Fox News Power Rankings provide insight into the competitiveness of elections. Each ranking is informed by data, reporting, and analysis.
Which races are ranked?
Power Rankings are available for every President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and Governor’s race each election cycle.
What does each ranking mean?
Races are assigned to one of seven categories:
Toss-Up: Neither party has an advantage.
Lean D or Lean R: One party has an edge but the race is highly competitive.
Likely D or Likely R: One party leads but the race is competitive.
Solid D or Solid R: This race is not competitive.
Rankings are pre-election predictions. In other words, they are based on known information about a race before any votes are counted.
Rankings predict the outcome of an election result. For example, if a race is labeled “Likely R,” it means that the Republican candidate is likely to win the race, not necessarily that the candidate will win by a large number of votes.
How are the rankings decided?
Power Rankings are driven by data, reporting, and analysis. The three factors are:
Polling: The results of recent Fox News Polls and other polls that meet Fox News editorial standards.
Election fundamentals: Results from previous elections and relevant non-election data, like demographic data and economic figures.
Candidate strength: Fundraising reports, incumbency data, and reporting from the campaign trail.
The rankings are nonpartisan. Democratic and Republican sources may provide information about a race but have no influence on ranking decisions.
How is the forecast decided?
President
To win a presidential election, a candidate must win a majority of Electoral College votes, or 270 votes. Electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the popular vote in each state.
(Maine and Nebraska award two votes to their statewide winner and one vote to the winner of the presidential vote in each of the states’ congressional districts.)
The Power Rankings forecast is a calculation of the total number of electoral votes for states categorized as Solid, Likely, or Lean for each party. Toss Up states are not added to either party’s total votes.
A candidate with at least 270 electoral votes is the predicted winner. If neither candidate has at least 270 votes, terms like ‘lead’ or ‘edge’ are used depending on the strength of their advantage.
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Senate & House
To win control of the Senate, a party must win a majority of seats, or 51 seats. The same applies to the House, where 218 seats is a majority.
The Power Rankings forecast is a calculation of the total number of seats categorized as Solid, Likely, or Lean for each party. Toss Up seats are not added to either party’s total seats.
A party with the majority of seats in the Senate and/or House is predicted to have control of that chamber. If neither party has a majority, terms like ‘lead’ or ‘edge’ are used depending on the strength of their advantage.
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How does the Power Rankings Issues Tracker work?
The Fox News Power Rankings Issues Tracker measures the advantage a candidate or party has on specific issues. For every issue, it compares an average of polls that measure whom voters trust more on that issue.
For example, if the average of polls show 60% of voters trust the GOP more on the economy, while 40% trust the Democrats more, the tracker shows a 20-point lead for the GOP on the economy issue.
If a candidate or party’s advantage is outside the margin of error of the tracker, then the candidate leads on that issue. If their advantage is within the margin of error, terms like ‘edge’ or ‘ahead’ are used.
The number for each issue is calculated by averaging recent polls that:
Meet the same standards as those included in the Power Rankings, and
Ask voters whether they believe a candidate or party could “better handle” or “address” a given issue, or words to that effect.
Questions about candidate qualities like honesty and age usually do not ask respondents to compare the candidates within the question, so for some categories, the tracker is calculated by averaging “yes” (or positive) answers to the same question for each candidate.
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The tracker shows which candidate or party voters prefer on an issue, not how important the issue is to their vote.
Issues and qualities are included in the tracker if the Fox News Poll or at least two other eligible polls asked about them.
