Six races move as our generic ballot average sits at D+6.6

Our model gives Democrats a 43 in 100 chance of winning control of the Senate as of 6:30 AM ET Sunday, with Republicans at 56 percent. The mean outcome across our simulations is 49.9 Democratic seats. 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. In the House, our model puts the Democratic chance of a majority at 94 percent and the Republican chance at 6 percent, with a mean of 241.2 Democratic seats against the 218 needed. Our generic ballot average stands at D+6.6, drawn from 22 polls fielded within the past 45 days.

The House figure rests on a simulation that draws error at four correlated levels: one national, one per census division, one per state, and one for each district. It does not include a term linking demographically similar districts in different places, because we have no cluster data for one. That omission is ours, and it leaves our House control number marginally firmer than a fuller decomposition would.

Six races moved since the last run. The largest change is in Alaska's 1st District, where the Democratic win probability fell 73.9 points, from 74 percent to zero. In Texas's 15th District, the Democratic chance rose 17.3 points, from 35 percent to 52 percent. The Ohio Senate race moved 12 points toward the Republican, from 54 percent to a 42 percent Democratic chance. Arizona's 2nd District moved 8 points, from 51 percent to 43 percent. The Texas Senate race moved 9.2 points toward the Democrat, to 66 percent, and Ohio's 7th District moved 8.9 points to an even 50 percent.

Recent Senate polling covers a wide spread of states. In Texas, a Texas Public Opinion Research survey of 1,000 likely voters fielded August 21-24 had James Talarico at 48 percent and Ken Paxton at 42 percent. The University of New Hampshire polled 1,878 likely voters in New Hampshire on August 20-24 and found Chris Pappas at 45 percent and Scott Brown at 40 percent. The same pollster, over the same dates, had Jack Reed at 51 percent to Raymond McKay's 31 percent among 750 Rhode Island likely voters, and Ed Markey at 49 percent to John Deaton's 30 percent among 881 likely voters in Massachusetts. In Michigan, two EPIC-MRA surveys of 600 likely voters fielded August 22-28 had Abdul El-Sayed at 47 percent to Mike Rogers's 43 percent, and at 50 percent to 45 percent.

In Ohio's 1st District, Quantus Insights polled 509 likely voters August 21-24 and released four versions of the ballot test. Greg Landsman ranged from 47 to 52 percent and Eric Conroy from 43 to 48 percent, with margins between three and four points in each. The race is close on those numbers.