2018 Congressional Generic Ballot and House Polls Megathread - the original

[Tartarus Sauce]

https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/999314587194417152

I think this tradeoff would make the Democrats quite happy.

How did educated whites vote in 2006?

How did uneducated whites vote in 2014?


The tradeoff is not good imo. More uneducated whites vote than educated whites in basically every state, besides maybe Massachusetts. There's an even bigger difference in highly competitive Senate seats in places like West Virginia, Indiana, and Nevada.

I interpreted it a little differently: that educated whites were polling strongly D (since 2006 was a D wave) this year, while uneducated whites were polling strongly R.  That would be consistent with other polling this year; and since it also seems that educated voters are highly motivated this year, that would overall be good news for the Democrats.  But your point about the effect in certain states being potentially bad for them is well taken.

It's just impossible to say whether this is a good or bad thing without knowing the exact numbers.

However, in every state, uneducated whites outnumber educated whites. While midterm turnout will increase educated white turnout, I'd expect only possibly Massachusetts and Maryland to have more educated whites turning out. A 5 point gain among educated whites for a 5 point loss among uneducated whites is a pretty bad trade overall.

I don't see much evidence in the special elections that non-college educated Whites are that strongly breaking for the GOP though, and the special elections highlight actual voter behavior rather than polls. While Democrats might not do as well with non-college educated Whites as they did in 2006 and while it might still be the best demographic for the GOP during the midterm, the idea that there will be that drastic a tradeoff at all is suspect.

If Democrats are winning big, they'll be doing much better with all demographic groups than they have the previous midterms. If anything there's likely to be huge gains among college-educated Whites and a fairly decent performance among non-college educated Whites.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Ok why did my King Lear parody post get deleted? Fr.

You mean you do serious posts too?

[Tartarus Sauce]

People who only watch the GCB and pay attention to none of the fundamentals are the worst kind of hacks.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Crickets from all the concern trolls and conservative pundits now, lol.

The new evidence does suggest movement toward the Dems. However, I thought GCB didn't matter, since all we have to do is average special elections and that's better than taking surveys?

Combine the two IMO

Yeah, special elections seem like reasonable indicators when you have a lot of them, and combined with the GCB + other more indirect factors like fundraising, recruitment, party that controls the WH, they are useful for indicating potential.

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To mencken's post - Republicans were leaning heavily on the GCB to back their anti-Dem wave claims, so it stands to reason that once the GCB swings against them again, their narrative falls apart.

For us Democrats who have argued a wave is coming based on numerous factors, such as special elections, the GCB, and the stuff I mentioned above, this is just one more reason for us to stand by our predictions.

My issue with using the specials average is they are highly inaccurate if the environment changes significantly near the end. If the environment is consistent, though, they are usually a slightly better (but still flawed) indicator of the midterm results than the GCB.

In particular, there's no incumbency advantage in a special, so the specials average is likely favorable to the out party.  Perhaps the best idea is to think of the specials average as a ceiling on the range of likely outcomes.  On the flip side, the GCB average is more likely a floor on that range in a year of unbalanced enthusiasm, since the polls are likely to miss first-time and previously unlikely voters who are motivated to turn out.

The current GCB average is about D+8 per 538, and the specials average is around D+13, so I'd be comfortable predicting a final result of D+9 or D+10.

I thought it was closer to D+17 on the federal races and D+15 at the state level. Thiking of the GCB as the floor and specials performance aggregate as the ceiling is probably a good way to think about it, though.