Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Don’t Fool Yourself — The Blue Wave Is Probably Real
On August 13, Ricochet member @bloodthirstyneocon shared a post about entitled “Nope, the Blue Wave Is a Myth.” The one datum pointed to in that post was the Real Clear Politics average of generic ballot polls which showed the Democratic advantage at a mere 3.9 points. The prevailing wisdom (as cited in the post) is that Democrats need a seven point advantage to retake the house, due to factors including gerrymandering and “wasted votes” in Democratically dominated urban areas.
August 13 was about the only time anyone could make that point, because there were two times this year that the Democratic advantage dipped that low, and one of them was on August 13. It immediately rebounded. So if you were pinning your hopes on something other than a blue wave to that one datum, you should know that the current RCP average is D +8.9.
However, the RCP average is not the only thing pointing to a blue wave.
The website FiveThirtyEight recently released their congressional forecast model which looks at all 435 congressional district. It’s … very complex. (If you want to hear Nate Silver explain how it works, you can find that here, and they made some changes which they talk about here.) They actually have several models that look at a whole slew of factors, including polls, weighted based on history. But since there aren’t quality unbiased polls for most districts, they do rely on other data.
So what does their model show?
Currently they give Republicans a 25.7% chance of keeping control of the house, or, as they phrase it, one in four. They give Democrats a three in four chance of keeping control.
If you’re curious about their forecast for your particular district, you can find that here. Since they launched their model a couple of weeks ago, those numbers have remained stead, as has their estimate of the popular vote margin, which they estimate at D +7.8.
Traditionally, the party that controls the White House loses seats in the midterms. It’s happened in almost every midterm year going back at least half a century. It happened in 2010. It happened in 2006. It happened in 1994. (The exception was 2002, which took place a 14 months after 9/11.)
Let’s look at 2010. That year, if we look at President Obama’s job approval rating for this week (8/30-9/5), it was 45 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove. On Election Day, it was the same, 45-47. Democrats lost 63 House seats that year.
For comparison purpose, Gallup currently has President Trump at 41 approve, 53 disapprove. That is in line with FiveThirtyEight that has Trump’s numbers to be 40.3-54.4 and RCP which shows at 41.8 to 54.0. In other words, Donald Trump is dramatically more unpopular than Barack Obama was at this point in their respective midterm cycles.
Is this set in stone? Could things change? Sure. A lot can happen in two months, and FiveThirtyEight still gives the GOP a one in four chance of holding onto the house. Weird stuff can and does happen in politics.
But if you think the Blue Wave is a myth, with all due respect, you’re deluding yourself. This isn’t a media creation. This isn’t a deep state conspiracy. This isn’t Democratic propaganda. There is data that strongly points to a victory for Democrats on November 6.
Addendum
Here are a few responses to common objections:
Yeah, yeah, but all the polls said Trump wouldn’t win either.
I know that’s what some Trump supporters claim, but it doesn’t apply to everyone. FiveThirtyEight still has their 2016 election page up. You can look at it for yourself. They gave Trump a 28.6 percent chance of winning. Not zero percent, not 10 percent, 28.6. What they’ll tell you is that they took crap from people before election day for having it that high, but it was what their model predicted.
All these polls are biased against Republicans.
Not all pollsters are created equal. There are polling outfits that lean toward Democrats and there are some that lean towards Republican. But the incentive structure in polling favors accuracy. If you’re interested in the quality of pollsters, their predictive values, and how they lean, FiveThirtyEight keeps a list of pollster ratings.
Isn’t it interesting that it swung from D+4 to D+11 in one poll!
Yeah. That’s why we look at the rolling average. An individual poll is going to vary. The rolling average smooths that out.
This poll is imperfect because of X! I disagree with its methodology.
All polls are imperfect. That’s why we take an average, and look at it over time. That mitigates the imperfections of individual polls.
You’re only talking about this because the RCP average shows a high Democratic advantage right now.
It has consistently showed a large Democratic advantage. The aberration, the cherry pick, would be to post about it when it’s at the second lowest point of the year.
You’re clearly rooting for the Democrats!
Whether I am or I’m not is completely irrelevant to what the RCP average is or what the FiveThirtyEight model says.
You’re so blinded by hatred of Trump that…
That’s not an argument. Again, whether I am or I’m not is completely irrelevant to what the RCP average is or what the FiveThirtyEight model says.
All polling is all broken.
It’s really not though. When it’s done well and used in the correct way, it’s actually a very useful tool. Even in 2016, well done polls were pretty accurate.
A lot of Trump supporters refuse to talk to pollsters. We’re too busy living our lives.
That would be interesting … if there was any data to back it up. (Note: the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”) I’ve heard Republicans trot this chestnut out to explain inconvenient polls for at least 25 years. Not for nothing, but the idea of shy Trump supporters seems … odd to me. If you think Trump supporters are too busy to share their opinions, obviously you’re not on Twitter.
Published in General
Because the MSM, the Dems, and their allies on the other side of the aisle (never-Trumpers) promote a never-ending tirade of why Trump’s persona makes him unfit for office in spite of what he’s done right.
What I learned in 2016 is that if the conventional wisdom makes no sense, that’s because it’s nonsense.
Another data set: The current right track wrong track gap is only -15.2 (in favor of wrong track). That’s much less underwater than Obama was at throughout most of his presidency.
Perhaps we’ve reached the point where we can finally say:
Conventional Wisdom – R.I.P.
I’m not sure you understand what a straw man is.
It doesn’t count as a straw man if it’s actually an argument that someone has used.
How about waiting 10 weeks or so before passing judgment on the wisdom? Like Boss Mongo says, we’ll know soon enough.
At this point I sort of view election polls as more push polls than actual “truth”. They are about pushing a narratives and shaping the public’s views. They are designed to feed the people wanting the polls (media) so they can tell the populace what they should do. Later they will sort of “tighten” as they start to reflect a true reading so the polling companies can keep their reputation up and sell their services down the road.
I agree Stad, but I fear we may have reached the point politically and culturally where we can say:
Wisdom — R.I.P.
Sure. So if someone was designing polls to honestly gather information about the state of public sentiment, as opposed to push some narrative, how would it look different?
Worth reiterating Hoyacon’s well taken point in similar threads that a 30 seat Democratic gain is not a “blue wave” but a pretty standard first midterm result for a president and his party.
If the Republicans win 210 House and 55 Senate seats the result is hardly a “blue wave.”
I think it’s worth pointing out that the polls in 2016 were actually pretty close, in terms of aggregate counts. Where they were wrong is in a small number of poorly sampled swing states, where small fluctuations made all the difference.
Stad, exactly. The myth is that the President brings his unpopularity upon himself. The truth is that the opinion-shaping elite in news, entertainment, academia, etc., have pulled out all the stops and are doing their best to savage the President — and that they’d do it for any Republican, as they were doing for Bush in the ending days of his administration. We’re experiencing the Republican version of the same press bias Obama received during his term: it was fawning, positive, or absent during the Obama years; it’s vitriolic, negative, and hyperbolic during the Trump years — and, I’m sure, always and forever in every future Republican administration.
It would look only at likely voters, because registered voters who don’t show up don’t matter. Of course, likely voter polls are more favorable to Republicans than registered voter polls.
Which is why a lot of Trump supporters are eager to get to the polls to exact revenge, and a lot of us have voted in midterms before, so we know the procedures better than the casual voters who Democrats are counting on.
There is a reason they actually hold the elections. We’ll know after the actual elections ( maybe after litigation…).
Well, imho everyone loses on only one of the outcomes. Few of us lose on the other. It is more like a win-lose wager.
But the popular vote still doesn’t matter. This is 435 individual races. You can’t poll all of those races precisely. Any pollster who tried would be swimming in an ocean of error.
Sort of like how this is a push post rather than actual truth.
Absolutely right. And presumably they’re polling differently now, focusing more attention on each race that’s believed to be close — as they should have done on each elector in 2016, but didn’t.
My point is just that we shouldn’t buy the argument, which some will make, that, because the polls failed to predict Trump, all bets are off. Not that what we expect makes much of a difference, of course, unless it affects our behavior on election day.
So let’s all vote.
So you think my purpose in writing this post is to … suppress Republican voter turnout?
If one Republican loses their seat it will be proof of Trump’s toxicity and need for impeachment or at the minimum primary challenged.
It matters to me. I will greatly enjoy reminding Fred of how wrong he was. BTW, one of my arguments for why HRC’s turnout was so low was that the pollsters gave Trump no chance of winning. Now, they give Republicans no chance of winning. That depresses the “We can’t lose” blue vote more than the “We can’t win” red vote, because we tend to vote on election day no matter what. Democrats struggle with midterm turnout.
Good scholars and pollsters are guided by more than just numbers. You have to base your argument on theory of how the world works: how people think and live. I have done so, and my analysis ages like fine wine.
You bet. The healthy rate of GDP growth will be used, especially by Never Trumpers, to highlight his electoral toxicity.
GDP for the 12 months before the 1994 disaster for Clinton and the Democrats: 4%. Yet Clinton was the most gifted natural politician of his age.
I hope you are wrong Fred, but so far you are the only one that has brought any numbers to the game today. Either way, I’m not losing sleep over it. It will be a dull election year if things don’t get more interesting in October. I do appreciate your talent for stirring the pot and poking sticks in hornets nests.
Assuming that this isn’t about Trump “destroying the Republican Party,” I don’t have an objection. Obama’s first off-year election cost the Democrats 63 seats. Although I don’t remember talk of a red wave, this is all about context. And there’s your most relevant/recent context. If the Republicans somehow hold the House, that’s a major win.
Bingo.
And a different member of Ricochet will owe me $10, but only based on the numbers when the House is gaveled into order in January.
Any numbers brought to the game are suspect. The only numbers which count are the votes actually cast on Election Day. This is why I don’t lose sleep over any pundit’s “analysis”, or any mathemathical “proof” showing a Dem win – or loss . . .
I’d say that high Democratic voter turnout due to the Trump animus is baked into the equation, so the question really boils down to what the Republican turnout in key states and swing districts will be, while the other wild card is the current hyper-speed news cycle. What happens Labor Day weekend positive or negative for Trump is unlikely to move the needle much, while what happens 7-8 weeks from now, right before Election Day and when many states will have begun early voting, may decide just how many GOP voters show up to the polls (something the Hillary people would no doubt agree with, since they still think Comey’s Oct. 28 statement two years ago about Anthony Weiner’s computer cost her the election).
I agree that there maybe a blue wave coming in November. However it may wash ashore on a futile beach.
What I mean is, that the seats that democrats normally win by 10 points, they’ll win by 25, but the republican seats located in fly-over country are relatively safe.
270 to win house election map has only 29 competitive seats in the house. 204 Seats are likely republican and 202 are likely democrat. I frankly dont see the democrats winning a majority of those seats – especially those seats located away from their power centers.
At the end of the election cycle, the democrats will whine that they got more votes than the republicans, but fewer seats. How is that fair? How about they assign electoral college votes by congressional district instead of by state? (with 2 votes going to the winner of the state) Every state would then become a battle ground state in every election.
That’s the system in Nebraska and Maine and that’s actually fair, since it maintains the small states’ added clout due to each state having two electoral votes because of their Senate seats. You can allow the electoral votes based on each state’s proportional House seats to go to the candidate who wins that House district, but IIRC, if all 50 states had that in place in 2016, it would have done nothing to alter the election outcome, and that’s not what the Democrats want.