Our friends at Four Directions sent me a link to the Jon Ralston story from Sunday’s Nevada Independent.
The headline: Crystal ball says Cortez Masto hangs on, Sisolak doesn’t and Dems retain two of three House seats
This quote from Jon Ralston below is only half of what he says before he shares his predictions: (bolding is mine)
Let me start this biennial venture into brave foolishness with a remembrance of things past.
I engage in this Proustian exercise to make myself feel better as I make election predictions, not shirking from my annual tradition, in the most puzzling and difficult year since I began.
I think pundits should make predictions based on data, which is important; on experience, which can provide insight; and by gut, which is born of the first two. I also think one needs to provide a rationale for why one’s crystal ball says what it says.
Here is my theory of the case:
The early voting numbers don’t indicate a red wave, just the possibility of one if everything breaks right for Republicans. This is not like 2014, when all the early voting data confirmed a red wave – I knew after a couple of days – and it was just a question of how many boats would be lifted by the red tide.
This year, the Democrats have a slight advantage with more mail to come enhancing that edge. The Democrats are in the game — a game they have no right to be in, considering President Biden’s subterranean numbers and sticker shock everywhere Nevadans shop. The Reid Machine, even with Harry gone, is a real thing, folks; it was built a decade and a half ago or so, and it is still around, this time a ship sailing into what may turn out to be a perfect storm.
The real mystery is what Election Day turnout will look like: Are tens of thousands of Republicans really waiting for Tuesday, or are Clark Democrats ready to flood the zone? And will inclement weather deter Election Day voters while neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays the postmen from the swift completion of their appointed rounds?
The two top of ticket races – U.S. Senate and governor – are very difficult to pick.
I would not be surprised by any outcome — both incumbents win, both incumbents lose or a split decision. I am even more at sea in the governor’s race than the Senate contest for a variety of reasons – see below – but mostly because I can logically chart a path for Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to hang on, but it is not so simple to find one for Gov. Steve Sisolak. She has a weaker opponent, probably will run stronger in populous Clark and may just win Washoe. Sisolak may have been harder to tie to Biden – although Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s campaign has done its best with those tricky sign pairings – but the COVID hangover, his weakness in the rurals and the adverse environment make finding a road to victory more difficult. Oh, it’s there — if non-major party voters tilt Democratic and if Lombardo has not consolidated the GOP base because Joey Bag of Hydroxychloroquine has poisoned the well. I would not be surprised at all to see the governor get re-elected.
If Clark turnout increases enough because of thousands of mail ballots yet to be counted this week, thus diminishing the rural GOP landslide, Washoe County will be The Biggest Little Cincher. It could change everything.
Before I get to all my predictions, my theory of the case in the down-ballot races is simple: I don’t believe Nevadans, if they are paying attention, will act against their own interests. At least I hope not. There are three manifestly unqualified people running for important state offices, all three of them obviously dangerous and whose election would be inimical to Nevada’s interests. I don’t think it matters at all that they are Republican; I see no evidence they believe in any principle except conspiracies and grievances they have conveniently concocted.
Having said all of that, I can dither no more:
Only then does he share his predictions.
What is likely to get spread around?
Cortez-Masto is predicted to win! The governor will lose! Oh no, I love Susie Lee and she’s going to lose!
Once more, because we probably all need to be reminded…
No one can fucking predict the results of the election because if anyone has an accurate voter turnout model for this year, it will be a total fluke, mostly dumb luck.
These next few days will be less of a roller coaster ride if we can all remember that.
Open thread.
bbleh
Honestly I’m more worried about Republican monkeywrenching of election administration than I am of Republicans winning fairly. I can see some races ending up not decided for months because they’re being litigated.
NotMax
Suggested libation.
Que sera, syrah.
;)
MisterDancer
@bbleh: I’d rather be in the win column and fighting to keep it, over not winning.
Another Scott
Lari Kake can go jump into a fire.
Grr…
Meanwhile, reupping from downstairs because I think that it’s a good reminder:
Hang in there, everyone.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
I’ve done all I can personally do, so that gives me a level of peace about the outcome, come what may.
Season 5 of The Crown drops Wednesday — all 10 episodes at once. That means I’ll have binge-worthy TV to distract me from reality, which is likely to suck in Florida regardless of how things turn out elsewhere. Hooray for history-based soaps with stellar acting and high production values!
tobie
I’ve long since checked out of the national horse race because I cannot handle it. But I adopted NC as my state for this cycle and phonebanking yesterday I spoke to a woman who told me she drove back three hours to Charlotte on Saturday to early vote for Cheri Beasley and the Democratic slate. An unenthusiastic, disaffected base simply doesn’t do that kind of thing. Fingers crossed.
Brachiator
I don’t know that this is entirely true, but I don’t care much as we get closer to election day. Pollsters are having problems with their models, but there may be ways of adjusting for this. That’s their problem, not mine.
And yeah, actual voting behavior can be surprising. But we live in a crazy society where some people are desperate to know everything before it actually happens.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
That’s pretty much where I’m at too, right now
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
In the meantime you might become enamored of the venerable The Duchess of Duke Street. One season only currently (for whatever arcane reason) on Prime, both seasons on Britbox or Hoopla.
azlib
At least Jon Ralston admits to the level of uncertainty in this election cycle. I have always thought the results will depend on turnout, followed by turnout. In a close election that is almost always the deciding factor. Did I mention turnout is the key?
lowtechcyclist
I have no big plans for tomorrow night, other than going to bed on the early side. Now that the pandemic has made voting by mail much more of a thing than it used to be outside of Oregon, it may take days to figure out who won, just like 2020. I’ll wait and see where we are when we actually know stuff.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: we’re enjoying Magpie Murders.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m with you
Nicole
Thanks, WaterGirl. This helps lift my mood about tomorrow. The media has really outdone themselves this cycle, fluffing the GOP. But you’re right; we just don’t know how it’s going to pan out. It’s definitely not going to be as bad as a traditional midterm should be for the party in power; I’m just terrified about 2 years of a GOP congress and a media eager to blame the GOP’s fuckery-failures on Biden because most Americans are too stupid to understand we don’t (at the moment) live in a dictatorship.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Wrote in the thread downstairs that I don’t know what she means by that she hasn’t said whether she thinks that’s an advantage or disadvantage because we’re not having big phone banks and big voter registration drives
Qrop Non Sequitur
Aside from a quick GOTV effort in the morning; I filled my day with doctor appointments, play dates, a dinner date, and the new Pokémon is coming out.
I’ll be good and distracted until significant returns are in.
dnfree
@zhena gogolia: We’re enjoying magpie murders too, but the main character (the editor) just doesn’t seem at all like the kind of person who would make a good CEO, so that part of the plot is annoying me.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Enjoying much more than I should the for-this-month-only The Little Murders of Agatha Christie on Prime. Tenuous at best relation to Christie; it’s the lead detective being such a pretentious prick that makes it a fun watch.
Matt McIrvin
On Friday, the last day of Massachusetts early voting, I posted a reminder of it and my mother-in-law posted a comment saying she and her spouse had voted. I might not have had anything to do with it, and as very politically aware people the chances that they wouldn’t vote at all were essentially nil, but those votes are banked.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
I think Dana is saying that she thinks more extensive Dem field organizing this time compared to 2020 (due to the pandemic understandably) might be helpful for turnout in close races
dww44
Talking about headlines and anti Democratic takes, these are the top news stories in my daily NYT newsletter:
Confidence, Anxiety and a Scramble for Votes Two Days Before the Midterms
by 3 reporters with the subheading “As candidates made their closing arguments on Sunday, Democrats braced for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country while Republicans predicted a red wave.”
Then As Midterms Near, Biden Faces a Nation as Polarized as Ever by Peter Baker with the subheading ” President Biden had hoped to preside over a moment of reconciliation after the turmoil of the Trump years. But the fever of polarizing politics has not broken ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.”
The third story is about the dueling top Republican stars, Trump and Desantis, and their rallies in Florida.
So, a way to vent one’s anger and forget about the anxiety. At least, for me.
zhena gogolia
@dnfree: Yeah, that’s pretty laughable. But otherwise it’s charming.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you, Betty! I was wondering when it would air. I don’t have much interest in the contemporary British monarchy (I do enjoy reading Tudor history), but I have to admit, I really enjoy this series. Miserable people who are rich by an accident of birth- I feel like I’m a kid watching Dallas again, and I do not intend any sort of negative reflection on either show by making that comparison. ;) Yay Wednesday!
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I see that Elizabeth Debicki will play Diana. Great choice.
knally
@NotMax: I was excited for a moment but it’s not on the UK Britbox but hopefully it might be coming. Gemma Jones was great in this.
The other series I’d like to see again is The House of Elliot, even if it was just for the costumes!
Omnes Omnibus
How it’s going in Madison this morning. Can’t project that over the whole state but Madison is doing its part. Anecdotally, my niece and nephew are both voting ON CAMPUS at their respective universities.
sdhays
@WaterGirl: Reposting from the previous thread:
Due to the pandemic, Democrats had a lot fewer in-person GOTV activities than they would have otherwise. It’s a counter-argument to the people who say the Democrats won because of the pandemic. This year, the pandemic is “over”, so those constraints aren’t there anymore, so this time we get to see how the parties stack up when one isn’t fighting with one hand tied behind its back because it’s trying to be responsible and avoid mass infections.
evap
Back when I first started following politics closely, some pundit (I forget which one) said that if there are a lot of close elections, they tend to break in one direction. This was true in 2006, when most (all?) of the close Senate races went blue. I think this was true to some extent in 2014. So here’s hoping they break blue rather than red….
zhena gogolia
@Nicole: It’s definitely like watching Dallas, but with much better acting.
Matt McIrvin
@evap: That’s correct. Polls for any given year usually have a systematic error, because of common bad assumptions about turnout, that is larger than the random sampling error they list as the “margin of error” (but which sounds very scientific because it’s the thing that you can easily calculate). So they’ll tend to break in the same direction.
In hindsight it seems like data prognosticators like Nate Silver got famous because there were two or three presidential elections in a row in which the systematic error across all polls was unusually low. It was a fluke, but it made statistical poll-aggregation methods work impressively well. (Note that it was still higher in midterms during that period, which they thought was some kind of special thing about midterms–it’s probably not.) To Silver’s credit, he hedged much more about possible systematic error than most of the other people playing that game did.
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: Some people, myself included though I don’t have the statistical background to quantify it, think that the collapse in response rate is increasing the systematic error. The people who don’t answer their phones are different from the increasingly small number who still answer any call.
Some pollsters do have caller IDs and once or twice I tried to catch a call from Gallup but missed it, because I don’t monitor my phone. But it seems most don’t, and in any case they never leave voicemails.
JMG
The narrative cannot fail it can only be failed is American political reporting’s credo (with some honorable exceptions like Ralston). So if the Republicans control the House by like 219-216 and the Senate 51-49, rest assured that will be known as a “red wave” forever after. It could be a Republican victory by way more than that. It could be a Democratic victory. Nobody knows. Ralston cannot be praised highly enough for admitting that he, a real expert on his subject, has no idea what’s going to happen.
MomSense
@tobie:
Appatently the Independent candidate is polling at 4% and WTF liberals can we please be strategic about our voting.
Fingers crossed and thank you so much for helping.
MomSense
@NotMax:
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not a historical soap, but Alaska Daily is really good.
JML
FB reminded me today of the election from 4 years ago where a state house candidate near me won his race by 8 votes. There were 7 write-ins. I tell this story to remind everyone (including myself) that every vote matters.
J R in WV
I have personally decided that all the signs and entrails prove that this election is a Blue Wave that will shock the FTFNYT pundits so badly they will all resign to work for ESPN computing football stats, which will be a massive improvement in their work product. I’m avoiding political news bytes for the moment, having done all we can do by voting early and contributing early to selected Democratic candidates.
Here in the southwestern hills of West Virginia, it has been shockingly warm for the past few days. Last night when I started fixing dinner it was 75 inside, and closer to 80 outside, so I turned on the AC for the duration of dinner prep. Wife just now said “Warm, sitting here in the sun!”, so we will use the AC again this evening. Wife has a PT appointment. I need to pick up some prescriptions, so off to town we must go.
Dogs have quit eating kibble, so their annual Bambi-bits season must have started, every year in the fall and early winter they find deer parts in the deep woods, which they much prefer to the high-end kibble they get from me. I won’t go into the nasty details… But we love them anyway; so sweet and affectionate.
tobie
@MomSense: Oy. I hate spoilers. Independent campaigns are vanity campaigns best I can tell.
catothedog
@JMG:
I’ll recycle the Nietzsche line I quoted yesterday..
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
There is no better indication that the Democrats don’t have real power, even when they govern. Power is when you control the narrative of your agenda, not when you have to tailor your agenda for keeping the narrators happy
Without destroying white power over media, there is no real democracy in this country.
And without having a powerful Democratic Party aligned media, there is no Democratic power in this country.
Mimi Haha
I’m at one of the larger public libraries in Chicago* which is also a multi-precinct early voting site. People are line up down the block, waiting to get in to vote. It’s pretty exciting to see that many people understand voting is important.
*Sulzer, if you’re interested. It’s basically the regional library for the north side.
Miss Bianca
@knally: “The House of Elliot”? What’s that? Would that be something about the Border Reivers? Don’t tell me there’s a series out there about my people!
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV:
Ah, this happens in your neck of the woods as well, eh? Do your doggoes drag deer bits (legs, butts, anything left out there) back to the house just so they can enjoy their noisome snacks in full view of their human tribe? Mine sure do! : )
TheTruffle
I’ve been reminded for the past few days of the 2002 midterms, which didn’t go as predicted. And yes, 9/11 happened. But look at what we are facing now. A shaky economy (2002 was the year of a recession). A year and a half after an attack on our capitol and government. There are a bunch of reasons why the Dems were trounced in 2002, and apparently the head of the DNC was stunned. Who’s to say that 2022 won’t be another anomaly?
lowtechcyclist
@JML: I remember (and I’m sure Geminid does too) the VA House of Delegates race in November 2017 that literally had a tie vote, and was ultimately decided by the equivalent of a coin toss.
NutmegAgain
I’ve been scanning my favorite blogs for some discussion of the recent announcement by Yevgeny Prigozhin that, yes, you bet he and his cronies are messing in elections here and in other western countries. (He’s a Putin pal, top shit in the shitpile known as the Wagner Group–Russia’s Blackwater, or army for hire, and I’ve seen some mentions that he’s a likely man for replacing Putin.)
So for all the sturm und drang that we went through while the orange oil slick was in the oval office about Russian interference, here’s the Russians coming out and claiming it. I’d like to see more in the US press.
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
The coin toss decide the result for that seat and also gave the Republican a majority in the House of Delegates
Another Scott
@NutmegAgain: I just posted an AlJazeera link upstairs.
Cheers,
Scott.
NutmegAgain
@Another Scott: thanks!
BlueGuitarist
@WaterGirl:
DanaHoule is “he” in KCRW bio that links to twitter account.
Arguing field operations will increase D vote share in 2022 compared to lack of canvassing in 2020 by D but not R.
Makes sense.
Hoping its true not just for outcome but for value of canvassing
WaterGirl
@BlueGuitarist: Okay, I see now that I read her tweet wrong. When I first read it, it seems like she was saying that canvassing wasn’t part of field organizing and I was like “wait, what? that makes no sense”
Yutsano
@tobie: A friend from North Carolina called me randomly last night. I told him I don’t care what else he does as long as he votes for Cheri Beasley. He laughed and agreed even though he’s a registered Republican.
no comment
@Miss Bianca:
@J R in WV:
.
If you don’t mind the nasty details, Dogs in Elk is hilarious.