You are familiar with the Congressional race projections from G. Elliott Morris at The Crosstab, which I’ve noted here and here. He uses a probabilistic model for each district. Which as it happens is also the approach taken by FiveThirtyEight in their model. You can see all those projections here. You know what that means: Let’s compare the two!
Dist XTab 538
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CD02 12.9% 7.8%
CD03 5.5% 0.8%
CD06 18.2% 6.6%
CD07 52.0% 49.3%
CD10 18.1% 2.6%
CD14 5.2% 1.8%
CD17 3.5% 0.5%
CD21 18.1% 17.8%
CD22 17.4% 14.2%
CD23 84.6% 72.4%
CD24 25.3% 4.4%
CD25 9.1% 7.9%
CD27 5.6% 0.5%
CD31 9.3% 20.1%
CD32 41.4% 11.7%
Overall, 538 is a bit more pessimistic about the individual Texas races. Where the Crosstab sees CDs 02, 06, 10, and especially 24 as lower-tier possibilities, 538 basically views them as nearly impossible. The one place 538 is more bullish than the Crosstab is in CD31; I’d love to understand the particulars behind that difference. But by far the most striking difference is in CD32, which the Crosstab has as slightly leaning red, while 538 sees it has almost a lock for the Republicans, behind not only CD31 but also CDs 21 and 22 on the Dem pickup list. That’s well out of line with the view of other national prognosticators, and at least one poll. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong, just that any time there’s this big a difference of opinion it’s notable. I’ll check back on this later to see if anything changes.
The “beauty” of probabilistic models (for the publishers) is that you can NEVER say they were wrong.
Which is also why they are useless for anyone seeking insights.