Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News News GOP and Democrats All But Tied Going into Midterms

After the last election cycle, polls have lost credibility with me.

Most polls for the last election were within the MOE, margin of error. You sound like the Trumpers after 2016 and going into 2020. The polls were wrong, the polls were wrong. It's just few know how to read them. The polls predicted the GOP would win the congressional popular vote by a 2.5 margin, they won it by 2.8. You can’t get any closer than that. There was a margin of error with the 2.5 predicted margin of +5.5 to a low of -0.5 when adding the MOE which all polls have of usually plus or minus 3 points. Being only off by 0.3 of a single point is outstanding.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-congressional-vote-7361.html

Red Wave, the Republican never lead in the generic congressional ballot by the plus 8 or more that would have predicted that. The most the Republicans lead by was 4.8 points back on 28 April. Which would roughly equate to a 20-seat house gain plus one senate seat. That’s still at least 10 seats off from what would qualify as a wave election. A wave election is the party out of power, not in control regaining control with a net gain of 30 plus seats. As late as 25 September the Democrats had an 0.3-point lead in the generic congressional ballot. That would equate to a 50-50 chance of the Democrats retaining control of the House. Then the Republicans regained the lead and finished with a 2.5-point lead over the Democrats. Roughly forecasting a net gain for the GOP of 10-15 seats. They gained 9. Again, that is about as close as one is going to get.

If you don’t trust the polls, that fine. But the polls had it right in 2022. Commentators on Fox didn’t as Fox was just telling their viewership what their viewers wanted to hear. What Fox was basing their red wave predictions on, I haven’t a clue. It certainly wasn’t the polls.

YOU are the only one saying that - the experts are not saying that at all. I'll go with the experts, thanks.

“Let’s get this out of the way up front: There was a wide gap between the perception of how well polls and data-driven forecasts did in 2022 and the reality of how they did … and the reality is that they did pretty well.

While some polling firms badly missed the mark, in the aggregate the polls had one of their most accurate cycles in recent history.”

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-2022-midterm-forecasts-performed/

I may be almost the only one saying this, but numbers speak for themselves. The polls were pretty accurate. It was the talking heads and their stupid red wave speculation that wasn’t. They had no numbers to back them up.

If you don’t believe cold hard numbers, there’s nothing I can do. Perception becomes reality, especially when one hears it over and over, one comes to believe their perception, true or not. it. I’ll leave it as that.

The polls didn’t as I showed you in cold hard numbers. For a wave election to happen the party out of power must have at least a plus 8 advantage in the generic. The largest GOP lead occurred in April of 2022 at 4.7 points. That’s 3.3 points below the minimum needed to forecast a wave election. The Democrats grabbed a 1-point lead in September which would forecast a wash type election. Either party gaining or losing somewhere between 1-5 seats. The Republicans regained the lead and finished with a 2.5-point lead. Which would indicate somewhere around 15 seats give or take a seat or two. Hence my own forecast of 13 seats, Greger’s 11 and your’s with the Democrats retaining control.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-congressional-vote-7361.html

You can scroll down to the graph and further down you can see all the polls. None of us here came close to forecasting a red wave election. I have concluded the political talking heads are full of it. I think it was a case of these talking heads telling their viewers what they wanted to happen than what the polls were actually stating. Which doesn’t surprise me one bit. We’ve talked about this a lot during the final months leading up to the midterms, everyone agreed that there would be no red wave. Yet here you are jumping on the red wave bandwagon. Even yourself didn’t predict a red wave. Why now?

If you think polls are useless, you don’t need to read this. I however agree with the thesis of this article.

Poll: DeSantis leads Trump for 2024 GOP nod — but not if Haley and others split the vote

https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-des...and-others-split-the-vote-175359642.html

Which simply means I view DeSantis as a threat to whoever is the Democratic nominee for 2024. Trump isn’t a threat at all as he would in my opinion if he is the GOP nominee help the Democrats retain the senate and regain the house.

The only poll that I need to know: The majority of Americans are good decent people and don't vote Republican as evidenced by the number of votes each POTUS candidate has received in the past 25 years.

LOL, last year’s midterm more Americans voted Republican than Democratic. 54,506,136 to 51,477,313. Not presidential, but folks still vote Republican. In 2016 51.8% of Americans voted against Hillary Clinton, she did receive more votes than Trump, but that was forecasted in the polls.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e...vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

Bush received 62,040,610 votes to Kerry’s 59,028,444, 50.7%, so most Americans voted for Bush. Bush received 500,000 less votes than Gore in 2000 true. Gore received 48.4% of the vote, so most Americans voted against him. Same for Bill Clinton in 1992, he also had most Americans voting against him.

I’d say it all depends on the candidates, especially today since independents, swing voters now make up 42% of the electorate. While the Republican Party has chugged along at an average of 27%, going up and down 3-4 points since Eisenhower, it’s been the Democratic Party that has shrunk. From 50% of the electorate in 1960, those who identified or affiliated themselves with the Democratic Party to 45% in 1980, down to 35% in 2000, to 30% today. Only 58% of all Americans now identify with both major party where it was 80% back in 1960 and as high as 70% in 2006. 2006 was the year in which independents began to skyrocket to the 42% Gallup states are independents today. Which simply means there’s a whole lot of people out there dissatisfied with both major parties. So much so, they have deserted them to become swing voters.

We’ve entered an era where independents, swing voters decide elections, not neither major party. Both major parties decide their nominees, a lot of times swing voters dislike both major party candidates which they end up voting for the candidate they least want to lose, not win, but least want to lose. I call these folks the anti-voters, those who vote against a candidate or party, but not for any candidate or party. Biden won these anti-voters 68-30 over Trump in 2020. These folks voted against Trump, not for Biden. Anyone not named Trump would have done. Trump won this group of anti-voters in 2016 which gave him his big wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. When one adds those, who voted third party to the anti-voters in 2016, you had 32% of the electorate voting against a candidate, be that Trump or Clinton, not voting for any candidate, just against. Such is today’s modern political era.

One time in eight POTUS election cycles.



***slow, polite hand clap***