›the wire
pollsters, desks & analysts · click through to the thread›signal integrity
every feed, every poll›poll-closing schedule
eastern time›how the needle works
Before votes are counted, each needle is set by prediction markets. Kalshi, Polymarket, PredictIt and Manifold are blended with weights of 45, 35, 12 and 8. The blended probability becomes an expected margin with a standard deviation of 7 points.
As the expected vote comes in, the counted margin replaces that prior, and the uncertainty shrinks with the vote still outstanding. A needle stops moving once a race is called.
Senate control comes from 6,000 correlated simulations of all 35 seats, blended with the chamber markets. That blend leans more on the simulations as more vote is counted. The 34 Democratic and 31 Republican seats not up this year are fixed. A 50–50 split goes to the GOP via the Vice President.
States with no Senate or governor race (IN, MO, ND, UT, WA) are ranked by their 2024 presidential margin plus the live national swing. Bellwether 2024 baselines are approximate and can be edited in data/bellwethers.json.