Top data scientist sees Republican Senate chances rise slightly, but model still predicts that Democrats will flip 5 seats
Source: Fortune ·
A prediction-market model built by a Northwestern data scientist shows Democrats favored to flip the Senate, but GOP odds have ticked up in Texas, Maine and Michigan.
From the source
This writer has been carefully following the Senate race forecasts on Virtualtout.io, a predictions site developed by Thomas Miller, a data scientist and professor at Northwestern University. The Miller approach first captured my attention when in January of 2021, his model posited that contrary to the polling, Democrats would win both of the two Senate races in Georgia. Miller scored again by calling for a Trump triumph in 2024. Miller’s template for the current Senate contests once again starts with the “prices” posted on betting sites. He relies on the two platforms that host the most trading, Kalshi and Polymarket. Miller calibrates the prices from both sources so that they reflect percentage probabilities of victory or defeat in each of the 35 races. He then uses multiple time series analysis that adjusts for “underlying factors” that tend to drive all the election “markets.” The overriding force by far, he says, is what Donald Trump just did or said. “The states don’t move…