October 12, 2018 09:59 AM UTC

One of These Candidates Will Definitely Win

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you flip a coin at any given time, there is a very good chance that it will land on either “heads” or “tails.” This, in a nutshell, is what you’ll find from reading CNN’s new prognostication feature called “The Forecast.”

In “The Forecast,” which CNN unveiled today with a big headline on its website, Harry Enten wades through every U.S. House and Senate race in 2018 and essentially comes to the same conclusion everywhere: Someone is definitely going to win.

Here’s what Enten says about Colorado’s most competitive Congressional race in CO-6:

My best estimate gives Jason Crow a six-point win. The worst case for Jason Crow is to lose by 9 points. That means Jason Crow is favored, but the margin of error is wide enough that we shouldn’t be surprised if Mike Coffman comes from behind.

Uh, thanks?

If Enten were a meteorologist, he would be predicting that it would either be sunny or cloudy or rainy or snowy today; high temperatures would be expected to range anywhere from 0-110 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are several decent political forecasts available online, from “Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball” to “Inside Elections.” These forecasts are helpful because they are more than just database number crunching devoid of all context or local knowledge. Perhaps someday soon we will be able to plug a bunch of numbers into an algorithm that will produce reliable, useful results…but we aren’t there yet.