Race to the WH
American political forecaster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Race to the WH is an American political forecasting website that was founded in 2020 by Logan Phillips. The website predicts presidential, senate, house, and governor races.
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 2020 |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Created by | Logan Phillips |
| URL | racetothewh |
History
Race to the WH was founded in 2020 by Logan Phillips. Phillips started the program when he was getting his graduate degree at Columbia University. He studied Presidential Campaign Management under Karine Jean-Pierre, the former Biden press secretary. Phillips worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign and Dannel Malloy's re-election campaign for governor of Connecticut in 2014.[1][non-primary source needed]
Race to the WH uses a political model with quantitative data to forecast their election, instead of using qualitative data.[2] They create a forecast in which they simulate the national popular vote, factor it onto the current partisan lean of a state, comparing it to results from the last 50 years of elections in that state, and then running it through the a simulator. During this, they also take partisan drift (how a state has been moving relative to the nation in recent elections) and recent special election performance as factors as well.[3][better source needed] They then run their model over 50,000 times and then average it to find the most common results, accounting for factors of over performance with a demographic or region.[4] Lastly, they then run their models filtering conditions to match previous elections to test the accuracy of the model.[5]
In the 2024 cycle, Race to the WH provided polling averages to Split Ticket for their House of Representatives predictions.[6][better source needed] Logan Phillips also did a joint interview with Lakshya Jain of Split Ticket on Politico about the 2024 presidential election.[7]
Predictions
During the 2022 election cycle, Race to the WH called 96.5% of the races correctly, only getting one Senate race, two gubernatorial races, and 16/435 of the House races incorrect, making them one of the "most accurate forecasters of 2022".[8][9]
During the 2024 election cycle, Race to the WH incorrectly predicted Kamala Harris would have a higher chance at winning the presidency,[10] due to strong showings in the blue wall.[9][11] However, the group did correctly predict all but two of the Senate races, incorrectly forecasting Bob Casey Jr.'s and Sherrod Brown's win in Pennsylvania and Ohio respectively.
Race to the WH's 2026 election cycle predictions were featured on American political website 270towin and on the website of American statistician Nate Silver.[12][2][non-primary source needed]
Race to the WH and Logan Phillips believe that Democrats could have a natural advantage in the 2026 as these midterms are under a Republican president, and the fact that midterms always affect the sitting president's party.[6][better source needed] Their predictions and data are also cited by Gonzaga University as a credible place to find information about electoral forecasting, and Cambridge University with regards to interpreting forecasting data from the 2024 cycle.[13][14]
Race to the WH has compiled early 2028 presidential primary averages, which have JD Vance winning the Republican nomination and Gavin Newsom winning the Democratic nomination.[15][16]