Project Manager @maristpoll. Data Science Fellow @VoteHub. Occasional writing on Substack. Marist '30
Poughkeepsie, NY
Joined June 2023
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Scott Colom will be Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction, its first directly elected Black senator, and its first Democratic senator since 1982, completing a historic upset over incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in a barnburner.
I’d be very careful about labeling Texas as red, blue, or even purple. Hispanic dealignment and suburban expansion leave the state primed for drastic swings between elections.
It has all the demographic ingredients to be extremely elastic, as we’ve seen this year.
Even if Darline Graham matched Alan Wilson's vote share in Norman-won runoff counties, she still would've lost by 24,792 votes.
Colom has surpassed 470,000 votes, roughly 3,000 more than Harris received in Mississippi, with votes still being counted.
Mississippi’s primary electorate was just R+3 this year, driven by surging Black turnout in the west, even before Callais. Add Hyde-Smith’s electoral weakness (she’s never won by more than 10!), and there’s a strong case to be made the data pointed towards a single-digit race.
Democrats are on pace to deal a major blow to the NCGOP’s redistricting efforts, turning an 11R-3D gerrymander into an 11D-3R delegation thanks to Cooper’s sweeping coattails.
The sequel to my July article on Black turnout is here! The post-Callais surge in primary turnout carried over into the general, delivering seismic Democratic gains across the Deep South.
Democrats won across the country in last week's midterms, but much of their Senate gains were concentrated in the Deep South, where Black voters turned out and supported Democratic candidates at unprecedented rates, writes @ElliscbIV.
votehub.com/2026/11/10/a-pos…
James Talarico received a larger share of the vote as a Democrat in Texas than Chuck Gray did as a Republican in Wyoming.
Very skeptical Schumer loses his leadership bid given the secret ballot, but this development is really notable. Just three senators have publicly committed to backing him as leader, while seven senators-elect have thrown cold water.
New in @playbookdc: A person familiar with Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s thinking about running for majority leader told Playbook he’s “received an outpouring of calls and is now in active listening mode. The door is not shut.”
.@ChazNuttycombe makes a great point about how poor EV numbers alerted the GOP to its VA-5 problem.
I wonder if the lack of EV in MS hurt the GOP. They knew there was an issue but were largely flying blind, unlike in LA, where EV numbers set off immediate alarm bells.
My personal Virginia predictions and the @StateNavigate poll did remarkably well this year; the error will be reduced further as same-day registration votes are counted by Wednesday (esp. in VA5, though Perriello will narrowly lose).
The last-minute GOP money saved McGuire, IMO. R's got caught sleeping at the wheel in a lot of reliably Republican districts this year, but everyone in Virginia knew from the start of early voting that it was a dogfight.
Proud to say my predictions nailed Maine and Michigan, which just so happened to be the two main battleground Senate races I led election night coverage for.
The polls did end up overestimating Collins (as I warned!)
Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Texas all voted against Trump’s first primary bid. A decade later, they have a chance to deliver the final blow.
My 2026 midterm predictions ⬇️
ellisbatesiv.com/p/predictin…
Circling back to this, yes. Colom ran the cycle’s best Senate campaign.
One major strategic win for Democrats was the appeal of the “liberal Christian” candidate.
Talarico and Hamilton turned Trump +14 Texas and Trump +17 Kansas into their clearest paths to Senate control, outperforming candidates in Ohio, Iowa, South Carolina, and likely Alaska.
