# Historical-reference and polling model

The expansion pages deliberately avoid transplanting Oregon's candidate-specific 2022 vote-transfer bridge.

Each page displays five stations:

1. the certified prior governor result;
2. the certified 2024 presidential result;
3. their two-party-margin midpoint, labeled as a historical reference;
4. the current reviewed polling estimate; and
5. the polling-centered Election Day forecast.

Stations 1–3 are descriptive and have exactly zero forecast effect. They help readers see whether current polling resembles or departs from recent statewide voting, but the chart does not connect them to the modeled polling stations as sequential updates. Only polling sets the model center.

The approach is intentionally conservative while a reusable open-seat/incumbency fundamentals model is evaluated out of sample. It prevents a convenient but unvalidated historical average from masquerading as predictive evidence.