NYT LIVE POLL THREAD:

[IceSpear]

Texas and Nevada are certainly looking more promising for democrats right now than they did last night but those Tennessee results are brutal.

Remember that Roy Moore did better in rural areas than he did in 2012 despite being an exposed pedophile (see sig.) Tennessee was always fool's gold.

#TriggerWarning for Atlas. Nevada is a tie while Bredesen is getting BTFO. Remember when multiple people insisted Bredesen had a better chance of winning than Rosen because fundamentals are irrelevant, muh 6 month early polls, and #CandidateQualityMatters? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[IceSpear]

Blackburn is definitely NOT up by 18. Either this is an outlier, or the sample is way too R-friendly.

It's an outlier, but the trend is undeniable. Blackburn is surging while Bredesen is in free fall.

[IceSpear]

WACKY JACKY IS NOW LEADING THE UNBEATABLE TITAN

[IceSpear]

Look, I still think Rosen wins so don't call me a concern troll, BUT can someone please tell me why we could not have gotten a better candidate in which this race would not even be close?

There's nothing wrong with Rosen as a candidate. The entire circlejerk about her being a weak candidate is based off NOTHING other than the fact that she's not demolishing Heller in the polls. But Democrats NEVER demolish Republicans in the polls in Nevada, even if they do end up demolishing them in real life.

[IceSpear]

So what we do know from these polls... TX and TN will not be flipped and NV will be super close. Nothing new here.

Agreed on the first two, but that is not necessarily true judging from the history of NV polls.

Anyway, in other news, it really is starting to look like Texas is the tipping point state.

[IceSpear]

I don't know why people didn't see Bredesen as another Bob Kerrey/Evan Bayh right at the start. It was so obvious that it was always going to end up this way. It seems like every year we get the storied pol come out of the woodworks to be the great hope for the Dems in deep red states and they end up losing badly in the end. Next year it will be Mark Beebe.

How dare you spell Sen-elect Mike Beebe's name wrong!

Anyway, some of us did see it...

Sorry to interrupt the party (not really ), but this will be Linda Lingle 2.0.

[IceSpear]

The NYT/Siena results right now are a mess. The Trump approvals can show you that they are too GOP-leaning. If anything, TX looked pretty normal when it was like Cruz +5.

Nevada is not out of the question but Trump's approval is only -2, which was his vote margin, so that's... unrealistic.

TX has Trump +6, which is also unrealistic. As is Beto being underwater and Ted being +10.

And Tennessee, let's be real, Blackburn does not have a +15 approval where Bredesen is underwater.

The samples are just horrific again.

Completely. Of course, IceSpear and blue avatars need to take ridiculous R-friendly samples to "reassure" them of a red wave.

"Nothing to see here folks, Bredesen's got this in the bag!"

[IceSpear]

Trump's approval is not +7 in Texas and it's not +30 in Tennessee. That's where these NYT/Siena polls are flawed right now.

62% in Tennessee seems a bit high, but 51% in Texas is perfectly reasonable considering he's at 43% approval nationally. I don't know where you guys think his 43% approval rating is coming from. 100% approval in Oklahoma and 90% approval in California? lol

[IceSpear]

Trump's approval is not +7 in Texas and it's not +30 in Tennessee. That's where these NYT/Siena polls are flawed right now.

62% in Tennessee seems a bit high, but 51% in Texas is perfectly reasonable considering he's at 44% approval nationally. I don't know where you guys think his 44% approval rating is coming from. 100% approval in Oklahoma and 90% approval in California? lol

So him having a -2 approval in Nevada is reasonable too, using that logic.

Like Tennessee, 48% in Nevada is a bit too high, but it's not some ridiculously unreal number either. Nevada polls are always junk anyway, so I don't put much stock in them.

[IceSpear]

The NYT/Siena results right now are a mess. The Trump approvals can show you that they are too GOP-leaning. If anything, TX looked pretty normal when it was like Cruz +5.

Nevada is not out of the question but Trump's approval is only -2, which was his vote margin, so that's... unrealistic.

TX has Trump +6, which is also unrealistic. As is Beto being underwater and Ted being +10.

And Tennessee, let's be real, Blackburn does not have a +15 approval where Bredesen is underwater.

The samples are just horrific again.

Completely. Of course, IceSpear and blue avatars need to take ridiculous R-friendly samples to "reassure" them of a red wave.

"Nothing to see here folks, Bredesen's got this in the bag!"

“Nothing to see here folks, just a smug egomaniac!”

Don't get mad at me for pointing out reality. Do you actually have a logical rebuttal to the graph which consists of objective data? Considering that was the best response you could manage to crank out, I'm guessing not.

[IceSpear]

I will note that the NY Times Upshot poll has under 45 voters making up just 24% of the total. Bredesen is leading by about 10 points among that group. Blackburn is leading by about 25 points among those older than 45.

There hasn't been off-year general election exit polling out of Tennessee in a long time, but in 2006, under-45s made up 35% of total voters. If you use the age proportions from the 2006 exit, Blackburn's lead is about 13 points, which is closer to other polls.

Similarly, in Texas, there is a big age gap, which O'Rourke leading by about 9 points among those under 45, and Cruz leading by 18 points among those over 45. Those under 45, however, are only counted as 28% of the sample. The 2014 Texas exit poll has them at 39% of the electorate. If you use the age weights from the exit poll, Cruz's lead drops to 7-8 points, which is closer to other polls.

Not that my amateur 'unskewing the polls' means anything, but it's interesting to note.

There's definitely room to quibble with the sample (as with most polls, from both directions.) Maybe if it's unskewed enough you could even get Tennessee within single digits. But it's pretty obvious at this point from this poll, the other recent polls, the trendlines, the fundamentals, etc. that Blackburn is on track to win, potentially by a significant margin.

[IceSpear]

The NYT/Siena results right now are a mess. The Trump approvals can show you that they are too GOP-leaning. If anything, TX looked pretty normal when it was like Cruz +5.

Nevada is not out of the question but Trump's approval is only -2, which was his vote margin, so that's... unrealistic.

TX has Trump +6, which is also unrealistic. As is Beto being underwater and Ted being +10.

And Tennessee, let's be real, Blackburn does not have a +15 approval where Bredesen is underwater.

The samples are just horrific again.

Completely. Of course, IceSpear and blue avatars need to take ridiculous R-friendly samples to "reassure" them of a red wave.

"Nothing to see here folks, Bredesen's got this in the bag!"

“Nothing to see here folks, just a smug egomaniac!”

Don't get mad at me for pointing out reality. Do you actually have a logical rebuttal to the graph which consists of objective data? Considering that was the best response you could manage to crank out, I'm guessing not.

The bump was the result of 2 recent polls, which had blackburn up a lot. It is reasonable enough to think that we need another poll or two before we can say that there is actually a trend towards Blackburn.

We're getting one right now, the Siena poll.

[IceSpear]

snip

I think it's fair to call this Tilt D. "But IceSpear told me Bredesen would collapse over time like Bayh!"

And that's far from the only mocking post you (and others) made. Don't cry now just because you're getting a taste of your own medicine. Probably shouldn't have spiked the football so soon.

[IceSpear]

snip

I think it's fair to call this Tilt D. "But IceSpear told me Bredesen would collapse over time like Bayh!"

And that's far from the only mocking post you (and others) made. Don't cry now just because you're getting a taste of your own medicine. Probably shouldn't have spiked the football so soon.

See his post two posts prior.

I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse or not. If you're going to mock someone's prediction which later turns out to be true, you can expect mockery in return.

[IceSpear]

snip

I think it's fair to call this Tilt D. "But IceSpear told me Bredesen would collapse over time like Bayh!"

And that's far from the only mocking post you (and others) made. Don't cry now just because you're getting a taste of your own medicine. Probably shouldn't have spiked the football so soon.

See his post two posts prior.

I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse or not. If you're going to mock someone's prediction which later turns out to be true, you can expect mockery in return.

So a single post (merely saying "Tilt D", not calling the race over) by a single poster is worthy of pages of spamming gloating that everyone has to read and deal with, the vast majority of whom never predicted Bredesen would win and are NOT doing so as well?

Well for one thing, there is no "pages of spamming and gloating." Secondly, he's far from the only one who made comments of that nature. And third, I think you are being deliberately obtuse. The fact that he called it "Tilt D" is irrelevant to the fact that he mocked people (naming me in particular) who thought Bredesen would collapse. You guys are the epitome of "can dish it out but can't take it", lol.

[IceSpear]

TN and TX were obviously long shots from the get-go, but have we forgotten that these polls have an obvious R-lean? It gave Andy Barr a one-point lead over McGrath and every other poll, internal and public, have shown McGrath up.

It's disingenuous to say that all of the NYT polls have a conservative lean. NM-01, KS-03, AZ-02, CO-06, CA-49. CA-45, MI-11, MN-02, MN-03, IA-01, and NJ-03 were all very good results for the Democrats.

Indeed, and I'm old enough to remember the celebrations with no caveats for those polls.

[IceSpear]

How many people do they plan to call for the Senate polls? They're over 700 now in Texas and still going.

[IceSpear]

Maybe you should save your #hottakes until after the poll is finished?

Yeah we don’t wanna jump to conclusions when the Dem candidates in TX and TN are down by 9 and 15 points respectively. Those remaining callers will surely close the gap!

Literally one poll, kiddo. You're drawing way too many conclusions.

Actually multiple polls in the last two months have shown this trend. Literally look below at my signature (which doesn’t have this Siena poll updated in it yet).

For the live of Christ, EVERYONE has seen your bio.

Then why did you say I was drawing too many conclusions off a single poll when most polls in the last two months have shown this exact trend? Are you unwilling to accept that this poll just furthers this trend?

Hack. This poll doesn't even fully take into account the Taylor Swift bump yet. It will be worth at least 20 points, so my mind model has Bredesen comfortably ahead.

[IceSpear]

I don't know if Blackburn "is not up by 15", but I think a result along those lines wouldn't be that surprising. It's TN, after all.

Yeah, and as the person above said, it wouldn't be the first time that polls early on looked promising for Dems in Tennessee only for them to collapse at the end. Or the second, or the third...