Sabato’s Crystal Ball assigns qualitative ratings for various elections, utilizing a 7-point scale ranging from Safe Democratic to Safe Republican. Sabato’s ratings cover presidential elections and races for the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and state governor. PollyVote converts these ratings into probabilities for the parties to win a particular race.

Treating these probabilities as independent forecasts, PollyVote conducts 100,000 simulations each for presidential, Senate, and House elections. This process generates forecasts for Electoral College Votes, Senate and House seat distributions, and estimates the parties‘ likelihood of winning each branch of government.