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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
Based on what I posted, I don’t think 30 is enough. Reagan lost 26.
Let the record reflect that the OP called me out individually. Therefore, I have the right to defend myself and give as good as I get.
If we lose the House it’s a wave to me. That will mean impeachment.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t calling you out. I was responding directly to your post. It would have been rude not to (1) give you credit for the post or (2) tag you in order to allow you to respond.
And if the tagging system had been broken (which it is sometimes), I would’ve sent you a PM. It would have been unfair (and counter to the purpose of honest discussion) to not have given you a heads up.
You could ask the contributor who posted them; his name is @fredcole.
He was using them as evidence that President Trump is a media whore.
I think he should use the past tense of “is” which is “was”, as the President is not getting paid for his media exposure.
OK, though at the time that was a very big deal. It was widely suggested after the 1982 midterms that Reagan shouldn’t even run again in ’84. He was mocked by conservatives who figured that ’82 ended the dream, with new “slogans” supposedly adopted by the White House: “Go with the flow! Ride with the tide! Bend with the trend!” The Post ran a Herblock cartoon of Reagan in the Oval Office on Inauguration Day 1985 being dragged out by secret service men.
As we know, he bounced back, and hardly anyone remembers a time before he wasn’t extremely popular.
I appreciate that, Fred. Don’t misunderstand the connotation of “calling someone out”. My last comment was neither pejorative nor rude. I simply claim my right to respond to one of the issues in the OP: the analysis in my OP. I stand by it, and I will until the last phony Blue Dawg dies.
You’re welcome to do so and I’m glad you did.
I would have fretted and made more efforts if you hadn’t responded so promptly.
Fair enough. I don’t agree. To me a wave is abnormal.
The Mean going back to 1934 is -27. The Median is -26. (The Mode is -48 which is because the data set is small). The Standard Dev is 24. So, -26 is about as normal a number as we can see in a mid-term election.
Lose 40+ and then it is a Wave to me.
http://ricochet.com/549511/dont-fool-yourself-the-blue-wave-is-probably-real/comment-page-4/#comment-4266598
To me impeaching a President for no reason along party lines is abnormal. These are the consequences of losing. Make no mistake about it; that would tear the country apart.
I don’t disagree with that it will be interesting. Not sure about tearing nation apart.
More context for the sudden collapse: the two worst polls: Emerson (D+13) and ABC/WaPo (D+14) collected data entirely within McCain week. Luckily, it’s not every day that a prominent war hero, anti-Trump Republican senator dies after having orchestrated a week long anti-Trump funeral tirade. That fever has already started to break.
I don’t know that it will be abrupt tearing apart of the nation but it will have a big impact. Reed got rid of most judicial filibusters. McConnell got rid of the rest. Dems impeach Trump over garbage, Republicans can do the same to the next Democratic President.
We did it in 1998, even knowing that most of the country was against it. It didn’t tear the country apart, but it sure didn’t do the GOP any good, and jumping for impeachment won’t necessarily do the Dems any good.
Mean plus one standard deviation gets us to 51, doesn’t it?
That is a clear wave!
Fair enough. I think that’s generally the President’s defense as well.
Because you don’t like the guy. Sure. We call that being biased. And it’s okay.
Hypothetically, sure. And we’ll know it’s true when you stop putting asterisks on positive accomplishments because… how was it you put it?
Okay, I’ll stop. Whether or not you approach the issue of Trump with some balance doesn’t really matter much — and doesn’t matter at all in terms of the validity of your arguments: you can be as biased as you want and still put forth perfectly good arguments.
I don’t like Trump’s approach to trade. I don’t like trade wars or tariffs, and I want a minimum of each. I also don’t like vulgarity, casual dishonesty, punching down, and a bunch of other things Trump does.
I do like the significant accomplishments of this administration, and the quality of many of the people who are serving in it.
Your list of concrete positives is similar to my own: judges, deregulation, competent security staffing. I’m going to hold off citing any positive non-policy intangibles, though I can think of a few big ones, because I want to focus on actual matters of policy.
What do you think are the three worst things about this administration, in terms of concrete actions taken? Mine would be tariffs, a few seriously incompetent appointments (since removed, thankfully), and . . . I’m not sure. A third really bad policy position doesn’t leap to mind.
What do you think?
This made me laugh
I am already stumping for impeaching the next Democrat POTUS and any elected office they can be impeached from. They want to tear the country apart. Cool, I am their huckleberry.
98 there was at least some legitimacy to the charge. Here, they’re trying to find the crime to get to what they were planning to do all along.
I think it will be damaging, you won’t hear about that in media naturally, and that Reich editorial is the endgame, not just get rid of Trump but find some deus ex machina to get us back to the “scandal free” Obama years. If Trump is brought up re: Russia, they’re going to also impeach or find a way to annul Pence because he benefited. The angle will then be to put enough pressure on anti-Trump GOP Senators to bring to trial and convict. Oh look, a Democrat Speaker in as new President.
It will make the half of the country that don’t matter to them mad. But it will tear the country apart. We’ll be told it’s good for our unity.
Trump may be impeached by the house. No republican senators ( that haven’t already decided to run in their next race as democrats ) will vote to convict. Everything will be party line. I think the republicans will all realize that if they abandon Trump the totalitarian left will kill them all, and so I think the impeachment will fail in the Senate. It will be an obvious attempt at a coup. I personally think the republicans will hold the senate, and I think Trump has a 51% shot at re-election.
Sounds realistic. It’s essentially what happened with Clinton; everyone knew all along that the Senate wasn’t going to convict, but the House went ahead and impeached anyway. Right this minute, 51% also sounds about right.
But keep in mind this double-edged sword: I read a very effective response of an evangelical woman being scolded for being part of a group supporting Trump: “We weren’t looking for someone to marry. We were hiring a bodyguard”. In all seriousness–no sarc–Democrats should actually stop and consider why this woman so detested them that she felt that she and her friends’ families needed a bodyguard, and the biggest, roughest one they could hire.
And in all seriousness–no sarc–the President’s earliest, most consistent, most forceful defenders should keep that in mind: You may love him. Your favorite radio host loves him. But his re-election relies on people who don’t love him. As far as they’re concerned, they hired him, cold as that. It’s closer to a Nixon relationship with his supporters rather than a Reagan one.
There is a lot of time between now and November. The democrats are exposing themselves. Bigly.