NYT LIVE POLL THREAD:

[Pericles]

Surprised how poorly Paulsen is doing. It's possible this is reflective of other districts and Republican chances in other Clinton districts are overestimated, while Handel won by 4 in a district Trump won by 2 that doesn't mean a Republican can win(or at least most of the time, Valadao may be an exception) in a district Clinton won by 8 or even by double digits.

[Pericles]

If you're making shaky assumptions about Manchin's chances based on Ojeda coming close to winning instead of outright winning, you should logically make assumptions about Clinton-Republican districts as well. Paulsen's (unexpected IMO) terrible showing, that would mean Democrats are likely picking up many other similar seats, eg CA-39 and CO-06. It would also portend that Democrats may also win other Clinton-Republican districts that were closer, just by narrower margins.

[Pericles]

If you're making shaky assumptions about Manchin's chances based on Ojeda coming close to winning instead of outright winning, you should logically make assumptions about Clinton-Republican districts as well. Paulsen's (unexpected IMO) terrible showing, that would mean Democrats are likely picking up many other similar seats, eg CA-39 and CO-06. It would also portend that Democrats may also win other Clinton-Republican districts that were closer, just by narrower margins.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people here (including myself) think that Democrats are going to win the lion's share of Clinton districts.

Well in that scenario they'd very likely win the House(even though the Clinton districts don't quite get to 23 districts, if they get say 18 pickups it will be very easy for Democrats to pick up a few more seats to win the majority). And I think the Democrats are underrated with some of these districts, and even if people think they'll win the lion's share that doesn't lead them to expect Paulsen to lose by double digits.

[Pericles]

Dems are actually doing better than expected overall(WI-03 seems like a typo). Given that 538 predicts Dems are gaining around 35 seats and have a  nearly 80% chance of victory, if the Dems are doing better in these polls then these aren't good polls for Republicans.

[Pericles]

Coffman is doing much worse than I imagined. If this holds up and turns out to be similar to the MN 3rd thing, Imma change my rating from tilt R to tilt D just like I did for Paulsen's seat.

Coffman is closer to the 10th gain than the 23rd, him doing badly is unsurprising.

[Pericles]

Are we really going to cheer the fact that Hispanics aren't turning out for the sake of a cheap gotcha?

Tbh it shouldn't be called a fact until the actual votes in the actual election are counted.

[Pericles]

My take on the results so far for the Dems:

Excellent: CO-06, MN-03

Good: MN-08, WI-01

Meh: CA-48, IL-06, IL-12, KY-06

Bad: VA-07

Yikes: TX-23, WV-03

A small lead for the Republican in VA-07 isn't that bad, and the Democrat losing in a Trump +50 district is just bad imo the times isn't warranted.

[Pericles]

My take on the results so far for the Dems:

Excellent: CO-06, MN-03

Good: MN-08, WI-01

Meh: CA-48, IL-06, IL-12, KY-06

Bad: VA-07

Yikes: TX-23, WV-03

A small lead for the Republican in VA-07 isn't that bad, and the Democrat losing in a Trump +50 district is just bad imo the times isn't warranted.

I would've expected Spanberger to be running a point or two behind, at worst. It's not a must-win seat, but it's part of the 10-15 seat buffer that'll really lock down Dem control of the House.

And as to Ojeda, people on Atlas were already talking about what he's going to run for in 2020 once he wins in 2018. He's far from a favorite and that clearly disrupted the narrative.

Yeah but what Atlas says isn't always the truth. I wouldn't rely on Atlas to understand the WV-03 race.

[Pericles]

Trende wrote that based on these polls he sees Democrats picking up 30 seats. So I guess these polls aren't very favorable for Democrats.

What? If Democrats gain 30 that's a majority, so they win. That's a pretty good result for them imo.

[Pericles]

KS-02 looks great for the Dems, but it's actually one of the few districts where the Democrat has higher name recognition, so the Republican has more upside. Still, it's embarrassing for the GOP that this district is even on the board.

Watkins also has negative net favorability though so it may not be as much of an advantage as Democratic challengers who are liked just without much name recognition. Davis also has positive favorability so that's a good sign.

[Pericles]

KS-02 looks great for the Dems, but it's actually one of the few districts where the Democrat has higher name recognition, so the Republican has more upside. Still, it's embarrassing for the GOP that this district is even on the board.

Watkins also has negative net favorability though so it may not be as much of an advantage as Democratic challengers who are liked just without much name recognition. Davis also has positive favorability so that's a good sign.

I am pretty sure Davis won this district handilly when he ran for Governor, so I was actually expecting he might be doing a bit better here than just a tie.

It's not easy to get solidly Republican districts to vote for a Democrat Representative at all.

[Pericles]

Is Torres Small a strong candidate? She has the lead even thiugh voters in the district want a GOP House by a 7 point margin and Trump's approval is 47% approve-47% disapprove. Or is Herrell weak?

[Pericles]

how tf is andy kim leading by so much his lead is almost beyond the moe

Guess MacArthur's constituents remember him being responsible for Trumpcare passing the House.

[Pericles]

All completed polls so far:


IA-01: D+14
CO-06: D+11
CA-49: D+10
MN-03: D+9
MN-08: D+1
KS-02: D+1
NM-02: D+1
CA-48: D+<1
KY-06: R+<1
IL-06: R+1
IL-12: R+1
NJ-07: R+1
CA-25: R+2
FL-26: R+3
TX-07: R+3
VA-07: R+4
ME-02: R+5
WI-01: R+6
TX-23: R+7
WV-03: R+8


So far, by my amazing statistical prediction model that exclusively uses NYT/Siena polls, dems have gained 8 house seats.

Dems are doing the worst of any poll in rural "WWC" #populist WV-03 even with Unbeatable Titan Richard Ojeda? How is this possible?!

It’s a Trump+50 district. While Ojeda may lose he’s overperforming by far more than most Democrats and is a high quality candidate, it’s just his bad luck that partisanship may ultimately mean he narrowly loses instead of narrowly wins.

[Pericles]

Has anyone said Taylor is DOA? That seems like a strawman argument. IMO he may win but he's less likely to because of the scandal and the seat is now a Tossup, the scandal isn't that big of a deal but could make the difference between Taylor +1 and Luria +1. That said, the Roy Moore example is a great way to undercut IceSpear's point. Sure, Republican voters didn't care overall(though many didn't turn out), but Roy Moore still lost in Alabama, which Trump won by over 30 points and has been a Safe R state. So clearly scandals had some impact, that kind of swing can't simply be explained away by "muh national environment". So while most voters don't change their minds, that doesn't mean scandals don't matter at all because if even a small portion of the electorate changes their minds that can make all the difference.

[Pericles]

I love the pro-Trump, pro-Kavanaugh R voting white guy in NC-09 who supports electing more feminists.

"I'd vote for a woman, just not 'that woman'"

[Pericles]

So I am looking at the crosstabs on TX-31, Cruz is only leading by 7 while....

there is NO Gender Gap so far in the crosstabs, both support the republican by about equal margins

Young Voters supposedly back the GOP candidate by wide margins, and yet.....

Cruz only leads by 7?

He is in deep trouble.

Beto needs to win, or at least come close to winning, TX-31 in order to win statewide. So Cruz leading by 7 is not really so bad for him.

Also, I just checked, and at this point Cruz is up by 9 now (poll still not done, but getting closer).

From what I took of dfw's point the crosstabs are fishy on the NYT poll so it may be overestimating the GOP, so Cruz isn't actually up by 9 there.

[Pericles]

Something is wrong with the sample for TX-SEN. It is almost all White Republicans so far, but the sample narrowly supports the right of black people to kneel (although they do oppose them actually kneeling).

I think there have actually been similar results in polls of conservative areas. KY-06 comes to mind but idk if that was it.

[Pericles]

Cohn should really drop this entire project. It's clear a lot of these polls are trash.

eh some of them are valuable and it still gives readers a good insight into polling.

[Pericles]

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.

[Pericles]

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

[Pericles]

Surprising in PA-01 that the generic ballot question is worse for the GOP than the Trump approval question, usually it's the other way round. Very early but hopefully Wallace can pull out a lead by the end of this, maybe this will be another CO-06 or MN-03 where Democrats are stronger than expected. Fitzpatrick seems rated pretty strongly by conventional wisdom, idk if this will be an outlier Clinton-Republican survivor or stick to the trend.

[Pericles]

Wallace weirdly looks both evil and nice at the same time.