2022 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Indiana 1st is definitely flippable, it has been silently trending republican

Which is why it was so boneheaded for Republicans to not change it at all. They could have shifted it 5 pts to the right with minimal line changes. Simply taking a few of the counties to the South of Lake and ceding Michigan City would’ve changed the partisan composition meaningfully.

Yeah this would have 0 controversy. It was what the 2000 district was.

Lake+Porter+Jasper+Newton+Benton+as much as La Porte as was needed is a district Rs could have drawn, that would put the seat in contention if 2022 is an R wave. But Rs just weren't interested.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Marie Newman under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for possibly bribing a primary opponent to stay out: https://www.businessinsider.com/marie-newman-bribe-primary-opponent-office-congressional-ethics-2022-1

An Illinois Democrat being corrupt? I've never heard of such a thing! 

I'm not one to hold grudges - generally. But I'm hoping this capsizes Newman's career. Deep down, anyway.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/JimJusticeWV/status/1493968656958517249
Justice is very popular, so this is a big deal.

Mooney's chances sink ever lower.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/timelywriter/status/1496577073669881859

Meuser running in PA-09, not against Cartwright.

Well, isn't this good news for Cartwright.
He may as well be the luckiest man today.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/timelywriter/status/1496577073669881859
Meuser running in PA-09, not against Cartwright.

Well, isn't this good news for Cartwright.
He may as well be the luckiest man today.

He's still extremely vulnerable? If he were to win, Dems would keep the House.

He's vulnerable. We don't know how vulnerable. You're right that if he were to win, Ds keep the House.
Regardless of the lucky breaks he's got thus far, it would be malpractice for Rs to fail to try to defeat him with a strong candidate.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/ColtonLochhead/status/1504947897871187971

He lives in Mesquite (unless he's moved since he was elected to Congress), which is in the 4th. I guess he decided the 1st is less of an uphill climb?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

More Dark Brandon Energy!

These are wonderful memes!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Cygnal (R) is out with a minor D lead in GCB

D 47.2%
R 46.5%

Their last poll was R+1 in mid-July

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1562852819325317121/photo/1

More evidence of a concrete shift in the national picture.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maybe they're trying to be clever by claiming it's because he's allegedly strong, when they have internals showing him actually losing and in fact Smith doesn't need the money.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maybe they're trying to be clever by claiming it's because he's allegedly strong, when they have internals showing him actually losing and in fact Smith doesn't need the money.

no

I threw it out as a serious possibility and I stand by that. Of course, neither you nor I are inside the Democrats' campaign structure and seeing their unpublished internals, which would provide the answer for this...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maybe they're trying to be clever by claiming it's because he's allegedly strong, when they have internals showing him actually losing and in fact Smith doesn't need the money.

Yes, I forgot..

Even when PAC's go dark in double digit Biden R districts, it's ultimately good news for dems.

I haven't been following that race as closely as you, but given how the lines have changed, it certainly feels possible Garcia is still enough of an underdog that the money these ads would have cost ultimately were cut (presumably to be spent elsewhere). It's not necessarily clear this is a triage. I'm not saying Garcia is doomed either, btw.
It's not necessarily good to pre-suppose that Garcia is just winning just because ad buys are cut.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/elections-poll-ca25-3.html

Polls have missed here before...the 25th is the old version of the 27th.

and Smith's own internal had her +6, which at worse would probably mean around a tied race... just like the primary result indicated (a tossup, etc.)

No matter what's happening, something strange is going on in CA-25. Either Garcia's the Charlie Dent of Northern LA County or there's a strange mix of factors combining to make the Ds pull their ads. Money needed elsewhere? Relative lack of willingness to spent these sums for just one seat? Good private internal polling for Smith?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maybe they're trying to be clever by claiming it's because he's allegedly strong, when they have internals showing him actually losing and in fact Smith doesn't need the money.

no

I threw it out as a serious possibility and I stand by that. Of course, neither you nor I are inside the Democrats' campaign structure and seeing their unpublished internals, which would provide the answer for this...

No, it’s not a serious possibility, it’s a weird Baghdad Bob-style conspiracy theory designed to put a positive spin on something that is an unambiguously bad sign for your party.

It also doesn’t make sense, regardless of the perspective from which you entertain it. Think about it:

You don’t cancel those types of reservations in any race in which there’s still a serious risk that you’re going to lose. If your theory that Smith is so far ahead that national Democrats (or at least this PAC) view the race as a done deal, then surely Garcia's own internals/national Republicans' polls would reflect that. And in that case, they surely wouldn’t be 'tricked' by that statement/narrative but be busy pressing the 'panic' button.

Unless you’re implying that Republicans aren’t conducting their own internal polling here, which makes even less sense.

You do realize that there is a difference between private internals and publicly released internals, right? Right? There's a reason I put "private" in there. It's Janus-faced...campaigns have generally really accurate private internals, and then publically released ones they put out to fuel narratives or do other things. Obviously, duh, both sides are conducting their own internals, every campaign worth their salt, and many that don't, do that.
Of course, if campaigns get nothing in return for a cancelled ad buy, then this entire thing is irrelevant.
In any case, I don't think that what I'm arguing is quite as silly as claiming that cancelled ad buys in a Biden+14 or so seat means the D is doomed...even if that D is named Christy Smith...
Cancelled ad buys and a (possible) GOP wave vs. an incumbent who votes as though he represents AL-04 and redistricting that gave the seat a bunch of urban Latino precincts that are probably rather inflexible in their D partisanship, and the fact that fundamentals (don't you say fundamentals are important? I agree with you strongly on that) suggest that Garcia faces long odds.
I'm not going to believe Garcia is favored in a situation where there are there is a dearth of polls. Right now the balance is still in Smith's favor. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I'm right and you are wrong - I am entitled to collect my accolades.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You do realize that there is a difference between private internals and publicly released internals, right? Right? There's a reason I put "private" in there. It's Janus-faced...campaigns have generally really accurate private internals, and then publically released ones they put out to fuel narratives or do other things. Obviously, duh, both sides are conducting their own internals, every campaign worth their salt, and many that don't, do that.

Okay, but if both sides are conducting their own internals, why is it "clever" to fuel the narrative that Garcia is in the driver's seat? You didn’t address that part anywhere in your post even though you based your entire theory on it:

Maybe they're trying to be clever by claiming it's because he's allegedly strong, when they have internals showing him actually losing and in fact Smith doesn't need the money.

Also, with all due respect, if "an incumbent who votes as though he represents AL-04" and those "urban Latino precincts ... probably [being] rather inflexible in their D partisanship" are some of your strongest arguments as to why this cancelation isn’t bad news for Smith, then I think it’s going to be a rather grim night for House Democrats.

You’re right about "fundamentals" being important (and it’s arguably the only reason why Smith even has a chance this year), but as you also know, I believe that no election is predetermined by uniform PVI shift. Garcia is vulnerable, but "Biden +13 seat ololo" a very simplistic way of looking at things, and one that’s certainly not backed up by the jungle primary results of this year. It’s not a good sign for Democrats that Republicans already received a (bare) majority of votes in this district in June.

I was saying "trying to be clever". Not out-and-out clever. They think they're doing some clever move, but this won't dissuade R money. As for Rs, Rs also have an incentive to fuel a wave narrative even if it doesn't actually make sense or reflect reality (there are exceptions to this). There's a chance it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So it's basically a combination of two ploys managing to meet at the same end point, though with widely variable outcomes.
As for my usage of "probably", these are terminology I wouldn't stress as being too important - I tend to use a lot of moderating language when I talk about the possibilities. Moreso than almost all other people.
I also think this race will be somewhat localized and not really say too much about the broader environment (it could say a lot about how CA Latinos turn out). This specific race will come down to Latino turnout (there needs to be good turnout in urbanized Latino precincts for Smith), candidate quality on the margins, and how much of a boost (if any) Ds get from the June primary. History suggests Ds would improve their standing enough to wipe out the R majority from June, but in a race like this, who knows? In any case, there's a lot going on here, ad buys are just one piece of the broader puzzle.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Some of these ratings changes are somewhat puzzling. NY-17? Of course, Sean Patrick Maloney probably doesn't have too much to worry about, he's survived close races before.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I seriously doubt Schumer knows very much more than we do at this point.

Schumer has access to a much different set of polls than we do. (Remember how the Biden campaign said "we have polls showing races are closer than you'd think" and they turned out to be right?)

Exactly.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Not sure I buy any of that. I don’t think he’s lying but I doubt those things are true and that he has actual knowledge of them. GA sounds like pushing that narrative just to work on turnout. PA sounds like he’s trying to convince the average voter that the neighbor down the street hasn’t turned on Fetterman so you shouldn’t either.

Also, the fact that he seemed so *surprised* by AZ being competitive this year tells me his 'internal' data is about as reliable as the insider reports in my signature

How do we know he wasn't sounding surprised while not actually being surprised? I wasn't sure how much of this was faked and how much of it was genuine, but hearing this makes me think the former more. Of course a state like AZ might be competitive in a midterm following a presidential election result like what the state had in 2020...it's plainly obvious.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How do we know he wasn't sounding surprised while not actually being surprised? I wasn't sure how much of this was faked and how much of it was genuine, but hearing this makes me think the former more. Of course a state like AZ might be competitive in a midterm following a presidential election result like what the state had in 2020...it's plainly obvious.

The fact that it apparently wasn’t obvious to him either means (a) he’s lying (and in that case there’s no reason to take any of his assessments of the other races seriously), (b) he genuinely didn’t believe it would be competitive, and that’s because his 'super accurate' internal polling showed the same thing as public polling — an inflated high single-digit/low double-digit Kelly lead but with Kelly's vote share very close to Warnock's (maybe Pollster can teach him to focus on D vote share rather than D margins from now on), or (c) he’s just a very erratic person (and in that case there’s no reason to take any of his assessments of the other races seriously).

There is (and remains) absolutely no sign that GA is clearly more likely to go R than NV/AZ/PA. Warnock isn’t safe by any means, but if Herschel Walker wins a majority of the vote in November, I’m pretty sure that GA will be the least of Schumer's/national Democrats' worries.

It's possible that he's making reference to the (likely) second round making victory itself harder to obtain in terms of effort, even if the fundamentals of the race are not as hard and the numbers aren't particularly bad in relative terms.
I agree these remarks are hard to read. You may as well decipher the Oracle of Delphi...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

CCES is one survey where you really -can- dig into the crosstabs even for demographically small groups because the sample size is so large.  A couple interesting things I noticed:

- Republicans lead among "Independents" (Party ID) 45-37, but Dems lead among "Moderates" (Ideology) 52-32.

- The racial breakdown is pretty sensible, unlike a lot of polls we've seen:
-- Whites are 48-42 GOP
-- Blacks are 76-9 Dem
-- Hispanics are 49-36 Dem
-- Asians are 60-25 Dem
The one that caught my eye is the "other" racial category, which is 51-34 GOP, substantially more Republican than White voters! Who are these people?  They can't just be biracial.  I've seen this on a few other polls, but always just dismissed it as a tiny sample.

- The age gap is pretty much what I expected: 65+ are GOP+9 while 18-44 are Dem+21.
- But a smaller gender gap than in 2020 from what I can tell: Men are GOP+5, Women are Dem+11

- Voters who "somewhat disapprove" of Biden are Dem+18!

That Indy lead should terrify Dems.

Not entirely wrong. But do remember, Romney won indys in 2012 and still lost. 45-37 is not an overwhelming lead, anyway...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Final Selzer coming tomorrow at 5:30 Central

Inb4 many Atlas posters either use this poll to change their rating, or use it to justify their existing rating. Calling it now.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Final Selzer coming tomorrow at 5:30 Central

Inb4 many Atlas posters either use this poll to change their rating, or use it to justify their existing rating. Calling it now.

As they should, Selzer is the gold standard. It correctly identified the late GOP surges in 2016 and 2020.

No disagreement there. But it's good to take things lightly from time to time! Sometimes you need to poke fun at yourself.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How is NY not Safe D?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Everyone: noo not every race is a dead heat there is such thing as polarization noo
RCP: haha tossup go brr

https://twitter.com/ashleymoirDC/status/1588573078782894081

This is propaganda.

No no. This is actually Sean Trende from the 2000s. He came here through a time machine. The Senate races in 2006 in a Kerry wins 2004 TL!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Does Data for Progress have any significant R house effect? Because a poll of this kind is concerning...GCB polls have been a big bright spot for Ds this cycle...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Does Data for Progress have any significant R house effect? Because a poll of this kind is concerning...GCB polls have been a big bright spot for Ds this cycle...

Hard to say. They’ve definitely been pretty right-leaning this cycle, and they whiffed the NY-19 special pretty hard (Molinaro +8, compared to the actual result of Ryan +3). But that could be a consistent house effect, or it could just be them being a bad pollster!

That's true. I guess we'll see in a day how good their polls were...and we'll see in another cycle or two if they have any consistent house effect...maybe they have more bullish methodology which produces better results.
Are any other GCB polls showing an R advantage? And if so, how many?