Talk Elections

https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/10/30/house-races-battleground-tracker/

Not sure how much I can trust any of these but some interesting ones like VA-4, CO-6, IL-11 that seem odd.

Holy sh*t! Every district!!!!

You know, I'm not gonna bash YouGov for this. What little House polls there are usually tend to be junk and/or internals anyway, so I'll take what I can get. I'll sum up the results on relevant districts here:

AK-AL: R+15
AR-02: R+1
AR-04: R+1
AZ-01: Tie
AZ-02: Tie
AZ-09: D+14
CA-03: D+12
CA-07: R+6 (*GOP PICKUP)
CA-09: D+9
CA-10: R+7
CA-21: R+3
CA-24: D+2
CA-26: D+3
CA-31: D+11 (*DEM PICKUP)
CA-36: D+4
CA-52: D+9
CO-06: D+3 (*DEM PICKUP)
CT-05: D+9
FL-02: R+2
FL-18: D+19
FL-26: D+1
GA-12: D+4
HI-01: D+15
IA-01: D+9
IA-02: D+14
IA-03: Tie
IA-04: R+7
IL-08: D+5
IL-10: D+5
IL-11: D+3
IL-12: R+1 (*GOP PICKUP)
IL-13: R+5
IN-02: R+16
KS-02: R+8
KS-03: R+11
KY-06: R+12
MA-06: D+4
MA-09: D+15
ME-02: D+3
MI-01: R+4
MI-06: R+17
MI-07: R+11
MI-08: R+9
MI-11: R+5
MN-01: D+11
MN-02: R+14
MN-03: R+11
MN-07: D+2
MN-08: D+5
MT-AL: R+8
NC-02: R+23
NC-07: R+22 (*GOP PICKUP)
ND-AL: R+9
NE-02: R+3
NH-01: R+3 (*GOP PICKUP)
NH-02: D+3
NJ-03: R+1
NJ-05: R+17
NM-02: R+8
NV-03: R+13
NV-04: D+9
NY-01: R+5 (*GOP PICKUP)
NY-11: R+4
NY-18: D+9
NY-19: R+19
NY-21 R+5 (*GOP PICKUP)
NY-24: D+6
OH-14: R+17
OR-04: D+13
OR-05: D+10
PA-06: R+6
PA-08: R+25
RI-01: D+19
SD-AL: R+16
TN-04: R+28
TX-23: D+1
UT-04: R+17 (*GOP PICKUP)
VA-02: R+16
VA-04: Tie
VA-05: R+11
VA-10: R+1
WI-06: R+16
WV-02: R+1
WV-03: R+5 (*GOP PICKUP)

Well, that was a lot of work. Giving ties to the incumbent party, the net gain is R+6.

The margins of error on these are insane.

23% MoE ... lol

Constituency-level polling is ALWAYS a nightmare and should not be trusted.

17 friends sitting around the table to get the 23% MOE? Wow.

There was one district I was really interested in - NJ12. I know it got way more D with redistricting, but Alieta Eck was supposed to be a decent candidate. I would be very disappointed if she lost by 31. Hopefully junk.

That district went 66-34 Obama. There's no chance that candidate will be within 20 points.

Rangel is losing to the Green in NY-13!

Awesome!

You can't conclude that.  There are two candidates running against Rangel - Working Families Party candidate Kenneth Schaeffer and Green Party candidate Daniel Rivera.  Best I can tell, YouGov didn't separately poll the two candidates - or, at least, didn't release results with the candidates separated out.  They could be splitting the anti-Rangel vote.  Plus, the MoE is +/-15 with 20% undecided, which makes the poll pretty useless.

YouGov also seems to have allowed voters to choose "Other" in the two NYC-area districts where Democrats are running totally unopposed - NY-06 (Meng) and NY-16 (Engel).  I suppose some registered Republicans and Conservatives will write somebody in.  But most offended Republicans and Conservatives will likely just skip over the race altogether.  As far as I know, there's no organized write-in campaign in either district.  So I doubt 14% of NY-06 voters write in someone other than Meng, as YouGov's polling suggest.  Ditto in NY-22 Upstate where Republican Hanna is unopposed.

FYI - the official New York State candidate list is here (http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/General/2014GeneralElectionCandidateList.pdf).

LOL, that would be hilarious.

Despite this being YouGov (even though their polls are trash, props to them for even trying something this risky and ambitious), taken together with some other evidence I've seen (such as the Democrats spending money on offense in an R-leaning district) and the huge difference in candidate quality, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in WV-2 Nick Casey will either win or (more likely) lose by a very small margin (1-2%).  I also think that Mooney will be a serial underperformer even if he wins, but that part seems pretty obvious.

It would be cool if Coffman was offed.

According to YouGov, the following districts could be within single digits:

Arkansas 2
Arkansas 4
Arizona 1
Arizona 2
California 7
California 9
California 10
California 21
California 24
California 26
California 36
California 52
Colorado 6
Connecticut 5
Florida 2
Florida 26
Georgia 12
Iowa 1
Iowa 3
Iowa 4
Illinois 8
Illinois 10
Illinois 11
Illinois 12
Illinois 13
Kansas 2
Louisiana 1
Louisiana 3
Louisiana 4
Massachusetts 6
Maine 2
Michigan 1
Michigan 8
Michigan 11
Minnesota 7
Minnesota 8
Montana
North Dakota
Nebraska 2
New Hampshire 1
New Hampshire 2
New Jersey 3
New Mexico 2
Nevada 4
New York 1
New York 11
New York 18
New York 21
New York 24
Pennsylvania 6
Texas 23
Texas 34
Virginia 4
Virginia 10
West Virginia 2
West Virginia 3

That's a total of 56 close races.

Considering that Rangel won with more than 80% of the vote, I think we may have a new contender for worst poll ever.

Of course I partially blame myself for being one of the 71 people who were in the sample for NY-13 and saying I'd vote for the green candidate.