortest longest campaign in our lives.

With the results in this unprecedented election now just mere hours away, I thought I’d quickly share what I think the electoral college map is going to look like by the end of the night (or week).

We will also look at control of the House and Senate, as well as a handful of governor races that will be decided today.

I am not expecting any of these “predictions” to be 100 percent accurate by the end of the night. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we are always treated to a surprise or two on election nights.

But so many people have been asking me what I think is going to happen, so here goes.

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President: Blue Wall seals a Harris win

The race to 270 electoral votes starts out as Kamala Harris’ race to lose: if she wins the three states that make up the so-called “Blue Wall,” she will be the next President of the United States regardless of what happens in the four remaining battleground states.

But Trump’s path to the White House isn’t that hard to imagine, either. If he wins Georgia, North Carolina and picks off Pennsylvania, that would put him exactly at 270.

But the Blue Wall states have voted in tandem with one another for decades now, and I don’t think that’s going to change this week.

Make no mistake: the Keystone State is the key to the White House.

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Senate: GOP benefits from lopsided map

Senate Democrats have a math problem and a map problem.

They enter tonight with just a one-seat majority in the upper chamber. But they also enter tonight with the most turf to defend: of the 34 Senate seats up for grabs today, 23 of them are held by Democrats and Republicans are defending 11.

And that’s not all: three of those 23 Democratic-held seats are in states that Donald Trump carried in 2020 and will likely win again today. One of them is already viewed as an easy Republican flip: West Virginia, where Independent Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement has cleared the way for Jim Justice, the state’s popular Republican governor, to flip this seat in a cakewalk.

This means that Democrats cannot afford to lose any of their two remaining red-state incumbents: Sen. Jon Tester in Montana and Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Tester has consistently trailed in most polling this year, while Democrats feel cautiously optimistic that Brown can again defy political gravity despite the Buckeye State’s red tint.

I agree with the consensus that Tester is the most likely to lose, which would flip the Senate from a one-seat Democratic majority to a one-seat Republican one.

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House: a game of inches

If you thought the narrow House Republican majority during this Congress was chaotic, get used to it: The narrow House battlefield means that the next House majority, regardless of which party claims it tonight, is likely to be a narrow one as well.

I’ll be completely honest: I have not been closely following many of the competitive House races this year. But I do know that both parties enter tonight with great opportunities to flip seats.

Democrats will be defending the three co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition, all of whom come from districts won by Trump. I think that at least two of them, Rep. Mary Peltola (AK) and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA) will narrowly come up short. (Perez’s district was where ballot drop boxes were set aflame last week.)

For Republicans, their most vulnerable member is easily Rep. Don Bacon (NE), who represents the Omaha-based district where the Harris campaign has spent a lot of money to nab that single electoral vote. And if recent Iowa presidential polling is to be believed, Democrats stand a decent chance of toppling a Republican incumbent (or two) in the Hawkeye State.

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Governor: Competitive races in NC and NH

In addition to the race for President and control of Congress, 11 states will also be electing governors today.

We all know about North Carolina, where scandal-plagued Republican nominee Mark Robinson has trailed Democrat Josh Stein for most of the campaign even as the race for President there remains anybody’s game.

The other race to watch is in New Hampshire, where popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is forgoing a fifth term (governors serve two-year terms in NH). Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) and Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig (D) are now battling for the governor’s chair. But with Harris expected to comfortably win the Granite State, the task for Ayotte is to convince enough voters to split their tickets. In an era of high polarization, that task could prove to be a tall one.

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Again, I am asking everyone not to put a whole lot of stock in my final predictions. We always see some surprises on election night, which leads to final predictions being busted. But this is my overall assessment on the state of play. One prediction I am absolutely certain of: this is going to be a historic night.