In competitive swimming, a heat sheet is the document handed out before a meet that lists every race, every competitor, their seed times, and their lane assignments. It's the essential reference -- a compact, data-rich summary of who's racing, where they stand, and what to expect.
That's exactly what we aim to be for American politics: the essential reference for every competitive race, who's running, where they stand, and what to watch for.
The name also works on its own terms -- "heat" implies intensity, competition, and pressure; "sheet" implies a reference document, a data source, a ratings page. You don't need to know anything about swimming for the name to land.
The Gap We're Filling
The political forecasting landscape is fragmented. Qualitative raters like Cook, Sabato, and Inside Elections produce expert judgments but refuse to attach probabilities to their ratings. Quantitative outlets like the late FiveThirtyEight and Split Ticket build models but don't systematically hold other forecasters accountable. Prediction markets offer real-time pricing but suffer from illiquidity and a lack of independent quality assessment.
The Heat Sheet sits at the intersection of all three.
What We're Building
Your Local Market -- Our first project, and the flagship of The Spread, our prediction market analysis category. Every House, gubernatorial, and Senate prediction market graded daily on volume, spreads, and open interest. Not all markets are created equal -- a 62% on Kalshi doesn't mean the same thing if one market has $400,000 in open interest and a one-cent spread and another has $500 and a spread you could drive a truck through. Your Local Market is live now and updates daily.
Race Ratings -- Every competitive House, Senate, and gubernatorial race rated on the standard scale, but with a critical difference: every rating comes with an explicit estimated margin range and implied win probability.
Decision Desk Scorecards -- Nobody systematically tracks how well AP, DDHQ, Fox, CNN, and NBC perform on election night. We will.
Who We Are
We're a group of high school students in Evanston, Illinois who love data and politics. We believe election forecasting should be transparent, calibrated, and accountable -- and that you don't need a newsroom budget to do it well.
Our Promise
Every claim we make will be backed by data. Every projection we publish will be scored after the fact. We grade ourselves with the same rigor we apply to everyone else.
Welcome to The Heat Sheet. We're just getting started.