In Inside Elections, you wrote back in mid-October that the elections were coming right down to the wire.
How much has changed since you wrote that?
Well, a lot has changed, but that assessment has not.
These elections are still incredibly close, and there are ample opportunities for both Democrats and Republicans to win control of the White House, of the House of Representatives, and we're even seeing some late shifts in the United States Senate.
So there are a lot of moving pieces in this election, but the top-line assessment that either party could come away from Tuesday with a pretty good night remains exactly the same.
What is the blue wall?
And can you talk a bit about the likelihood that Harris is going to gain some victories in those states?
The blue wall is a term coined by the legendary Ron Brownstein to talk about the set of states that voted consistently for Democratic presidential candidates from 1988 onwards to all the way up until 2016.
Now, originally, that meant it included traditionally Democratic states like California, New York, Maryland, as well as some of the swing states that always seemed to break for Democrats.
But in 2016, what we saw was the blue wall begin to crack.
So Donald Trump carried Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and that was enough for him to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Now, when people talk about the blue wall path to victory for Kamala Harris, that's essentially what they're talking about is winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and getting to 270 electoral votes for the Democrat.
If you factor in those California, New York, Washington, Oregon, the states that we know are going to consistently vote for the Democratic nominee.
So the blue wall is one of the two main pathways, the two main theaters of this presidential election, along with, of course, the Sunbelt states in the South that have become more increasingly competitive.
Now then, how much impact do you expect Vice President Harris and former President Trump and people's decisions whether or not to support them to affect some of the down ballot races, especially with the House and Senate so competitive?
The presidential has a lot of effects on the down ballot races because we were at a historical low in the practice of ticket splitting.
It used to be that how you voted for president only had a minimal bearing on how you voted for a race down ballot.
People were more than happy to vote one party for president, a different party for Senate and House.
In fact, a lot of people did that.
We saw Democrats continue to do very well in Republican-leaning states up until about 2010.
Democratic senators in Montana and North Dakota and Louisiana, places that were not electing Democrats at the top of the ticket, and the same thing in the House.