Sam Wang takes a look at the latest PPP Congressional polling:
It is hard to predict how this translates to seat gain/loss next year. If the election were held today, Democrats would pick up around 30 seats, giving them control of the chamber. I do not expect this to happen. Many things will happen in the coming 12 months, and the current crisis might be a distant memory. But at this point I do expect Democrats to pick up seats next year, an exception to the midterm rule.
Note that in these calculations I did not even include the worst of the news for Republicans. In a followup series of questions, PPP then told respondents that their representative voted for the shutdown. At that point, the average swing moved a further 3.1% toward Democrats, and 22 out of 24 points were in the gray zone. That would be more like a 35 to 40-seat gain for Democrats. An analyst would have to be crazy to predict that! However, it seems like mandatory information for a campaign strategist.
I’d like to see a Democratic SuperPAC spend a few million bucks on simple, cookie-cutter, 30 second ads in 30-40 districts with one message: your Representative voted to shut down the government. Get that message cemented in voters’ heads a year before their Rep has a chance to mount a well-financed excuse-making campaign, and you’re one step closer to a turnover.
That said, I’d also like to see a unicorn pee a rainbow, but a boy can dream. In the meantime, give until it hurts:
RaflW
I (happily) went on a bit of a campaign donation binge last night. Ellison, Franken, Eliz Warren, Wendy Davis, and the BJ DCCC/DSCC/DNC thingy.
Felt great!
MattF
Is Wang the only reality-based meta-analyst around now? I agree that he’s excellent, but I’d like to see more than one.
beltane
Well, the Republicans did promise us that this would be their Gettysburg. Then next year will be the March to the Sea followed by 2016 which will be their Appomattox/destruction of Carthage.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@RaflW: Added, thanks for reminding me.
@MattF: Harry Enten at the Guardian is another one. Nate Silver is building the new 538 right now, but I’m sure he’ll be bigger and better than ever in a couple of months.
Napoleon
Sam Wang made a similar prediction regarding the Republicans in the house at the last election a few months out and was not even in the same planetary system as the actual results. They guy is not to be take seriously on this.
catclub
“your Representative voted to shut down the government” … BECAUSE THEIR GOP BOSSES TOLD THEM TO.
Punchy
Then watch the Koch-affiliated groups spend hundreds of millions on at least 100x more ads saying the opposite. It’s becoming impossible to match dollar signs with these almost bottomless bank accounts.
amk
I trust sam wang. He was spot on throughout in 2012, better than nate silver, whose EV predictability was bobbing up & down based on the so called polls.
EconWatcher
Attack ads are nice, but won’t it be the ground game that makes or breaks the midterms?
Fuzzy
Where and when will Nate Silver come back to political work? He disappeared in the bowels of ESPN and has not given us the real insight in almost a year. I do not trust these polls without his take on the reliability.
Alexandra
Came to appreciate Sam Wang’s posts more than Nate Silver’s over the last presidential election, although both are excellent, along with Drew Linzer who was uncannily close many months out. Not sure what their congressional predictions are like.
These days, I’m sometimes left wondering what Organizing For America is doing at local levels or if they have any plans for 2014?
amk
@EconWatcher: Yup. It has been proven in 2008 & 12, ate least at presidential level, which sure had some coattail effect on some dems. The dems need to treat 2014 as another presidential election. Come to think of it, it is.
amk
@Alexandra: And of course Drew Linzer. Also. Too.
RaflW
@Punchy:
So we shouldn’t try?
Sadly, the SCOTUS handicappers think another breach of campaign finance limits is in the offing, the main question being wether Roberts goes all-in on no limits, or he and Alito manage to craft some minimal window dressing of individual contrib limits.
Its gonna get worse on the money front.
But the last cycle also suggests that money alone isn’t doing it. In the same way that a $50 million ad buy wouldn’t have saved Gigli, ads alone won’t save totally depraved, incompetent and angry GOP candidates.
dmsilev
I like this headline from Steve Benen: “House GOP demands treats because they’ve ‘fought so hard’ “.
If it would help, I’m willing to head down to the grocery store and buy a package of Snausages to send to the GOP.
Feudalism Now!
We need to Get Out the Vote. Participation will be key. The hover round contingent of the Tea Party will be there in droves to support their anarchists, will we?
MattF
It’s a poll, so not entirely OT:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/why-the-government-shutdown-isnt-anywhere-near-over-in-1-graph/280359/
What’s the story with ‘Independent’ voters who don’t want to compromise? What do they want?
ETA: Looks like they are split 50/50.
EconWatcher
@amk:
Speaking of the next presidential election, Ruth Bader Ginsberg is pretty much betting the farm on a Dem winning. In recent quotes, she’s made it clear that she’s not stepping down, and said she’s confident of a Dem victory in 2016.
I have the greatest respect for her service, and I get where she’s coming from: She’s great at her job, it’s the well-earned pinnacle of her storied career, and she wants to keep doing it. She’s also probably also noticed that people with her drive tend not to live very long after they retire.
But I wish she’d rethink this. She almost certainly can’t make it until 2020, and it’s hard to even fathom what we’d see if she were replaced with someone like Alito.
Belafon
@dmsilev: I’d pitch in for cupcakes.
I just thought of an apt comparison for where we are now: The Republicans are like LBJ in Vietnam. They have have no clue how to finish this because they quitting now would question their manhood. I’m not entirely immune of this, but they cannot/will not admit they are wrong.
How do you beat them into submission this far from elections? Maybe Obama should ask for a delay until August of next year. Then we can have these fights in the middle of campaign season.
shortstop
@MattF: @dpm (dread pirate mistermix): I see others have mentioned Drew Linzer; I thought he was still around, too, but looks like he put his blog down for a nap after the 2012 election. Hope he’ll be back as well.
Rob in CT
@MattF:
Something like 90% of “Independents” are actually partisans. These days, I’d guess that breaks down something like 60/40 Rep/Dem leaners (Rep brand is pretty toxic, so many Rep voters call themselves independents). The last 5-10% of Indies actually are Indies.
Rough guesstimates, of course. Anyway, if you look at indies as mostly not really indies, it makes sense.
virginia
Treat, snacks, comfort goodies? How bout some of my chamomile tea with soy milk — don’t forget the Stevia. So hot and yummy.
Redshift
And the great Carl Hiaasen has dubbed Boehner “the emptiest suit in Washington”.
kindness
I’m not sure that polls matter. I think $$$ matters and the big $ have spoken. The Tea Party wins because they continue to be fully funded.
They won’t win in the end, we will. But they will extract their pound of our flesh getting there.
magurakurin
I’d say you are right. I’m registered as an independent. It’s something I did in my 20’s and just never changed it. I became an expat, and I’m frankly too scared to try changing it for fear it will somehow screw up my vote. As it is, I can get and cast my ballots in the mail, no problem. I can’t vote in the primary, but I am a full on Democrat and completely partisan. I’d vote for Mussolini before I’d vote for any Republican.
mai naem
l listen to a show on XM on the POTUS channel with Julie Mason. While I find her to be a sort of right of center journo( a true right of center, not a Faux kind of journo) and I don’t want to agree with her, she seems to turn out to be right more so than not. Anyhow, she thinks the numbers will change as time goes and as the messaging gets better the public will be just as anti-Dem as they are anti-GOP. Also, as an aside, she doesn’t think Wendy Davis stands a chance in hell of winning in Texas(she worked for the Houston Chronicle for a few years) because of 1/the GOP’s hold on the state and 2. she thinks Davis comes across as too wimpy/good two shoes. She thinks Davis needs to comes across like a “broad” like Anne Richards did.
RinaX
@Rob in CT:
I’d say more like 70/30 Rep/Dem, which makes the press’s obsession with independents even more ridiculous.
Jockey Full of Malbec
There will be no repercussions for the GOP until the majority of the Little Turnips start to feel actual pain.
Regrettably, that won’t happen until default. By which time, it will probably be too late.
Belafon
@mai naem:
The flaw in this is that if the Republicans had a message, they would already be using it. The one group that is currently holding together with a simple message is the Democrats.
I don’t think Davis has a great chance of winning, but then again, the biggest reason Richards won was when White insulted her. And we’ve already seen enough of that coming from Abbot and other Republicans this cycle.
danielx
If the stakes weren’t so serious, this would be fun to watch…House Repubs have put themselves out at the end of a very long and thin branch, and the only thing Obama will hand them is a saw.
shortstop
@Belafon:
Clayton Williams, I think, wasn’t it? As the late great Molly told it, he never had to pay electorally for his rape “joke,” but Texans of that day wouldn’t countenance his refusing to shake a lady’s hand. Now, of course, Davis’s opponent could punch her in the face and be cheered on by every Republican in the state.
Mike E
@magurakurin: Me three. I registered unaffiliated after the steady neoliberalization of the 90s, but pre-Monica. Love Big Dog but he made too many self-centrist types think they could do “it” too, and Bill Clinton remains as the only politician to thread that strange ideological needle.
Peter
@kindness:
There’s a kernel of truth in that thought, which is that adverse polling CAN be overcome by money; money spent on GOTV, spent on organizing, spent calling people and reminding them to head to the polls. You know, all that stuff that the republicans’ CU paymasters can’t spend their money on.
The big GOP money machine can only run ads to try and shift the polls, not circumvent them. So no, the polls do matter.
xian
@Napoleon: this was not a prediction. He is simply analyzing the current polls. He clearly states this does not predict what will happen a year from now.
MattF
@dmsilev: Nah, even ‘E for effort’ is overdoing it. Given, e.g., this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bachmann-end-times-are-coming-because-obama-is-supporting-al-qaeda
ETA: Bachmann: “Yes it gives us fear in some respects because we want the retirement that our parents enjoyed. Well they will, if they know Jesus Christ.”
Cervantes
@mai naem: Interesting. I don’t know Mason. What is (or was) her take on Kay Bailey Hutchison?
Marmot
“I’d like to see a Democratic SuperPAC spend a few million bucks on simple, cookie-cutter, 30 second ads in 30-40 districts with one message: your Representative voted to shut down the government.”
So, I also think this is unlikely to happen, but I’ve never understood why it’s so unlikely for our side. Any ideas?
xian
@MattF:
They want people not to know they’re Republicans.
Marmot
@shortstop: “Clayton Williams, I think, wasn’t it? As the late great Molly told it, he never had to pay electorally for his rape “joke,” but Texans of that day wouldn’t countenance his refusing to shake a lady’s hand.”
Yep, it was Williams. “Relax and enjoy it.”
But I thought it was the joke that was the big deal — was it really a refused handshake? I have only the foggiest memory of the time.
Matt McIrvin
@shortstop: Watching Linzer’s Votamatic site over the course of 2012 was strange. People didn’t pay him much attention, I think because his model’s output was so stable (more so than Wang’s simpler calculation) that there was no drama there. It stayed pegged at a more or less constant result even during the period when Obama was losing ground after the first debate. He seemed kind of like a nut during that period, with this insanely optimistic prediction. And it turned out to be exactly right.
Now, that was his first time out, so the question becomes: was he just lucky, or does he have an even better predictor than Sam Wang’s? I’ll be interested to see how he does in subsequent cycles.
I’d come to trust Wang’s work just because of what happened in 2004 and the way he responded to it. Sam Wang screwed up in a very specific way in 2004, and it was easy to tell what happened because he’d laid it all out on the table. He aggregated polls and computed an “if the election were held today” result just based on them. Then he calculated an adjustment based on his belief that undecideds would break heavily for Kerry, and posted a different map based on that. In the end, the un-adjusted map was right, and the tweaked map was wrong.
Wang concluded that his adjustment was a mistake, the polls themselves were more right than he realized, and he wasn’t going to tweak his calculation like that any more. And then in 2008, he was right on the money, and in 2012 he was right on the money again. (In 2010, he did underestimate the size of the Tea Party wave by a bit, but he did no worse than Nate Silver. Wang thinks midterm Congressional elections are inherently harder to call.)
xian
@Belafon: Davis’s run is not just about trying to win, it’s about driving up Democratic (and Latino) participation in Texas elections.
gbear
@RaflW: I made some phone calls to rep Betty McCollum and senators. I wish I could pony up with some donations but I’ve got $0.00 in extra cash right now.
WereBear
Sam Wang, I think I love you.
But I want to know for sure!
C’mon, hold me tight…
I love you.
Belafon
@shortstop: You’re right. Wrong name stuck in my head.
Tone in DC
As mentioned by others, a lot can change between now and late 2014.
I’m not as gloom and doom as some folks, however. I still think BHO is a very smart guy, and he’s handling this crisis very well.
I also think the Not So Loyal opposition is a bunch of boozy howler monkeys with a fecal obsession.
Darth Cheney, Karl “Bad Math” Rove and The Dread Justice Roberts have actual functioning (though foul and power hungry) brains.
These teabaggers like Cruz, Ryan and the oh so obstinate Orange Julius? Not so much.
amk
@WereBear: lulz.
Matt McIrvin
@Rob in CT: Many, many of the 2010 Tea Party voters called themselves “independents.” Some of the early media coverage seemed to be gulled by that into treating the Tea Party movement as somehow centrist, especially on cultural issues, but they never were, of course; they were more extreme than the Republican Party of the time, which is saying something.
Belafon
@xian: And being here in Texas, I hope it does. I think what will help even more is convincing the Latino community that they need to vote, and helping them register starting now, because the state is trying to make it as tough as possible.
Jay C
@Redshift:
That’s quite an impressive achievement, given the level of competition there….
shortstop
@Marmot: Well, “uptight, humorless females” did not care for that hy-larious joke. But what really did him in, according to Ivins (allowing for the slight hyperbole that made her one of the greatest storytellers of our time), was that he refused to shake Richards’s proffered hand before a debate. That sort of thing offended old-school men, of which Texas has plenty, as well as pretty much all women; the criticism from men wasn’t that he was being churlish in general but that he was doing it to a lady.
Kind of ironic that one form of sexism didn’t kill him, but failing to adhere to another traditional standard of gender-related behavior did.
VOR
@Napoleon: Um, re-read the first paragraph of the Sam Wang quote. “I do not expect this to happen. Many things will happen in the coming 12 months, and the current crisis might be a distant memory.”
He is looking at polls for a point in time which is over a year away from the election. Lots of things will change between now and then. He knows that and acknowledges that fact.
TAPX486
Thank goodness, the GOP has come to it’s senses and is about to propose a REAL solution to the crisis – (drum roll, well multiple drum rolls please) – it is OFFSPRING OF SUPERCOMMITTEE..
We are screwed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Svensker
The problem with this poll is that it posits a generic “Dem” against the known Repub. But apparently many of those places don’t have an actual Dem who can run a decent race. So the poll just says how much people dislike the Repubs, nothing about how they would vote in a real election.
shortstop
I do suspect that the amount of blatantly sexist shit that will be thrown at Davis will give her a few points. Not enough to win, but probably enough to notice and cause Republicans to wonder anew why they can’t attract the ladies to their ticket.
Dexter
@TAPX486:
Looks like Democrats have already rejected it.
Trakker
I think it is obvious that Boehner, at some point, will HAVE to give in and pass a clean CR and raise the debt ceiling. Is there much disagreement about this? When Boehner finally caves, the Tea Party will erupt. Studies I’ve seen recently show that Tea Partiers already distrust and dislike the Republican Party, and this “betrayal” by Boehner could be the final straw for many of them. The point is, I think that within the next year the Tea Party is going reject the GOP and explore a party structure of their own. They already have a significant base and an identity.
In the long run this might even be the best solution for the Republican Party in the long run. As long as the Tea Party is a major force in the Republican Party they will become increasingly extreme and drive more and more voters away. I suspect the establishment Republicans know this and know they must somehow rid themselves of the TP so I suspect little effort will be made to keep the TP in the party. Bottom line – the 2014 elections will be very volatile…for the Republicans only.
liberal
@EconWatcher:
You’re going too easy on her. There’s no conclusion to come to other than she’s egotistical and selfish.
Both she and Breyer should resign before Obama leaves office.
Roger Moore
@Trakker:
The big question is how much damage will happen before he does it.
TAPX486
@Dexter: Bummer Dems in the house has abandoned poor little OFFSPRING OF SUPER COMMITTEE to it’s fate, Such spoil sports.
Botsplainer
@Tone in DC:
These days, he’s got all the mien of a dry drunk without the dry part, or any of the charm…
Citizen_X
@xian: Damn straight. Davis running will make contests across the state more competitive, in an election where he Texas GOP should have had the run of the table. The organizational experience alone would make the effort worthwhile.
(The negative way of saying that is “Anything that gets the Texas Dems off the goddam floor is good.”)
Botsplainer
@liberal:
Right now, there are too many high-profile wingnut lawyers and judges out there for comfort should the party of the presidency flip.
As a nation, we’ve let them take over the law schools, and they’re getting churned out by the thousands each passing year.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Svensker:
How many of these districts have seen Republicans run unopposed because the DCCC/DSCC/DNC gave up on them long ago? Not sure how things stand now, but here’s a Democratic Underground piece from 2006 from 2006 that shows Republicans running unopposed in seventy House districts.
I’m not saying that we should mount a full court press in every district in the land. It sure would be nice if we had people with a bit of name recognition in them so that we can take advantage of changes in voter sentiment. As it stands, there are X number of districts where the Dems can’t win simply because they don’t even try.
Scott Supak
Sam Wang is the best. If we ever get a site like Intrade back, I highly recommend that people take a small amount of cash and spread it out over various bets that Sam says you’ll win.
I made out like a bandit doing just that last year (the Obama to get 330 EV’s market was grand).
Anna in PDX
@RaflW: I did that during the last elections – hope to pay off some bills so that in the next months I will be able to start doing those donations again. Feels like it is really really important right now. I didn’t have much hope for this election cycle but the Repubs keep shooting themselves in the foot, so maybe…
Suffern ACE
It’s the paranoid freak in me that thinks the whole point of this excercise is to create enough disorder that Allende is removed by Pinochet. From the oligarch’s perspective, a few hundred million to get rid of Allende in the US would probably be worth it. Why go to Meese if you weren’t planning something awful?
Cervantes
In the 2012 cycle, Drew Linzer’s votamatic.org, was a site for sore eyes (so to speak). It’s been dormant but he’s thinking about resurrecting it in the spring for the mid-terms.
Sam Wang and Nate Silver are good as well, of course.
Suffern ACE
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Yep. I think we need to start earlier this time placing calls to DCCC Chair Steve Israel. He isn’t exactly known for being an attack dog to pick up seats. The DCCC is more interested in saving it’s own incumbents.
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
… and default on the full faith and credit of the United States.
Gotta include that too, especially if we go past the 17th without raising the debt ceiling.
JGabriel
Dear Mr. Speaker,
Perhaps it won’t do any good, but I submitted the following the Speaker’s contact page:
Like I said, I don’t know if it will do any good, but perhaps if enough people contact the Speaker’s office with similar sentiments, it will sway him.
JGabriel
Shit, fucked up the formatting. Obviously the salutation should be at top of the blockquoted letter, not at the top of the comment.
shortstop
@JGabriel: We got it, baby. Nice letter.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
@Belafon: Unlike Richards and Bell and White, Davis has a significant issue to run on, one that’s getting national attention. That doesn’t mean she’ll win (right now I put the odds at less than 10%), but this will be the first election in a while that won’t be completely driven by personality.
Of course, flipping the Lege is the priority, but a Davis candidacy makes that ever so slightly less impossible.
Mino
@EconWatcher: If the Dems don’t win in 2016, it’s all gonna be moot anyway, imo.