Today, on election day, several races with national implications are still too close to call. One of those races is in the state of Missouri, a state President Trump won by nearly 20 points in the 2016 Presidential election. However, according to a RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls conducted on the race, it is currently tied.
Two fierce candidates, incumbent Claire McCaskill and up and coming political star Josh Hawley are locked in an ugly battle for the right to represent Missouri in Washington D.C. Historically, Missouri is a political bellwether state. Missouri voted for the winning Presidential candidate in every election during the 20th century with the exception of Adlai Stevenson in 1956. The Chicago Tribune called Missouri the “bellwether state that almost exactly mirrors the demographic, economic and political makeup of the nation” to explain Missouri’s uncanny ability to pick the winning side. Missouri goes as the nation goes and despite a shift towards the Republican party in the 21st century, the 2018 midterms allow Missouri to reclaim its bellwether status.
In order for Republicans to retain a majority of the seats in the House, FiveThirtyEight’s Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver claimed Republicans “need a systematic polling error.” Surprisingly, FiveThirtyEight also has the Missouri Senate race as a tie in its polling, but they give McCaskill over a 60% chance to win citing a bias in the polling conducted on the race. FiveThirtyEight also takes into account polling bias while measuring Generic Congressional Ballot polls. Without FiveThirtyEight’s manipulation of polling data to attempt and correct for measurement error, the Missouri Race is a dead heat and the battle for Congress is alive as well.
How the Missouri Senate race turns out will be a model to the rest of the country. If Hawley, the Republican challenger, wins decisively, it is very likely Republicans will have better results in the midterms nationwide than most forecasts indicate. However, if McCaskill can keep her seat or if she beats Hawley by more than 3 points, Republicans may lose 50 or more seats in Congress and have the narrowest of margins in the Senate.
If you are reading this on Tuesday, November 6th, wherever you are, make sure to go vote. Especially vote if you are in Missouri because you never know, this race may come down to the thinnest of margins.
-Ethan Harper
