No betting site has anyone’s probability of victory - at least not on purpose. The platforms respond to money moving, which moves when people take an input and act on it. That input is almost always polling, and I have a suspicion sometimes loads of money from people we can’t see looking to generate posts exactly like this one I’m responding to. Sometimes in blowout blue states you get 98 to 2 splits. Those coincide with probabilities. If I do enough to convince people my phone won’t hit the ground if I drop it, then they may move away from 100 to 0 odds and be wrong. A great example in politics is when Harris supposedly led IA by 3. The markets went insane for Harris because IA like that means something in WI, MN, rest of Midwest. People were responding to Ann Selzer’s rigged poll. But anyone who knows data realizes Harris had roughly a zero chance of carrying Iowa and it was obvious to her campaign because they never even farted in its general direction. So no, there is not a 61% probability Talarico wins. His shares are worth 61 cents right now because people have driven that market in that direction because of polling. Pollsters are currently herding the race to the right after having realized they’d never work again leaving the race at 5-6 points (500,000-600,000 votes margin). Some are choosing exact ties, and some are staying with MOE while still showing Talarico ahead because they don’t want to miss out on “we called it right!” if lightning strikes and Talarico wins while others called it. There is little glory calling the party that always wins the likely winner and people will forget. He has a pathway but it requires a ton to go right without one piece falling out from under him. I would think this would be easy enough for people to understand, but then again, I’d be giving people too much credit. People can’t comprehend that most of the bettors favoring Talarico are from blue states and think Austin represents Texas for anything more than the largest concentration of deranged whackjobs in the state.

History tells you the most likely case. Democrats have an edge to take the house but it isn’t as high as it should be because of redistricting and also because there are a handful of first-tier automatic flips I don’t think they’re going to flip because the DSA candidates were nominated. The Senate is different because it has more traction to presidential baselines and not all seats are up. Democrats have to climb massive mountains to flip it. Then there are state level races for governor and legislature that can’t be predicted using national trends. Some things will be good. Other things will suck. Midterms are about survival. Take it or leave it.

Let me go ahead and warn you. If you’re emotionally invested in the TX Senate race, you are in for at least a few solid days of gaslighting, doom, and negativity. Closely manage your mutes and blocks and pay attention to where the votes are coming from. The attached is a map I’ve made describing the county dispositions of Texas. They are indisputable. There are Essentially five county types in the modern state. Original MAGAverse (Crimson) - based on where even the great O’Rourke was unable to penetrate in 2018, and on a long string of real results, these counties pile up massive margins. Every batch of votes here is good for the GOP ticket, and the idea is to run up turnout. The last time Texans were afraid of a Democrat win (2018), many of these counties produced 85-90% of their 2016 presidential vote count. Regular Red (Pink) - these counties are going to be Republican wins, but they will likely give back some presidential margin. Montgomery and Brazoria are the largest in this group. High turnout here is still good for Paxton. Big Blue Four (Blue) - Democrats have to max out these counties and get huge margins. Harris (Houston), Dallas, Bexar (San Antonio), and Travis (Austin). The media will focus on “record breaking” turnout in these. Dallas will probably give Talarico trouble mobilizing the black vote, as well as Houston. San Antonio and Harris will probably show improvement from 2016-18 for Paxton with working-class Latinos. Every batch of votes from Travis is only good for Talarico. Slipperies (Purple) - These counties had big movement for O’Rourke in 2018. I think Paxton will win two of them, so the mission here is margin control. Talarico needs to move these a lot and will want to flip Collin. New Trumpian Empire (Yellow) - South and West Texas. More than 300,000 total presidential margin moved in these from 2016 to 2024. Talarico will lose a lot of O’Rourke’s raw margin in El Paso County. The increase of GOP support with Hispanic voters was not something the O’Rourke campaign had to worry about in 2018 and is being discounted this year. In a nutshell- In order to win, this is what Talarico needs: *Poor turnout in the crimson *Party turncoats in the pinks *Massive surge to polls in the blues *Betomania in the purples *Massive reversion of the Latino vote in the yellows, back to 2016 presidential level And THAT would be enough for a TILT margin. If the crimson votes in big numbers, the yellow will offset the purples and blues.