Today’s entry: @brianmuddradio Steve Hilton had a few polls last night showing democrats making huge gains. One house estimate is now only showing republicans gaining 15 seats. Democrats are also raising massive amounts of money, which is odd if people think democrats are likely to lose.
Bottom Line: Generic ballot polls are increasingly closely watched in midterm election politics. And with good reason. As I point out in my midweek midterm election update, the most accurate indication of which party will fare best on Election Day is the generic ballot poll. Since the advent of the polling age in the 1930’s, the party which has led on the generic ballot on Election Day has fared best in every midterm election. The average of generic ballot polling has been the closest thing to a sure thing in election prognostication there is. Students of history who cover politics and reference polls should know this, and if they’re offering an honest assessment of cycle, address it. It’s likely Fox’s Steve Hilton gets it. Independent of those who’re historically aware of the accuracy of the generic ballot polls, they’re under additional scrutiny this cycle as politicos and media types attempt to discern if the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe is impacting the political preference of voters as we head down the homestretch of this election cycle. With all of that said, if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years – it's that cherry picking polls, or simply relying on those which are among the least reliable – is often a primrose path. Just ask Hillary Clinton about that one. So, what’s really going on? Are Democrats really in the process of flipping the script on a pending potential red wave in November?
In short, the answer is no. There’s no credible data which suggests a meaningful shift in favor of Democrats of late. The RealClear Politics average of accredited generic ballot polls this cycle has featured a range of Democrats holding a seven-point advantage last summer, to Republicans holding a four-point lead, as recently as mid-May. That specific timing is especially notable because it was in the wake of the SCOTUS-leak in the Mississippi abortion law case in what turned out to be the eventual ruling by the Supreme Court. If we were to see a surge to the left based on that ruling – that's the window in which it would have begun to show up. When that didn’t happen, it was evident there wouldn’t likely be a significant shift politically on the basis of that ruling. And that’s proved to be the case. Where are we today? Republicans are shown with an average advantage of three-points. So, what was Steve Hilton’s depiction about?
In Steve’s case he fell victim to a case of recency bias. There happen to be ten national pollsters who’ve been regularly sampling voters on the generic ballot question. Three of those pollsters, The Economist/YouGov, Politico/Morning Consult and Quinnipiac have consistently shown Democrats leading on the generic ballot throughout this cycle. They’ve been the clear outliers. It just so happened that all three reported their latest polling results heading into the weekend. If all one was to do was to glance at the latest reported polls, without consideration of the broader context, you’d see seven consecutive polls showing Republicans with a lead followed by three consecutive polls with Democrats in the lead. That appears to be the trap Hilton fell into. Since this weekend we’ve had three newer polls released and the results of those three – Republicans leading by one according to Emerson, eight points according to Trafalgar and ten points according to Rasmussen. Context is always key and that very much remains the case when evaluating this kind of information. In the record setting 2010 election cycle, in which Republicans flipped an all-time record 69 seats, Republicans held a 4-point advantage on the generic ballot on this date. So, is it likely that Rasmussen’s ten-point lead is correct? That’s highly, highly unlikely. Is the average polling result across all ten pollsters which shows Republicans with a three-point advantage, or one which currently sits just below that record setting cycle of 12-years ago? That seems very likely. To that end consider this...
Nate Silver’s 538 model, which has historically produced results which have errored in favor of Democrats (including Hillary Clinton being given a 97% likelihood of winning on Election Day 2016) currently shows Republicans heavily favored to win the House (85% chance) and slightly favored to win the Senate (51%). Each is within 2% of the high-point in the cycle for Republicans suggesting he’s not seeing the current environment as one which is favoring Democrats or significantly shifting in their direction. Now, regarding the financial piece... I’m not the least bit surprised it’s picking up for Democrats. Be mindful that Democrats have potentially been only one, at most two, Senators away from having been able to complete the long-desired overhaul the United States of America. A change that would have been completed with the expansion of the Supreme Court, the eradication of state’s rights via the tenth amendment and conversion to a socialist economy via the Green New Deal. For big money actors on the left like George Soros, this is the closest they’ve been to achieving that goal. Soros in particular doesn’t have many election cycles left, and thus I’d expect him and his related New World Order, Great Reset clan to go all in, in the hope of pulling out unlikely wins this November. This is their last best chance to achieve this outcome for the foreseeable political future and a lot can still happen over the next three months. No one should take the significance of the cycle for granted.
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