Monopoly Politics 2004: Even Less Competition Than in 2002
Initial Release November 8, 2002Updated September 15, 2004
On November 6, 2002 -- one day after the mid-term congressional elections -- we issued our initial projections in more than 350 races for elections in November 2004. We used the same methodology that had a 99.9% accuracy rate in projecting winners in more than 1,200 races from 1996-2002. In March 2004, we updated these projections, based on the following factors: newly open seats (where an incumbent would not be running for re-election); Texas congressional district line changes; and updated data on 2000 presidential results by congressional district (in 2002 we had made estimates in 50 districts for which this data had not been available). Since then we have only made additional changes based on newly-created open seats, party shifts (two Democratic incumbents have changed parties) and special election results (Democrats won two special elections). Our final number of projected winners is 351.
The 2004 Monopoly Politics projections are now available in Excel format. If you choose to view this file as an Excel workbook, please right-click and save the file to your hard drive. If, in Excel, you have difficulties using the spreadsheet, go to "Window" and then "Unfreeze Panes" so you can scroll down the page. This spreadsheet contains all the data used to make projections along with the actual projection model and allows the users to modify a variety of parameters to observe their impact on the accuracy of the projections.
The 2002 elections were strikingly uncompetitive:
2002 Election Results
| Range | Number of races |
| Landslide wins (>=20% margin) | 356 |
| Comfortable wins (>=10) | 41 |
| Tight (<10% margin) | 38 |
| Total Races | 435 |
Here are our Monopoly Politics projections for 2002 and 2004 as of April 29, 2004. Without a major partisan surge for one party, expect the 2004 elections to be even less competitive. Also, note the increase from 2002 to 2004 in the number of projected landslides victories.
2002 and 2004 Monopoly Politics Projections| Number of Projections | ||
| Range | 2002 | 2004 |
| Landslide (>=20% margin) | 196 | 211 |
| Comfortable (>=10) | 101 | 107 |
| Tight (<10% margin) | 38 | 33 |
| Total Projection | 335 | 351 |
Competitive | 83 | 70 |
Vulnerable | 17 | 14 |
Total No Projection | 100 | 84 |
We downloaded a map of the 2002 House election results from the New York Times website.
Finally, you can read a glossary of terms used in the Monopoly Politics 2004 projections, a User's Guide and a description of the algorithm used in the menu on the left.