2018 Congressional Generic Ballot and House Polls Megathread - the original

[IceSpear]

Imagine if the GCB actually did end up as D+11, and we get LimoLiberal posting about how it's a disaster that Democrats only picked up 50 seats instead of the 100 they could've gotten if not for the tax reform bump.

[IceSpear]

Still too early. Good god people think shifts in either direction will matter much in November. Right now, 538 and RCP have the dems up by 8 points in the generic ballot, but I'm certain it'll be a different story in a few weeks, let alone November.

Unfortunately, logical posts like this are ignored here. Good try though.

[IceSpear]

Yeah, and Issa is up 17 too. They retired solely because they wanted to spend more time with their family!

[IceSpear]

CA-39: Young Kim (R) leads potential Democratic challengers

http://www.anaheimblog.net/2018/01/18/cd39-did-beltway-prognosticators-overreact-to-royce-retirement/

Remington Research, and they don't give the actual poll release so take it with a grain of salt.

But it shows generic ballot 47-47 TIED, and Trump approval 45-49 (in a district he lost by 8 points!).

There is two matchups between Assemblywoman Young Kim (R), who has the endorsement of Royce, and possible democratic challengers.

Kim (R): 41
Cisneros (D): 38

Kim (R): 42
Tranh (D): 33

One of the worst polls I've seen for Democrats since the 2016 election.

snip

Lol at the casual racist remark thrown in here.

Mods, srsly

[IceSpear]

Democrats led in generic ballot polls as late as October 2010 and November 2014. It's January. You all need Xanax.

[IceSpear]

Democrats will win big in 2018....ignore the polls.

The last ABC poll taken before the 1994 midterms showed it a 4% lead for the GOP

Again, look at the signal (retirements, fundraising, enthusiasm,etc...) and not the noise (polls, dumbass pundits, LimoLiberal)

Look at the polling from 1994 for example:

Why go all the way back to 1994? Just look at 2014.

[IceSpear]

DOOOOOOOOOM

In all seriousness that’s a good poll, but it’s only one poll; and I’m not getting excited unless I see corroboration

It's February. You shouldn't get excited (or bummed) regardless.

[IceSpear]

So how many times has Atlas gone back and forth from apocolyptic to giddy over random generic ballot fluctuations in the past few months? 10? 20?

[IceSpear]

After yesterday's Arizona special we've come to the point where people like Enten and Wasserman admitted that all the CGB fluctuations are just statistical noise

Anyone with a brain cell already knew this. Generic ballot polls are almost always noisy and quite often completely inaccurate.

[IceSpear]

Quinnipiac: Generic ballot D+8.

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2538

Previous Q poll was D+3.

b-b-b-b-b-ut I thought it was a permanent swing and not random noise and that DEMONCRAPS WERE FINISHED!!!11!!

[IceSpear]

Democrats are back up to an 8.2 lead at 538.

It's almost like opinion polling is noisy.

Yet the usual suspects will do what they do when it inevitably drops again, lol.

[IceSpear]

Virginia, honest question here: what exactly is the mods' position on this kind of repetitive trollery?  

Some of us, like myself, are more authoritarian on it and would just like to exile people who make it clear that they do not respect anyone around here and wish to piss people off, start arguments, etc. I can only speak for myself here but generally I feel that once a user has established a clear, consistent pattern of thread derailing, sparking arguments and such, that there is no reason to let them stick around. What is the point? Atlas is a forum people wish to converse on because of the mature, reasonable users who engage in thoughtful discussion, not the bottom of the barrel bomb throwers like hofoid, King Lear, and at least LimoLiberal v1 (I still think he's gotten better). Why should one or two users be allowed to sit around trying to piss people off?

There are then some Moderators who maybe would take a harder line against trolling but Dave never really addressed this, and they don't want to start down a path where they might be regulating Dave's forum in ways he might not approve of. It's not the most unreasonable issue, but I wish more of an effort was made to actually get Dave to weigh in on this.

Then there are some Moderators who I'm not sure about. I have seen some viewpoints that trolling can be too ambiguous, and/or that people need to stop feeding the trolls, which is something I kind of agree with. If we all agree that hofoid is a troll, just stop responding to him, and the problem solves itself. But then again, while I think that's semi-reasonable, I also believe reality never works out like this. Even I wished to respond to various trolls at times simply to leave take apart their stupid theories for others to see, because some of those theories are things actual non-trolls believe in. Just look at the Twitter feed of that eccentric conservative cheerleader LimoLiberal always posts on special elections lol.


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Let me take apart hofoid's post, just for an example of why it's becoming clear (although arguably has been for a while now) that he either has always been a career troll or is becoming one now:

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First:

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D+3 in MO is blatantly not a disaster from the perspective of anyone who knows anything about Missouri. Republicans won the House PV in Missouri by over 20 points in 2014 and 2016, and by over 12 points in 2012. To say it is a disaster for Democrats is intellectually dishonest and hyperbole that basically all of the recent Atlas trolls have engaged in.

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Again, anyone who follows these House races closely would know that Wagner's seat is not even needed to claim a majority. It's way back there in terms of competitive seats. I'm not sure how many GOP-held seats are in front of it, but upwards of 40 - 60 seems reasonable, if not more. Again, this is either intellectually dishonest or he is just hopelessly stupid.

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Starting to sound like King Lear here. A short look at history would show no party that controls the White House has ever gained 10 seats in a midterm since 1934. There are good reasons for it. This has been talked about at length on here. I can actually forgive this for most people since it is usually only people ignorant of politics who think their party can win big in a midterm where their party controls the White House.

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Now he's imitating LimoLiberal. Let's put aside his almost surely insincere motives for a second. A bounce implies something goes up, then down. It's April 30th for gods sakes lol. Who even cares if there is a meaningful bounce. The entire problem for the White House party in midterms is that the focus is always on them, and they get blamed for everything. A gajillion things are going to happen between now and November that will cause a constant shifting of the narrative.


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I don't think I'm going to be as patient with hofoid this time around. He knows what went on with the whole King Lear/LimoLiberal situation. If he wants to go down that path, there isn't going to be a containment thread for him. I'll just begin scrubbing every one of his posts on the midterm boards. The same goes for LimoLiberal if he wants to revert back to form again as well. I want everyone, including myself, to enjoy Atlas free of annoying little pests, especially for the midterms, so if I have to get more aggressive with this then I will.

I mean, I don't see how LimoLiberal has gotten better. Maybe because I wasn't around for his really frequent spamming, but his recent posts are just as bad and intellectually dishonest as that hofoid post. For example:

McCaskill hasn’t so much as grazed 50% in a poll since 2012. Here she trails a lesser-known challenger six months out in a state where POTUS remains popular. Rasputin-like fortunes aside, there’s no way to spin this as good news for her.

For one thing, this is an outright lie. Every poll I've seen has shown Trump's approval as roughly evenly split in Missouri. Also intellectually dishonest since an evenly split approval rating in an R+9 state you won by ~20 points is obviously not good news for you, which is basically the same thing you just debunked about the hofoid post.

Tester is in big big trouble. Check out the comments on his social media. Looks like Montanans are turning against him.

More intellectual dishonesty. I highly doubt, considering he can comprehend election data and can formulate sentences with proper grammar, that he genuinely believes that random people on social media (99.9% of whom are not from Montana) represent the opinions of Montanans. It's a clear bait post.

Lean R.

• Trump is very very popular there
• Heidi is already losing in a high-quality poll

More intellectual dishonesty and outright lies. Basically the same formula as the Missouri post. His "high quality" poll is a Republican internal that was off by double digits in several of their 2016 polls. And like Missouri, no poll shows Trump "very very popular" in North Dakota. He knows this stuff already, as he obsessively follows the polls. It's clear trolling.

Trump is going to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

Blatantly obvious bait. Nobody, even the genuine MAGA crowd, is dumb enough to believe this. If this is "better", what exactly was it that you guys were dealing with before? lol

[IceSpear]

Just popping in to say that Democrats lead in the generic ballot in May 2010. In fact, they lead as late as July 2010 (and as late as September 2014.)

Yeah yeah I know, babby's first election/babby's first midterm, but I still have no clue why some of the rational people here are so obsessed with these polls.

[IceSpear]

I’m not going to dig too deeply into the cfosstabs of a poll as jumpy as YouGov. +6 in a week? Who knows what it’ll be next week.

Or in 26 weeks.

[IceSpear]

That was 10 points a little while ago. Something's happening...

Do not start.

One doesn't have to be a concern troll to see those fluctuations and worry juuuust a little bit.

http://www1.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2010_generic_congressional_vote-2171.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-2170.html

[IceSpear]

It's almost as if a former Congressman would have more name recognition than a some chick.

[IceSpear]

Bear in mind that most of the tightening in the generic ballot lately has been Rs coming home - in general R numbers are up but D numbers are about the same. This makes sense when you consider that Trump has had a few good weeks, primary season is underway, and Trump has started campaigning a bit. No one ever doubted (well, almost no one doubted) the ability of Rs to get 44-45 percent of the house vote this November. The question is can they get much if any beyond that. If Rs take 46.4-47 percent of the vote it’s hard to see the house as better than a coin flip and it’s virtually impossible to see a senate flip. If they get 44.5 percent then the house flips easily and the senate is a tossup. Obviously it’ll depend where the independents, disaffected Rs, and Obana-Trump voters go to see where in that range are fall.

Ds can be happy as long as they numbers don’t fall below 46-47 percent and R numbers don’t climb beyond 45 in any meaningful average, given how strong independents have broken for them thus far, in my opinion.

Agreed. Dems thinking they were going to win the generic vote by double digits were dreaming anyway. Even in the massive waves of 2008/2010, Obama and the Republicans only won by 7 points. +5 is actually a pretty great spot to be at 6 months before the election, considering the fact that Democrats were actually leading the generic ballot at this point in 2010, which for whatever reason tends to be a historical high point for the incumbent party.

[IceSpear]

Bear in mind that most of the tightening in the generic ballot lately has been Rs coming home - in general R numbers are up but D numbers are about the same. This makes sense when you consider that Trump has had a few good weeks, primary season is underway, and Trump has started campaigning a bit. No one ever doubted (well, almost no one doubted) the ability of Rs to get 44-45 percent of the house vote this November. The question is can they get much if any beyond that. If Rs take 46.4-47 percent of the vote it’s hard to see the house as better than a coin flip and it’s virtually impossible to see a senate flip. If they get 44.5 percent then the house flips easily and the senate is a tossup. Obviously it’ll depend where the independents, disaffected Rs, and Obana-Trump voters go to see where in that range are fall.

Ds can be happy as long as they numbers don’t fall below 46-47 percent and R numbers don’t climb beyond 45 in any meaningful average, given how strong independents have broken for them thus far, in my opinion.

Agreed. Dems thinking they were going to win the generic vote by double digits were dreaming anyway. Even in the massive waves of 2008/2010, Obama and the Republicans only won by 7 points. +5 is actually a pretty great spot to be at 6 months before the election, considering the fact that Democrats were actually leading the generic ballot at this point in 2010, which for whatever reason tends to be a historical high point for the incumbent party.

Tbf d's won the house by 10.5% in 2010

True, but that was during a time when they were not only competitive in, but occasionally even dominating in, territory that they couldn't even dream of making competitive today.

[IceSpear]

Bear in mind that most of the tightening in the generic ballot lately has been Rs coming home - in general R numbers are up but D numbers are about the same. This makes sense when you consider that Trump has had a few good weeks, primary season is underway, and Trump has started campaigning a bit. No one ever doubted (well, almost no one doubted) the ability of Rs to get 44-45 percent of the house vote this November. The question is can they get much if any beyond that. If Rs take 46.4-47 percent of the vote it’s hard to see the house as better than a coin flip and it’s virtually impossible to see a senate flip. If they get 44.5 percent then the house flips easily and the senate is a tossup. Obviously it’ll depend where the independents, disaffected Rs, and Obana-Trump voters go to see where in that range are fall.

Ds can be happy as long as they numbers don’t fall below 46-47 percent and R numbers don’t climb beyond 45 in any meaningful average, given how strong independents have broken for them thus far, in my opinion.

Agreed. Dems thinking they were going to win the generic vote by double digits were dreaming anyway. Even in the massive waves of 2008/2010, Obama and the Republicans only won by 7 points. +5 is actually a pretty great spot to be at 6 months before the election, considering the fact that Democrats were actually leading the generic ballot at this point in 2010, which for whatever reason tends to be a historical high point for the incumbent party.

Tbf d's won the house by 10.5% in 2010

True, but that was during a time when they were not only competitive in, but occasionally even dominating in, territory that they couldn't even dream of making competitive today.

I still think they can win by 10.5%. There is no spin on AZ-08. That was a complete disaster for the GOP. Dems didn't even come close in 2008 there. Obama didnt do very hot in places like suburban TX and CA in 2008.

Obviously dems won't replicate the rural success they had in 2008, though.

Yeah, it will be offset somewhat by Dems markedly improving in suburban areas since 2008, but in terms of sheer popular vote they were certainly in a better position in 2008. Just look at all the districts they won in 2008:

AL-02/AL-05: Even Roy Moore won them, gonna get BTFO.
AR-01/AR-04: A mere Blanching would be a decent result for Dems here, they couldn't even find candidates in 2016. The polar opposite of 2008, when the Democrats ran unopposed!
GA-08/GA-12: Won these in a landslide, but would be lucky to keep them within 20 points now.
ID-01: lol
IN-02/IN-08: Went from winning by ~30 points to losing by 20/30 points.
LA-03: Dems were literally unopposed, now routinely lose by over 60 points.
MS-01/MS-04: Dems won by double digits (and in MS-04 by 50 points!), yet today these districts would even deliver for Chris McDaniel.
MO-04: Winning by 30 to losing by 40.
ND/SD: Even in a massive wave it would be surprising if Dems got within single digits. Yet in 2008 they landslided by 25-35 points.
OH: Districts got too scrambled to make direct comparisons, but they were landsliding in Appalachia at the time.
OK-02: Winning by 40 to losing by 40.
TN: Even if Bredesen wins, he probably wouldn't come anywhere near carrying those rural districts where Dems ran unopposed (!) in 2008.
VA-09: Another Democrat running unopposed in a district Republicans routinely win by ~40 points now.
WV-01/WV-03: Yet another unopposed Dem in WV-01, that Republicans just won by 40 points. Even if Ojeda wins WV-03, he'd never come close to matching Rahall's ~35 point margin.
WY: Dems lost this, but it was within single digits, lol.

And this isn't even an all encompassing list!

Compare to the suburban districts where Dems are improving. They still broke 40% against Roskam, Rohrabacher, Dent, Paulsen, Kline, etc. There are some exceptions obviously (Frelinghuysen, LoBiondo, Castle, etc.), but for the most part the distribution is far from equal.

With them dominating in all that current day no go territory plus their total being inflated by tons of unopposed Democrats even in deep red districts, I'd be extremely surprised if they could top a 10 point win in 2018.

[IceSpear]

The takeaway from Limo's posts continues to be that he is as much a hack as the people he no doubt thinks of here, except he's a Republican-favoring hack, who has tunnel vision just as much as anyone else, except for his own narrative. So tbqh he (you, Limo) are in no position to be calling out other people for their unwavering beliefs in a Dem wave this November. You're even worse, just for the opposite.

He can be a GOP hack if he wants. But the "I'm just an oh so concerned elitist latte sipping Northern Virginia limousine liberal" troll schtick is getting old.

If a Democrat troll made the account "WhiteTrashConservative" with an R-WV avatar, and started spamming every thread with "howdy ya'll this dem wave sure is gonna be big with all them darkies votin an such!" something tells me they wouldn't last very long.

[IceSpear]

Really bad poll for the GOP. Fitzpatrick, who is reasonably popular, should be favored against a mediocre candidate like Wallace, especially this early when Wallace's name recognition isn't as high. Yet it's a toss up.

IMO districts 5, 6, 7, and 17 are already gone. 1 and 10 should be interesting.

[IceSpear]

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Now imagine what races in swing districts where the Republican incumbent doesn't have a +30 favorability rating would be like.

[IceSpear]

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Now imagine what races in swing districts where the Republican incumbent doesn't have a +30 favorability rating would be like.

Also, it shows that Trump is the one dragging down the Republicans. The economy is not going to save them.

Those undecided have a 34% approval rating for Trump.

It won't matter! They still love Republicans! The Dem wave is over!

Reminds me of the Dem hacks saying "DON'T WORRY ABOUT UNDECIDEDS IN PRYOR VS. COTTON ONLY GIVING OBAMA AN 8% APPROVAL RATING, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, THEY STILL LOVE DIXIECRATS AND THE PRYOR BRAND!!!"

[IceSpear]

Yeah, Dems almost win an R+13 seat in AZ with a some lady and pick up R+11 PA-18 all in the last three months, but sure, the House is merely a tossup.

But those things happened months ago, you see. It's much smarter to rely on a Reuters poll that has whiplashed from R+7 to D+8 in a few weeks for literally no reason.

[IceSpear]

I'm really not convinced the Deplorables on Staten Island won't elect the criminal again.