Latest Generic Polls: Ras +12%R; WSJ 6%R; Gallup 15%R; CNN 10R; Fox13R; Bloom 3R

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Generic ballot polls should go in the same thread (starting now would be fine, though) so that it's easier to track/clogging issues.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We should have thrown the election to McCain and waited our turn. 

Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, 'having your turn' will never be worth it and ought to be avoided at all costs. Which is bizarre. The point of politics is power; after all, if the right people don't have it, the wrong people do.

Which isn't to say that the Obama administration hasn't done a huge amount of damage to the Democratic Party's chances in the mid-terms; of course it has (and so, actually, have the Congressional Democrats. Both in terms of the Leadership and individual members). But more through a tin ear and a failure to understand that the post-Cold War phase of American politics is over than because of the inevitability of electoral disaster for whichever party won in 2008.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, it's important not to get superstitious about that kind of thing; as people who follow elections are wont to.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I am the only one who doesn't put a lot of stock in the generic ballot question? I prefer to look at the individual races and try to determine what's happening from there.

The theory is that if there is electoral movement than that electoral movement will be at least partly uniform. Some places will swing more and some won't budge, but a general pattern will exist. Though the power of incumbency and the tendency to run dead (even in winnable districts!) makes it less useful in the U.S than most countries with single member districts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Based on the 55% figure, the Butler swing would be 12.7 which is normally the point at which you lose about half your seats if lucky. Not that the 52% would be much better; 10.2. Basically Gallup is predicting a landslide.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Another little oddity come to think of it. The Dems won 256 seats with a 10.5% margin. If the GOP wins with a 15% margin, how many seats should they get, after dealing with the incumbency factor and the surprise the seat would have fallen if only we could imagine the moon, but we are not stoners, headwinds?  Without the headwinds, the GOP should get about 270 seats, no (a 91 seat gain), with some remote symmetry to it all?  

BTW, I am sticking with my 63 seat net gain for the moment.

When swings get over a certain strength, it's basically impossible to predict accurate numbers. In the 97 election here, no one had a clue how big the landslide would be until the results were declared.

Of course it's quite likely that Gallup are overestimating things, but maybe that doesn't matter so much; that a pollster is showing a double-digit swing days before the election is enough.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Half your seats meaning the Dems lose 128 seats (256/2)?

 

I don't know; it's more an observation than a prediction.

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With certain very significant exceptions, America is observably less polarised than many other industrialised countries The key difference is gerrymandering and the extraordinary - by the standards of everywhere else in the first world - powers of incumbency.

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It would but I just played with % changes.