How incumbents almost never lose: The congressional races through Indiana through Montana by Jonathan Hamill and Emma Rosenthal

In order to predict the winners of the 2014 congressional elections, we used three main sources, “Ballotpedia”, “The Wall Street Journal” and “Open Secrets”. We used campaign funding, voter polls and recent elections to predict the outcomes of our races. The Wall Street Journal, had predicted the outcomes with almost pinpoint accuracy with the exception of the second congressional district of Maine. Open Secrets showed that funding is usually the primary determiner of who gets elected or re-elected the only candidate who was out spent and was not an incumbent was Bruce Poliquin of Maine’s Second Congressional district. In Maine's Second District Bruce Poliquin defeated Emily Cain by only 5% of the vote, this was surprising because Cian belonged to a historically Democratic District. However we called Cain's victory not only based on this fact but also her over 200k in funding over Poliquin, however this proved to be wrong. In Marylands 6th congressional district there was a mix up of candidates I predicted Dave Banach when the original incumbent was Dutch Ruppersberger who had not only out funded Banach by 900k but also won by over 61% of the vote.  There were three other mistakes partaken between us

In Iowa’s 1st congressional district, the congressional seat seems to always flip flop between the Democrats and the Republicans. However, I predicted that since there is currently a democratic incumbent and that the democratic candidate, Pat Murphy, has much more money that he should have come out victorious. And on paper, it was a completely safe race. However, it seems as if the major disconnect that occurred between the race on paper and what actually happened was the fact the republicans swept The House nation-wide. It seemed as if the Republicans all came out to vote and for that reason, some safe Democratic seats were no longer safe. Looking at the money side of this race, Murphy did have and spent more money all around. However, Rod Blum did receive much more outside help from individuals as well as PACs. This outside support may just be another reason why he was able to edge out the favorite.

In Iowa’s 3rd congressional district, the race was called as a toss-up race from day one. It was also an extremely interesting race from day one too since the incumbent was beaten out in the primary. I projected that Appel would win since she had much more money. However, the money was not what won this election. In this election, the republicans showed up to vote, and swept the house along with this seat.

In Minnesota’s 8th district, I overestimated the amount of effect that the Green Party candidate would have on the overall outcome. I should have considered the money more seriously along with the fact that the incumbent is a Republican. In these midterm elections, being the Republican candidate gave a big advantage, no matter what district. So with this district being a toss up, instead of  independent votes going towards the Green party candidate, the deciding votes followed the pattern of the rest of the country and went to the Republican party.