Could Democrats Win a Senate Seat in Texas? Florida? Nebraska??? Manifold Prediction Market

There is a stark contrast in the amount of competitive races, Jacob Cohen of Manifold Markets notes.

"Joe Manchin is retiring, so Democrats can write off West Virginia. (This takes Democrats from 51-49 down to 50-50.) They also have an uphill battle in Montana, and are defending competitive races in Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin … well, that’s for next week, but the list goes on.

"If Democrats lost West Virginia but held on in all those states — a tall order — and won the presidency, they’d have a winning 50-50 majority."

Like at betting sites that do take real money wagering on the 2024 November Elections in the traditional manner, Manifold's prize prediction model has former US president and GOP nominee Donald Trump up versus current vice president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

There's is a little higher at 55/45, though Manifold and similar prediction markets claim action on the U.S. presidential race is mostly skewed due to money coming in from foreign gamblers.

No doubt, this year's Senate races will be focused on a handful of key states.

Texas: Colin Allred (D) vs. Sen. Ted Cruz (R)

Manifolder commentary:

Richard Hanania: I think if there’s one place [Republicans might lose seats], it’s Texas, where Ted Cruz is running against Colin Allred, a UC Berkeley School of Law graduate, member of the House, and former linebacker for the Tennessee Titans … I say Allred is underpriced, but my view is mostly vibes based. Polls that show a tight race report that Allred’s favorability is positive, while Cruz is underwater … I’m going to give Allred a 30% chance of pulling off the upset.

Cremieux: My first bet will be safe and not worth all that much: I think Ted Cruz is going to win reelection, and I'll throw $20 at it.

Harold Reasons: If there is a god ted Cruz will lose so we can get one that doesn't leave his voters everytime there is a disaster. Poop on cruz³

Conflux commentary:

This is a cool election for me, because my friend’s mom worked on Colin Allred’s campaign when he was elected US representative in a 2018 upset victory. The same year, Beto O’Rourke waged a highly publicized campaign against the unpopular Ted Cruz for Senate (in an article from 2018, Clare Malone wrote “[O’Rourke has] gone on Ellen and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and has been compared to a Kennedy an embarrassing number of times in profiles … we’re in the midst of that self-mythologizing, magical moment for O’Rourke”) before running for president in 2020. Beto lost both races — the Senate race narrowly, the presidential race not so much.

Since 2018-Beto was such a good year for Democrats, can they really go beyond that in 2024 in order to do the unthinkable and win in Texas? They have a popular candidate, and the Republicans don’t. Democrats have proven, with Arizona, that they can sometimes win previously red states in the Southwest. But the fact is, Cruz is winning polls. Overall, I think a 20% chance is about right here, but there’s room for debate.

Florida: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell vs. Sen. Rick Scott

Manifold commentary (from Discord, I couldn’t find any on the website):

Gabrielle: Interesting Senate predictions from The Hill, they're seeing FL as more likely Dem than MT … And notably they give Dems better odds in FL than in TX

SemioticRivalry: Montana is and always has been likely R, bordering on safe. as is florida
    there's no way they beat Rick Scott in this environment
    if anyone disagrees i have a million mana and nothing to spend it on

Conflux commentary:

What is it about the Florida Senate race that makes it seem so hopeless and devoid of energy? It was a virtual tie in 2018, as you can see, but Florida has been drifting away from Democrats. In 2022, Marco Rubio won his Senate race by a 16-point margin. A prestigious New York Times poll for the presidency showed Trump winning by 13 in the state, and Manifold gives a 38% chance that Trump will win Florida by more than 8 points (a bet that Keith Rabois could have made with Nate Silver after their Twitter feud).

But sometimes, in elections, trends don’t continue. Often, there is reversion to the mean, where an outlier result — like Republicans in 2022 — does not shape the future trend. Rick Scott is leading Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the polls by about 5%, but that is within a normal polling error. Even if people don’t talk about it, Democrats aren’t out of the woods in Florida. Still, the most likely outcome is a clear reelection of Scott.

As this article was in the process of being revised, there was some activity on the market. Gabrielle bet it up to 27%, toward the Hill figure, but Semiotic brought it down to 18%. I tend to agree with Semiotic on this.

Now it’s time for the Nebraska election, where there’s somehow a 19% chance of a Democrat.

Nebraska (regular): Dan Osborn (independent) vs. Sen. Deb Fischer

This is the one everybody seems to be watching, and with good reason.

It's quite possibly the most likely to flip away from Republicans, though there are no guarantees Democrats will necessarily benefit.

Manifolder commentary from April:

    Magnus: There’s still a decent chance the Democrats will endorse Osborn. Either way, this isn’t going to be a close race.

    Timothy Johnson: He might be better off if they don't officially endorse him…
    There was a single poll in November that showed Biden down by 18 (53-35), and Dan Osborn winning 40-38. I don't quite believe that, but I could believe that he'll do much better than Biden.

Manifolder commentary from more recently:

    Timothy Johnson: The latest poll showed Fischer winning by just one point, 39-38.

    SemioticRivalry (on Discord): not gonna totally rule it out … osborn is doing the right stuff

Conflux commentary:

Nebraska is a red state. No Democrat has ever come close to winning there.

But Dan Osborn isn’t a Democrat. He’s a veteran, labor union leader (who led a strike at Kellogg’s Omaha plant), and independent. For now, anyway — if he wins, Manifold gives him a 77% chance of joining Bernie Sanders, Angus King, and the other members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Not caucusing with any party in the Senate would deny him committee assignments and other perks.) Multiply his 24% chance of victory with his 77% chance of caucusing with Democrats and you get a crazy 19% overall chance of a Democratic senator from Nebraska.

Instead, he’s running as an independent. There was some drama in the state Democratic party about whether to field a candidate; initially, they planned to endorse Osborn on May 18, but only three days before, Osborn said he wouldn’t be “charmed” or “schmoozed” and didn’t want the Democrats’ help. The state party originally looked for a write-in candidate, but ultimately decided not to field anyone. So Osborn’s shrewd strategy may have paid off: it’s a two-way race between him and incumbent Deb Fischer, and he seems like a true independent. (There is a chance he’ll caucus with no one, which would make him a true independent.)

I wouldn’t have guessed this race would be competitive at all. There have only been a handful of Independent vs. Republican races in red states like this: Kansas in 2014, Alaska in 2020. It’ll be an uphill battle for Osborn here, but the polls are very close. This will be an interesting race.