Who will take control of the Senate?

Inside the U.S. Senate




Where can the Democrats comfortably win seats?





Other Races to Watch.













Who will take control?



Predicting the Presidential Election.

Who will win? Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?






Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.

District of Columbia


Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.





Very safe Democratic state which Hillary Clinton will win with ease.

Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.






Prediction: Clinton.

New Hampshire


Prediction: Clinton.

New Jersey


Prediction: Clinton.

New Mexico


Prediction: Clinton.

New York


Prediction: Clinton.

North Carolina


Prediction: Clinton.

North Dakota


Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.

Rhode Island


Prediction: Clinton.

South Carolina


Prediction: Trump.

South Dakota

Very safe Republican state which hasn’t voted Democrat since 1964.

Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Trump.




Prediction: McMullin.




Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Clinton.

West Virginia


Prediction: Trump.



Prediction: Clinton.



Prediction: Trump.








What to expect from the Vice-Presidential debate.

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Tonight, the first and only Vice-Presidential debate between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence will take place, at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

Typically, there is minimal media attention directed toward the Vice-Presidential debate in an election campaign. This is because the Vice-Presidential debate rarely influences the result of the election in the same way as the Presidential Debates proper do. However, tonight’s debate still matters, and could potentially be important to the eventual outcome of the campaign.

Usually, the point of the Vice-Presidential debate is to test the competence of each Vice-Presidential nominee in case of a situation arising where said nominee is forced to deputise (or take over from) the sitting President. This means that the Vice-Presidential debate is usually a thorough discussion of the record of each candidate, and their competency for the job in hand.

However, this won’t be the case this time around.

This Presidential campaign has been dominated by the records of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and the suitability of each of these candidates for the White House. Expect, this Vice-Presidential debate to be completely dominated by discussion of the competency of Trump and Clinton. Effectively Pence and Kaine will simply be acting as surrogates for their running mates, and answering questions on their behalf.

For Kaine this will mean going after Trump’s temperament and looking to hammer home the message that Clinton looked to push during the first Presidential Debate — that Trump doesn’t have the temperament required for the Oval Office. Given the week that Trump has had, Kaine will certainly have plenty of readily available material to use to criticise Trump.

Pence, on the other hand, will look to push the Trump line that Clinton will not be able to create the change in Washington that Trump can, and that she is simply a member of the political establishment. With Clinton having won the first debate, but not scored anything close to a knockout blow, Kaine’s performance could be very important.

For Pence, he needs to be able to show stability in the Trump campaign. Although Clinton won the debate, it wasn’t a thrashing by any means. However, Trump then spent the rest of the week making things very difficult for himself. He re-ignited a feud with a former Miss Universe winner, which involved him tweeting abuse in the early hours of Friday morning. There was then an investigation by The New York Times which suggested that Trump had been able to avoid income tax for almost twenty years, he failed to respond to this. Finally, he faced renewed question about the status of his charitable foundation, which he failed to answer satisfactorily. None of these did him any favours in terms of his goal of appearing Presidential. Pence needs to put in a solid, measured performance in order to try and put out the fire Trump has lit for himself.

Both Kaine and Pence are known for being mind-mannered, and so it will be interesting to see how they rise to the task of strongly criticising their opponent’s campaign. For Pence, the task is perhaps hardest. He has already been called into action throughout the campaign to defend Trump, but with the week Trump has had, this could prove very difficult. His only option could be to go on the attack.

What could be interesting is whether the debate boils down to a discussion on social issues. This was something which wasn’t covered in the first Presidential Debate, in part because they aren’t a key part of either Trump or Clinton’s pitch to become President. However, Pence is a social-conservative and has long been a champion of the anti-abortion movement, and the push to defund Planned Parenthood. On the other hand, Kaine has been a strong proponent for the abolition of the death penalty, and is generally socially liberal.

Overall, this Vice-Presidential debate could be an interesting one. With Pence facing the task of getting back on message, and negating the impact of some of Trump’s recent indiscretions; and Kaine attempting to hammer home these indiscretions, it could make for compelling viewing. On the other hand, with neither candidate known for their exciting oratory, it could be very dull. Who knows!

Why Hillary may come to regret her selection of Tim Kaine as running mate.

With several months to go until the Presidential election, Hillary Clinton has selected Tim Kaine as her Vice-Presidential running mate.

Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine (Photo: Getty Images).

Kaine is currently a United States Senator for Virginia, having previously served as the Governor of Virginia. As a centrist Democrat, his selection has naturally disappointed many on the more liberal side of the Democratic party, namely those who turned out to vote for Bernie Sanders in great numbers during the primary campaign. Kaine is strongly in favour of the sort of free-trade deals which have been strongly attacked by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as being harmful to American workers. As well as this, Kaine has stated in the past that he personally opposes abortion, although he has supported a woman’s right to choose. Nonetheless, the fact that he is not from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has upset some members of this growing faction, who would have preferred a Vice-Presidential nominee closer to the left of the Democratic Party. Perhaps Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, or Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

Although Sanders clearly lost the primary election, his supporters will feel that the success of such a left-wing candidate should have had more of an impact upon the Democratic Party’s platform for the upcoming Presidential election. Sanders won just over thirteen million votes, compared to the just under seventeen million won by Hillary. In addition, Sanders won more votes from young people (voters under the age of 25) than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined.

Many of these voters chose Sanders over Clinton as they were disillusioned with politics as usual, one of the same reasons why so many people voted for Donald Trump during the Republican primaries. In recent days, Trump has attempted to court the Sanders supporters who dislike Hillary, highlighting the similarities between Trump and Sanders on issues such as international trade (for example, both strongly oppose TPP).

However, although Trump has been reaching out to Sanders supporters, it would be hugely unexpected if vast numbers of people who voted for Bernie Sanders during the primaries, turned out to vote for Donald Trump during the Presidential election. Ultimately, these voters want a progressive, liberal president and so shouldn’t be voting for Trump. No, the real worry for Hillary is that they turn out to vote for a third-party candidate (potentially Green Party candidate Jill Stein, or Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson) or that they simply stay at home on polling day.

Following the conclusion of the Republican Party Convention, Donald Trump crept into the lead in CNN’s post-convention opinion polls, polling 48 per cent to Clinton’s 45 per cent. Although polling will likely swing back in the direction of Hillary following the conclusion of this week’s Democratic Party Convention, the Presidential race remains on a knife edge. Indeed, when third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are included as options in polling, Clinton’s share drops to 39 per cent, with Trump on 44 per cent, showing just how close this year’s Presidential race has become.

With Green Party candidate Jill Stein solidly polling around three per cent, she clearly is not going to become President. However, she certainly has the ability to take enough votes away from Hillary to stop her becoming President. This would somewhat mirror what occurred during the 2000 Presidential Election, where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader took just enough votes in Florida away from Democratic candidate Al Gore to hand the Presidency to Republican candidate George W. Bush.

Given the danger of a similar thing happening to Hillary, you would have thought that she would choose a candidate from the left side of the party in order to guard against this. However, she instead selected a Democrat from a Southern state, probably in an attempt to sweep up some of the traditional Republican vote who are unimpressed by Trump. In addition, Kaine is a fluent Spanish speaker and so Clinton will hope that this will help the campaign capitalise upon Trump’s anti-Hispanic rhetoric. However, although the Trump campaign has been divisive amongst Republicans, it seems that even though Republicans are not united in their choice of candidate, they are united in their hatred of Hillary. You only had to see the massed ranks of Republicans with placards reading ‘Hillary for Prison 2016’ as well as the chants of ‘Lock her up’ during the Republican Party Convention in Cleveland, to see that it seems unlikely that Hillary will be able to gain the votes of many lapsed Republicans during the Presidential election. Instead, she should have focused her strategy upon appeasing the growing left-wing element in the Democratic Party and ensuring that these people turn out to vote for her.

Whilst Hillary Clinton’s selection of Tim Kaine as her running mate could be considered a ‘safe’ choice in some respects — Kaine is tested at every level of public office, he is a solidly Democratic politician who has the ability to be elected in Southern states, and he is a good public speaker — it is unlikely to be a move that excites the base of liberal support built up by the Sanders campaign. The loud booing that accompanied Bernie Sanders Philadelphia speech supporting Hillary’s campaign suggests that many of his supporters feel that by endorsing her, Sanders has sold out his principles. Given the way these people feel, it is hard to see them casting a vote for Hillary come November. Instead, they will either stay at home or vote for a third-party candidate. Both of these scenarios have the potential to be disastrous for Hillary’s campaign. In a race as close as this, turnout is king, and if the Clinton campaign cannot get a strong turnout from the young liberals who supported Sanders during the primaries, then they will lose. Equally, previous presidential elections have shown what can happen when a third-party candidate can gain a groundswell of support around the United States. Perhaps the best example of this is the independent candidacy of businessman Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential Election. Although he failed to gain any electoral college votes, Perot won 18.9 per cent of the vote. He took votes from both sides, but his right-of-centre stance took more support from Republican candidate and incumbent President George H.W. Bush, than it did from Democratic challenger (and eventual victor) Bill Clinton. Given Bill Clinton’s experience in 1992, it seems surprising that Hillary Clinton has not chosen a VP nominee with a scenario like this in mind. Maybe she feels as though there is a little chance of a similar situation occurring. If this is the case, then she is being complacent. She is not universally popular, with some Democrats wishing for a more liberal figure as their nominee, whilst she has become a figure of hate for supporters of the Republican Party (particularly after the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State). In addition, Donald Trump has remained popular a lot longer than most commentators believed, and has shown no sign of losing the support he has built up thus far.

Given this set of circumstances, Hillary should be doing everything she can to unite the Democratic Party for the campaign ahead. For Hillary to have done this properly, she should have picked a ‘firebrand’ liberal as her running mate, in order to appease the ‘Bernie or Bust’ members of the Democratic Party. Although Tim Kaine is an impressive politician, he will not unite the Democratic Party in the same way that someone like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, or even Bernie Sanders himself, may have been able to do.

Therefore, the decision to select Senator Tim Kaine as her nominee for Vice-President, is one that Hillary Clinton could come to regret come the conclusion of the Presidential Election in November.