https://split-ticket.org/2024/05/29/whats-in-a-rating/
When the Cook Political Report declares that a race is “competitive, but one party has an advantage”, at least in their final ratings, what they really mean is “we are very confident this party will win this race. If we weren’t, we would’ve rated it as a Tossup.” Likewise, while the word “tossup” connotes a coin flip, where both sides have similar chances of winning, Cook instead defines it to mean races “either party has a good chance of winning.” As mentioned in the introduction, the absurdly-high accuracy of Cook’s Lean ratings implies that their Tossup races include those where one side does have an advantage, but not one insurmountable enough to make their Lean category.
To be clear, this is a reasonable choice for an organization to make – prioritizing accuracy above all else. However, it’s a choice that deviates from the common meaning of their terminology.