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

[Torie]

FWIW, I think pollsters are over estimating turnout.  I think the GOP is under-polling by about 3% across the board.

That is my sense of it, after wading through the Gallup high and low turnout models, and their numbers, vis a vis history.

[Torie]

Is it possible that the Republicans will do much better on the congressional 2 way vote total as opposed to for the Senate? I ask this because I don't see how Republicans are +10 and losing Washington, Connecticut, California and are close in Colorado, Kentucky or Pennsylvania.

Also I found an interesting nugget in the pew poll. 12% of Democrats (the fifth highest response) would be "okay" with a GOP takeover of the house and 5% would be satisfied.

Senate races are potentially more personality specific for obvious reasons, although that affect is obviously muted this time. You have a point that if the the Dem Senate candidates are winning big in NY, with no Texas race, and for Florida and NC, not that big a margin for the GOP, and California and Illinois a wash, it is hard to see how big GOP margins in small states generate an overall 10%. GOP lead. Ohio can't do it alone.

[Torie]

Battleground/POLITICO says 48-42 GOP (the article says 47-42, but the guts say 48-42 - its your choose).

Among those "extremely likely" voters, GOP is ahead by 12 according to the article (can't find it in the guts.

http://www.politico.com/static/PPM170_101022_bg42questionnaire.html

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44092.html

It took a lot of work to deduce that 47-42 spread! 

[Torie]

Here is a chart of the gains RCP projects the GOP will make in the House. The trajectory is not pretty for the Dems.

[Torie]

Yes, of course, there may be momentum, or maybe not. The line might have a memory, or be a random walk.

[Torie]

Gallup's low turnout model assumes a 43% turnout. So, that poll is either wrong because the turnout will be higher than 43%, or wrong even though the turnout assumption is correct, or it is right. Which is it, Vorlon?  I myself strongly doubt the turnout will be above 43%, and I suspect it will be lower.

[Torie]

Gallup's low turnout model assumes a 43% turnout. So, that poll is either wrong because the turnout will be higher than 43%, or wrong even though the turnout assumption is correct, or it is right. Which is it, Vorlon?  I myself strongly doubt the turnout will be above 43%, and I suspect it will be lower.

I am on record as saying I think the GOP, broadly speaking, is being under polled by about 3% or so.

I's not so much the 43% or so I quibble with, it's the composition of that 43%.  Baking into the cake turnout demographics from 2008 seems incorrect to me in 2010.

I could be very wrong, we will know in 8 days.  

It will vary from race to race naturally, but I just don't think modeling in the 2008 turnout among young people, minorities, etc makes sense in any midterm, and certainly not 2010.

Clearly Gallup was not baking into the cake turnout composition models given a given turnout percentage from 2008! I suspect it is  more like 2004, even though that was a presidential year.

To be honest, I suspect if the election were held today, it would be a huge GOP blowout, with all of us shocked as Angle's margin, and Toomey's and Raese's, and the Connecticut race skin tight (the West coast does it differently). The issue is how many Dems drift home and get out to vote between now and election day. I suspect the Dems will make some progress. If they don't, Vepres has it right.

[Torie]

I added 3 new generic ballot polls in the heading which I picked up off the RCP website, from Bloomberg, McClatchy/Marist, and CBS New York Times.

[Torie]

I am going to put this post I put up elsewhere here as well:

I am putting up the chart below to confuse everyone. Suffice it to say, if the GOP wins the House by 15% (57.5-42.5), which is reflected by the blue line, and every CD held by a Dem swings in a uniform manner from its PVI baseline (bearing in mind that a CD needs a PVI to GOP +2.5 to break even  (Bush +2.5%, Obama -7.5%, sum the two, and divide by two, for the PVI break even point), then the GOP wins 114 Dem seats (the red line). In other words, per this metric, if the Dems lose every seat they hold with a Dem PVI of +5 or less, they lose 114 seats. If the GOP just breaks even in the generic vote, the Dems lose about 50 seats if the Dem can't beat the the PVI baseline for the CD after deducting 2.5%, to get the CD down to even. So based on the PVI thing, as adjusted, if the GOP margin goes from -5% to 0%, and all CD's follow the PVI model, the GOP gets 50 seats. If there is no swing at all from the PVI, and the GOP loses the Generic vote by 5%, it still picks up about 42 Dem seats.

So, as a very crude cut, the Dems are holding a lot of seats they should not be holding based on 2004 and 2008 POTUS results, and thus a nationalized election, with the GOP in the lead, where incumbency is of marginal value, is one reason for the impending blowout. And sure some Dems will survive the PVI game, vis a vis the generic ballot swing, a substantial number of them. How many?  A lot fewer than we thought a month ago.

And yes, between 50 and 70 Dem seats, a lot are in play as compared to the PVI differential (i.e, the red line gets relatively steep between 50 and 70, and particularly 50 and 60), so as the GOP moves into positive territory, it hits a lot of Dem seats, against which the Dems have to play their incumbency card, etc.

And oh yes, you subtract GOP losses, be it 2 or 5 or whatever, from these totals.

[Torie]

Yes, my chart is a mindless PVI thing. But it shows in a nationalized election, with the GOP having a healthy generic lead, just why so many Dem seats must fall, if the PVI thing has any meaning, and it clearly does. One can see that in my prediction chart, where I include the PVI, and one can see the steep fall off in the GOP harvest, as the the Dem PVI hits about +3% or so.

I was surprised frankly, the the Dems hold so many seats that they have no business holding.

[Torie]

Wow, just wow.  I had about GOP 10-12% in the back of my mind, when I did my projections, trying to fit local poll stuff within it, and if it did not, ask why, not the 15% spread that Gallup now uses, having made up its mind about the turnout (and 45% is still amazingly high), rather than bifurcate, and leave it at that. If the 15% margin really happens, GOP +60 seats is a floor. The math otherwise just doesn't work, particularly if minority turnout is down in some places.

In 1994, the GOP won with a 7% margin. In 2008, the Dems won by a 10.5%, so if the Dems now lose by 15%, that is a 24.5% swing, sinking all those Dems who won last time by less than 63% or so in 2008, as a starting point. Obviously that won't happen, but it is not as if in safe GOP seats, the GOP will run up massive margins of wasted votes. If that were the case, state races would be in the bag which are not.

[Torie]

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.

[Torie]

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.

Half your seats meaning the Dems lose 128 seats (256/2)?  If so, American politics doesn't work that way, in part because of extreme polarization. A 15% margin means a 57.5% figure by they way, not 55%, by my math.

[Torie]

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

I respect your caution but I fear you underestimate how pissed folks are.

I was deemed a GOP hack on testosterone, when I put up 50-60 a month or more ago, and the GOP would take the House 3 months ago. How things change.   (Yes, most are too polite to say such things to me, but I am a sensitive chap, and just know .)

Yes, I don't really believe the margin for starters. It just does not show up in enough local polls. Unless of course, the Dems are taking yet another hit in the last few days. I guess that is possible.

[Torie]

Both good points Al. America does have extreme gerrymandering, and well, it isn't a parliamentary system, so every chap in Congress is an independent entrepreneur to a fair extent. And then of course there is all the money ... and on and on it goes. America just isn't a British colony anymore is it?    Sad in some ways, when it comes to these matters - along with our disgusting legal system as compared to yours.

[Torie]

Rather large gap from Gallup, from WSJ (which can hardly be considered a Dem dysinformation basement operation ). Somebody is going to have some explaining to do.

Meanwhile RCP is moving again this evening, now up to 66.5 GOP seats net, with CO-7  going into tossup status (that is that charismatic black guy GOP guy, Mr. Frazier), and AZ-8 into lean GOP status, among other things. So now RCP's projection is that the GOP will elect 2.5 blacks to Congress, all of whom have been generating a lot of buzz, and if elected, will be national figures.

[Torie]

Ras poll:  GOP 51%, Dems 39%.  That is a lot of undecideds this late, no?  I wonder how they will break.

[Torie]

Brittain33, it is entirely unclear to me why negotiations with a few GOP senators over HCR broke down. Neither party made it clear what the points of contention were, and who if anyone switched positions (putting aside Grassley perhaps).  I suspect positions were changing all over the place, as this rube goldberg toy was put together desperately trying to round up votes. It won't survive in its present form; its gears mesh so poorly that it is just not operable.

Anyway, it would be great to read a Bob Woodward type book that tells the inside story on this, because the press to date has done a really poor job at it.  The press in general to my mind is getting increasingly superficial.

[Torie]

Here is a fun article about the pollsters dissing each other.