Election 2024 updates: With Arizona, Trump sweeps all 7 swing states

From taxes to abortion, from immigration to health care, the policy stakes for this presidential election are large. But there is a consolation prize that is likely to go to the party that loses this presidential election: control of the House of Representatives in two years' time.

Political scientists have documented that American electoral politics is subject to powerful, often predictable tides. And as I wrote back in 2016, midterm elections, and especially midterm elections for the U.S. House, offer a clear example of that. Particularly in an era of close margins in the House, whichever party loses the presidency today will become the immediate favorite to retake the House in the next election.

Dating all the way back to 1980, there has only been one presidential election in which the losing party didn't wind up in control of the House of Representatives after the subsequent midterm, regardless of whether they controlled the House at the start of their president's term. In the other 11 elections since then, the party that lost the White House either regained the House or held control in the subsequent midterm. Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all saw their party lose control of the House in their first midterm election; Republican Donald Trump did in 2018 as well.

The only exception came in 2002, when 9/11 had reshaped the political landscape and helped Republicans gain seats in the House while George W. Bush was president. But even Bush was not immune from this pattern — in 2006, two years after his reelection, his Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate.

Ted Cruz has established quite the reputation as a rabble-rouser; but his confrontational, and often unconventional, politicking has earned him yet another competitive general election challenge.

This isn't the first time that the two-term senator has faced a serious challenger. In 2018, Cruz narrowly eked out a win against onetime Democratic sensation Beto O'Rourke, and it's likely tonight's race will be similarly close. 538's final average of polls gives Cruz only a 4-point lead over his opponent, Democratic Rep. Colin Allred.

Part of the reason why Cruz finds himself here again is because he's one of the most loathed members of Congress. He was among several Republican senators who tried to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden's victory in 2020 and has refused to answer whether he'll accept the results of his own race tonight. And despite his largely unsuccessful attempts to rebrand himself as bipartisan, Cruz has repeatedly leaned into red meat and culture issues to fire up his base of Texas' most staunch conservative voters.

Texans have taken notice: According to an October poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Cruz was viewed as more ideologically extreme than Allred. Just 26% of likely voters said they'd describe Allred as "extremely liberal" compared with 44% who rated Cruz as "extremely conservative."

Allred has worked to take advantage of this perception. During a spirited debate on October 15, the former NFL player made repeated reference to the fact that he's been rated Texas' most bipartisan member of Congress. He's also tried to paint Cruz as someone who won't work across the aisle, citing, for instance, that Cruz was among a group of Senate Republicans who torpedoed a bipartisan border legislation package in February after former President Donald Trump came out against it. Allred has also laced into Cruz for refusing to say whether he agrees with Texas' near-total abortion ban and for taking that infamous trip to Cancún in 2021 amid a weeklong storm that left many of the state's residents without power or water.

Cruz's attempts to fight back have mainly been focused on comparing Allred to Democratic bogeymen like Nancy Pelosi. And in the home-stretch to Election Day, Cruz has amped up attacks focused on Allred's support for policies supporting transgender Americans. (Allred in 2023 voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would've cut off federal funds for athletic programs that allow transgender men to compete in women's or girls' sports.)

538's final election forecast gives Cruz about an 84-in-100 shot at winning the Senate race. And in a lean-Republican state like Texas, the race remains his to lose. But the Republican's vulnerability for a second go-around is an interesting sight to see and raises questions about whether Democrats might be closing the gap on flipping a statewide seat there — something the party hasn't accomplished since 1994.

And now for the race that is decidedly not close: the race to control the Senate. Our model gives Republicans a 92-in-100 chance of winning control of the upper chamber, which includes scenarios in which they win 51 seats or more and scenarios in which they win 50 seats as well as the White House. (The vice president breaks ties in the Senate.)

Republicans' strength in our forecast comes from their expected wins in reliably red Montana and Ohio, where moderate Democratic incumbents are trying to fend off fierce competition from Republicans. In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester is trailing Republican Tim Sheehy by about 7 points in the 538 polling average. In Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown is polling 0.8 points behind Republican businessman Bernie Moreno. And our forecast gives the Democratic candidate in West Virginia, Glenn Elliott, less than a 1-in-100 chance of holding onto retiring Sen. Joe Manchin's seat.

If Democrats lose at least two of these seats, which our forecast reckons should happen about 95% of the time, they would need to pick up new senators from either Florida or Texas to hold onto their majority. They currently have a 16-in-100 chance of winning each. That is not negligible; to return to our classic examples, it's about the chance of rolling a standard six-sided dice and getting a one. But with Democratic candidates with no record of overperformance statewide and weak polling numbers, our model thinks the party has a fairly steep uphill climb in each.

One thing I'll be keeping an eye on as results start to come in is how the electoral votes are stacking up compared to the popular vote. In each of the past two elections, Trump lost the popular vote, but he lost the Electoral College only once. According to 538's final election forecast, we see a repeat of that split in around 21 in 100 simulations. For Harris, an Electoral College win with a popular vote loss is far less likely, with only a few simulations sitting in the top right quadrant of our Electoral College vs. popular vote scatter plot.

Either way, a split outcome could inspire calls to abolish the Electoral College — in a YouGov/The Economist poll last week, 54% of Americans agreed that the winner of the presidential election should be the candidate with the most votes nationwide, while only 28% said they would favor the current system.