What do the scoreboards represent?
For the presidential race, we add up the electoral votes represented by each category of our classification. So we have allocated all 538 electoral votes as either strongly supportive or leaning to a candidate. For the race for Senate, we have classified the current standing of the 35 contests and added those numbers to the party affiliations of the 63 Senators not facing an election this year. As such, the large numbers in the middle of the scoreboard should add to 100. The two senators labeled as “other” (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut) caucus with the Democrats. We follow the same procedure for the races for Governor, plotting our classifications for the 11 contests for Governor and adding those numbers to the party affiliation of the remaining 39 governors not up for election this year.
