A couple decades ago, The Rothenberg Political Report would wait months before placing individual Senate races into specific ratings categories, admitting that the election cycle was far from taking shape. But that would be almost unthinkable today. For example, most media outlets that handicap races released 2020 Senate ratings before the 2018 election results were certified. There’s a significant temptation to feed the beast.
We held off releasing our initial 2020 Senate ratings until our Jan. 4 issue, but it’s a fair question to ask: how predictive are early ratings anyway?
Early ratings are an initial look at which races…
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