Will Republicans take the House? Probably.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I’ve been a skeptic about the Big Republican Surge that’s brewing across the land.
In my last back-of-the-napkin scorecard, I predicted that Democrats would hold on in both houses of Congress, with a razor thin margin in the House and a more comfortable advantage in the Senate.
But the late summer and early autumn were deeply unkind to the party of President Barack Obama. Two trends have developed which make a GOP takeover (at least on the House side) extremely likely.
The first is that in many of the dozens and dozens of races where Democrats look vulnerable, the Republican challengers have built more comfortable leads.
Until recently, the whole country seemed balanced on a political razor’s edge. Now there appears to be a very distinct lean to the right.
The other relatively new development is that Republicans have flipped the equation in terms of fundraising.
Across the country, the GOP and its allies have capitalized brilliantly on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing secret donations to fuel political advertisements.
A lot of Democrats who might have been competitive in a trench-fight could well be overwhelmed by a wave of spots funded by groups like the Chamber of Commerce.
Still, there are a couple of caveats to this Big Win narrative worth noting.
First, again, a lot of Democrats in these races are competent, charismatic, scandal-free and well funded candidates.
They’re working with very good, established get-out-the-vote machines in some of the most competitive districts.
Yes, the climate is horrible. But it’s possible that a surprising number of Underdog Democrats will pull out upsets, especially if the climate shifts a bit over the next two weeks.
The second Question Mark Factor worth keeping in mind is a growing sense of skepticism about these polls.
Normally, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this sort of thing. There is enough consistency in the aggregated survey data to show clearly that a lot of Democrats are in serious trouble.
But a number of very good statisticians have been pointing to the growing number of Democratic-leaning voters who are no longer using landline telephones.
As a consequence, roughly 25% of the country’s voters are simply invisible to the vast majority of pollsters.
Here’s the result of an analysis released by Pew last week.
In the Pew Research Center’s latest poll, conducted Aug. 25 to Sept. 6 among 2,816 registered voters, including 786 reached by cell phone, 44% said that if the election were held today that they would vote for the Republican candidate for Congress in their district or leaned Republican, while 47% would vote for the Democratic candidate or leaned Democratic.
Among the landline respondents, 46% preferred the GOP candidate and 45% the Democratic candidate, a four-point shift in the margin. In this survey, both estimates would have shown a close race between Republicans and Democrats.
So that’s a pretty big shift. When all phones are used in the poll, Democrats were up by 3%. But when landlines alone were used, Dems were down by 1%.
Pollsters are using fairly elaborate mechanisms to compensate for this technology discrepancy. They’re also doing some complex math to set the formula for those Americans they view as “likely” voters.
In a presidential race — or even in big statewide Senate contests — these funky variables wouldn’t be significant enough to matter.
But in individual House races, with only small and scattered polls, there could be a lot of noise in the data.
(It’s important to note that the noise could, theoretically, be pulling the numbers in the opposite direction, and the Republicans could have an EVEN BETTER election night than anticipated.
If you’re a politician, you certainly don’t want to be banking on this sort of thing to save your bacon. Democrats are in a bad spot, no doubt.
But I still think the depth of the crater they find themselves is uncertain.
Tags: election10
Another point to consider: I have a landline with caller ID and I don’t answer any calls except from numbers I know, including pollsters. They have called me but I “wasn’t home” to respond to their poll. I wonder how many other folks screen their calls the same way.
I’m with Mr. Bullard. I know almost no one these days who doesnt use the current technology to screen incoming phone calls. the question I dont know is how using the universe of people who dont have on TV-screen phone numbers or who will take calls from “800 number” or “incoming call” let alone, “Somebody polling” is affecting response.
People apparently expected miracles from Obama and he hasn’t delivered them (or certainly fast enough) and the Dems are going to get hammered in two weeks.
i sure think the dems are going to get hammered too, and to some extent i think people may have expected too much from obama and dems, but they also deserve a lot of the blame: the stimulus was way too small and elections tend to be dominated by the performance of the economy.
Like the above, I don’t take calls from unknown or from any toll-free numbers.
As to the Republicans taking control of the House and maybe the Senate, well gosh! Does this mean we can start blaming the Republicans for everything?
Pete K: Yes we can and will.
Interesting that the discussion so far is all about the land-line-cell-phone factor. None on the way the Citizens United decision has pretty much ended democracy as we used to know it. Republicans groups are outspending Dems by a margin of 7 to 1. This means endless, usually deceptive attack ads, for which no one is held responsible. The Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and the Koch brothers are buying themselves a nice, cooperative Congress.
If we had publicly funded elections, this one would turn out far differently.
Osama`s numbers are down.
Trying to pin the sentiment of the voters based on phone type is missing the point.
More than enough voters do not want to pursue Obama’s policies any further, and will vote accordingly.
Five-thirty-eight has the House at 227 to 207. That is conservative (no pun intended).
Expect a rout. If the new Congress doesn’t do enough to oppose Obama, they will be out in two years.
Nate Silver of 538.com has had the republicans taking the house for a long time, but with the democrats hanging on slightly to the senate. (with a lot of potential variability).
I simply don’t have as much faith in the Repubs winning the hearts and minds as some. I do have faith in people voting against the current spend and borrow and borrow and borrow paradigm. People generally aren’t stupid and blind. They can see things aren’t getting any better, they respond to that.
The phrase “capitalized brilliantly”, I hope that is unintentional.
It is truly evil the extent that money has corrupted our political process. Our current Supreme Court will be repudiated one day, soon I hope.
Have you seen the reporter who was handcuffed in Alaska for trying to ask Joe Miller questions?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/18/reporter-detained-by-joe-_n_766565.html.
The Democrats will contain control of both chambers of congress when everything is said and done on November 3. The media spinning and the biased polling in favor of Republicans will fall short on election day. Recent reports on absentee/early voting is favoring democrats in a number of districts, and the liberal base of the party will not disappoint on election day. The Doom and Gloom of the mainstream media is a fabrication that will not hold muster.
That’s right Steve S. Don’t forget to vote on November 3.