Been getting a lot of requests for a new thread, in spite of the fact that like I've said a couple of times now there's not a lot that's going to be going on in the next couple of months. That said, since I'm tired of getting PMs about it I'll just go ahead and leave this here so people can watch it sit idle rather than wonder if anything worthwhile is happening. With that, your initial (and in some cases incomplete) 2016 likely outcome ranges:

President: Tilts Democratic - until we know candidates and electoral atmosphere
House: D+? - R+? - will update after the earliest round of candidate recruitment
Senate: D+9 - R+2 - will change more when we know retirements and red-state Democratic challengers
Governors: D+2 - R+3

House: 2014 set up a pretty unique battleground for next time. Several deeply-conservative districts that had long been represented by conservative Democrats finally transitioned over to Republican representatives like they probably should have done decades ago and there's no reason to think they'll be competitive moving forward. Due to abnormally-low turnout in 2014 some consistently-blue districts also flipped to the GOP for 2-year rentals and they likely won't be very competitive either; they will just easily flip back over. You are going to have about 15-20 really competitive House districts though, possibly more if the parties do their job in recruiting quality candidates. It's too early to know how well (or poorly) they are doing right now but early indication is that the Democrats are having the success they thought they would have in pairing downballot candidates with what they hoped would be a powerful presidential candidate. They had to compete against this scenario last time as potential candidates wanted to wait for 2016 but now the wait is over.

Senate: Close 2014 losses in Alaska and North Carolina in particular give the Democrats two top-tier options for candidates if they can convince Mark Begich and/or Kay Hagan to throw their hat back in the ring. The Democrats are preparing to unleash the largest "flood the zone" offensive seen from either party since 1994 and waging stiff challenges all over the map is crucial for the party's attempt to try to retake the Senate. They'll put forward a strong challenge in North Carolina with or without Hagan but recruiting Begich would get the Democrats their premier candidate. We now know Mary Landrieu is eligible to run in 2016 after her runoff loss but it's unlikely her or Mark Pryor of Arkansas try again. Democrats will probably choose to contest neither race.

This post was edited by Pollster on Dec 11 2014 04:54pm

Well. This should be fun.

Lol top tier candidates.

I don't expect much activity for quite a while because even though there's an immense amount of campaign and candidate recruitment activity going on right now it's not of the variety that most people really see, understand, or care about with the election 23 months away.

That said, there's really no discussion in the future or now to be had on the electoral strength of Begich and Hagan. They are quite obviously the premiere Democratic candidates in their respective states, as anyone with even an elementary understanding of campaigns and elections recognizes. Their accomplishments in 2008 in those states with all the idiosyncratic difficulties they present would speak for itself, but you could add on top of that the performance of both this year against the massive headwinds they faced. There simply isn't a better Democratic candidate in Alaska than Begich, and Hagan could make a similar claim that would either be acknowledged upfront by her peers or acknowledged after she beat them in a primary. The only outstanding question in both cases is whether or not they have any interest in campaigning again.

isn't this like 2 years too soon

From the hack himself.

Was half expecting:

President: D+2

Lulz

Are there really requests for this?

Guys, quit bothering Jay. He's enjoying retirement at the moment.

Working non-profit for MSNBC, making 40k a year.

This post was edited by IceMage on Dec 11 2014 09:07pm