Senate sits at 45-54 for Democrats as House estimate stays near 239 seats

Sixty days out, our model gives Democrats a 45 in 100 chance of winning Senate control, against 54 percent for Republicans. The mean Democratic seat total in our simulations is 50.0. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. That is down from the 47 percent our model carried a day earlier.

In the House, our model gives Democrats a 93 percent chance of winning a majority and Republicans 6 percent, with a mean Democratic total of 239.4 seats against the 218 needed for control. One caveat there is ours to own: our simulation draws correlated error at the national, census-division, state and district levels, but not across demographically similar districts in different places, because we have no cluster data for that term. Without it, our House control probability is marginally firmer than a fuller decomposition would leave it. We are not putting a number on the size of that gap, because this run does not measure it.

Our generic ballot average stands at D+6.3, drawn from 25 polls fielded within the past 45 days. The individual surveys spread widely. Morning Consult, polling 28,429 registered voters August 24-30, had Democrats ahead 47.1 percent to 42.3 percent. An Economist/YouGov survey of 1,434 registered voters, fielded August 28-31, had it 46-40, while the same pollster's sample of 1,589 adults had it 36-31. Ipsos, polling 924 registered voters for Reuters August 28-31, had Democrats up 43-38; its sample of 1,167 adults had 38-31, with 3 percent for others. A HarrisX poll for Harvard CAPS of 2,100 registered voters, fielded August 28-30, put the margin at 51-49 for Democrats, and the same pollster's likely-voter sample had Republicans at 51 and Democrats at 49.

Two Senate races moved toward the Democrats. Our Iowa estimate rose 15.5 points, from 21 percent to 37 percent for Josh Turek, after a Wedgewood Polls survey of 600 likely voters, fielded August 27-29, showed Ashley Hinson at 50 percent and Turek at 48 percent, and an Emerson College poll for Nexstar of 750 likely voters, fielded August 31 to September 1, showed Hinson at 49.5 percent and Turek at 45.1 percent. Michigan rose 10.9 points, to 69 percent for Abdul El-Sayed, after an Abacus Data poll of 500 registered voters, fielded August 26-28, showed El-Sayed at 41 percent and Mike Rogers at 35 percent. Our Virginia figure fell 8.7 points, from 99 percent to 90 percent.

The day's largest House shifts ran the other way. Our OH-7 estimate fell 22.2 points, from 52 percent to 30 percent for the Democrat, and TX-15 fell 18.2 points, from 55 percent to 37 percent. In TX-35, a Normington, Petts & Associates poll for House Majority PAC, fielded August 27-31 among likely voters, had Republican Carlos De La Cruz at 45 percent and Democrat Johnny Garcia at 44 percent, a close result. No sample size or margin of error was reported with it.