North Carolina's Senate Field Is Unanimous for Cooper, While Shapiro and Sexton Stand Alone Elsewhere | MissedTakes Election Brief
North Carolina's Senate Pundits Don't Disagree About Anything
Twenty days out, the one race drawing total agreement is also the one with the fattest list of callers: all 13 pundits who've made a call on North Carolina's Senate race say Roy Cooper beats Michael Whatley. That includes every forecaster tracking the race (3 of 3) and every talker (10 of 10), no split between the modelers and the microphone crowd here, which is the exception this cycle, not the rule.
The outside numbers back the field up. Polymarket has Cooper at 96 cents to Whatley's 4, and VoteHub's average of four polls through October 11 puts Cooper ahead 52% to 41.3%, a 10.7-point lead, with Shannon Bray pulling 3.7%.
What's notable is who's in that 13. Tom Bevan called Cooper on September 28 carrying the best record on this list by a wide margin (97.6% accuracy on 18 graded calls, a 52.7 MissedTakes Score, though the sample is still limited). Josh Kraushaar called Cooper on October 13 carrying the opposite: 20.8% accuracy on 5 graded calls and a score of -40.4, a record early enough that it's still provisional. Neither circumstance moved either of them off Cooper, and that's the point of a race like this: agreement here says nothing about who's right, only that the gap between a pundit who's historically been careful and one who hasn't has closed to zero on this particular call. Ben Shapiro picked Cooper twice, on October 9 and again on October 14 (he carries a 63.9% accuracy and 25.3 score over 81 graded calls, a sample the site still calls limited).
Shapiro's single busiest day of the cycle
Shapiro also supplied the volume story. Of his 16 calls so far this cycle, ten landed on October 14 alone, covering Michigan, North Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Ohio's special election, Iowa, Maine, plus picks on both House and Senate control. On Senate control he picked Republican while also filing a seat-count call putting Republicans at net -1, two numbers that point in different directions on how comfortable that majority looks. Kraushaar, on the same stretch, filed his own seat-count call: Democrats netting "three to four seats" in the Senate (October 13), which would be enough to flip it. Two pundits, overlapping windows, opposite signs on where the chamber is headed.
Standing alone: Alaska and New Hampshire
Two pundits are each out on their own this week. In Alaska, Shapiro is the only caller (as of his October 14 pick) on Republican against 7 who have named Mary Peltola, including forecasters Kyle Kondik, Lakshya Jain and Carl Cannon. Polymarket has Peltola at 74 cents with no price quoted on a Republican candidate, and the one VoteHub poll on record has her at 47.2%.
In New Hampshire, Buck Sexton is alone on John E. Sununu, a call he's made twice now (September 17 and October 6) against 6 pundits on Chris Pappas, including Kondik twice and Megyn Kelly on October 7. Sexton carries a 59.9% accuracy and an 11 MissedTakes Score across 25 graded calls, a record still limited by sample size.
On the record
The 2026 cycle now holds 437 calls from 73 pundits, with 109 filed in the last seven days and 21 new since our last brief. None of it is graded yet, the season hasn't answered any of these races. For the running tally of who's called what, see the election leaderboard and the US Elections hub.