2022 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread

[UncleSam]

Why is this forum so obsessed with the of Biden disapproving democrat voters? It’s obvious that they exist, it’s not physically possible for democrats to only get 38% of the vote. I believe this is a decent pollster but it’s obvious the undecideds will break R for multiple reasons:

1) This is apparently a registered voter poll even though CNN acknowledges in the article that R’s lead in enthusiasm and motivation

2) The usual midterm electorate already gets whiter than presidential elections and this will be even more so the case this year based on polling. Various polls have shown minorities being apathetic towards Biden, more focused on the economy than culture issues, and in some cases even shifting republican

3) The super majority of undecideds are still Biden disapprovers. Not only do they outnumber Biden approvers almost 2-1 to begin with, but a higher percentage of them are still undecided compared to approvers, based on CNN’s wording. There’s a good chance these people break heavily Republican or just stay home. Yet Dems on this forum truly believe that undecided disapprovers are somehow loyal Dems

There’s actually no undecided here. It’s 46-46 and then 2% for “other candidate”, 5% for “neither candidate” and 2% for “do not plan to vote”.

The highest demo with other/neither is 18-34 for 12%, so realistically that group will likely choose in the end, and more likely to be the D than R.

The Biden approve’s total share of Other/Neither/Don’t plan to vote is 5% while Biden disapprove is 11%, so the Rs do have some upside there. But it would equal out likely to just a pt or two.

You’re missing the biggest problem with this poll, which is that it is RV rather than LV, which is near-inexcusable at this point. Enthusiasm gap matters at this point. It’s also weighted to a presidential general electorate in terms of race, which is ludicrous.

[UncleSam]

Uncle Sam and many Rs like to cherry pick Biden Approvals and not look at the state by state polls if Biden Approvaks are so bad Murray wouldn't be winning 51/33%

Rs, BUT, BUT THE POLLS, YEAH THE POLLS LIKE PA R PRIMARY WERE WRONG THEY PICKED FRANCHOT instead of Perez and Perez had the momentum and thus Moore won

Can you point to literally a single time in any thread anywhere on this board where I have referred to Bidens’ approvals as being indicative of Dem vote share or in any way predictive of the future outside of the broadest ‘Biden isn’t super popular = tough midterm environment’ takes?

Yes I agree that many Rs on this forum keep saying stuff like ‘Biden is at X so Dems won’t get more than Y’ and there are obviously many more Biden disapprovers who will nevertheless vote D this November than there typically would be.

The rest of your post is nonsense and I’m only 69% sure I’m not replying to a bot.

[UncleSam]

Rasmussen making sure that R+0.9 538 average didn't stay for long!

https://twitter.com/stella2020woof/status/1550490139956285443

What was their prior poll? I typically correct Rasmussen a few points left in my head but this seems like an outlier even considering that.

[UncleSam]

Rasmussen making sure that R+0.9 538 average didn't stay for long!

https://twitter.com/stella2020woof/status/1550490139956285443

I increasingly think that these polls are just straight up fake.

Something something expanding mind.

Pro tip: all polls are fake. Pollsters know that they won’t get called out on anything other than their final numbers so they basically sh**tpost for months in an effort to help their favored candidates then release real polls the Monday before the election.

[UncleSam]

Rasmussen making sure that R+0.9 538 average didn't stay for long!

https://twitter.com/stella2020woof/status/1550490139956285443

I increasingly think that these polls are just straight up fake.

Something something expanding mind.

Pro tip: all polls are fake. Pollsters know that they won’t get called out on anything other than their final numbers so they basically sh**tpost for months in an effort to help their favored candidates then release real polls the Monday before the election.

Yeah, no. The bottom line here is that I agree that Ras is likely fake. The only polling organization to afford to do a weekly poll/GCB is YouGov because they have a giant organization. Gallup couldn't even afford to do it daily or weekly. So how does Rasmussen afford to do, what, 2500, every 3 days? Or whatever rolling basis their doing on? Given their ridiculous crosstabs (that are always behind a paywall), I truly believe Ras is actually making them up.

Ras polls the same group of people over multiple days, that’s how they do it. Ras is no more fake than any other pollster, and their record has been better than most in recent years. The reason you don’t like them is that their methodology includes an assumption of a ‘shy R’ vote, merely because it has become apparent in recent years that that is in fact a thing that happens.

With that being said, Ras has an R agenda, like most pollsters have an agenda. Trusting any numbers this far out is silly, since most polls are released for political rather than accuracy reasons.

[UncleSam]

I asked this twice for the people on here fully trusting generic ballot and arguing that 2020 doesn’t prove that the underestimation is systematic. Nobody has a good answer for it. The “environment” had to be something like R+8 at that time in order for those results to have happened. You can argue that Virginia and New Jersey had some unique state-specific issues, but it was also all over the country in local elections such as R’s easily winning Jacksonville/Duval and the Long Island races. The generic ballot at the time was literally a D lead

You simply can not use state election results to gauge a federal political environment. State candidates can delink themselves from the national party more effectively than senate candidates. Does anyone believe that Dem wins in KY and LA meant that Dem senators would have won those states if elections happened in off years? I don’t think so.

Is there some correlation? Probably. Youngkin doesn’t win in 2017, for example. But you absolutely can’t make an apples to apples comparison to national GCB.

Youngkin wouldn’t have won in 2020 (D+3 year) or even 2016 (R+1 year).

The point is more that, while that might be true, extrapolating the result of a gubernatorial race to a federal midterm environment is inexact to say the least.

[UncleSam]

Data For Progress of all places has R+3 48-45. Taken July 13-25.

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1553100942182055936

Is this actually a D-commissioned poll?

Low key think this might be a poll released to try to keep people invested / not getting complacent lol, not sure why a D polling firm would release it otherwise.

[UncleSam]

Trafalgar naturally has R+6, 48-42 on the GCB. Bumps Dems back down to D+1.2 on 538 average.

What was their prior result.

[UncleSam]

NYT/Siena GCB at D+2, 46-44

Their last poll in July was D+1, 44-43 I believe

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/us/politics/biden-democrats-abortion-trump-poll.html

Lots of interesting numbers in here, though using RV at this stage is kind of embarrassing malpractice.

[UncleSam]

I really don't get it why Republicans have such an edge in the economy? It's out of question that the economy has done better under Democratic presidents since at least the end of the Cold War. Don't people remember this? What proposals have Republicans even introduced in terms of the economy other than tax cuts for the super rich? They're even too busy fighting culture wars than introduce serious proposals. The Democrats really need to work on this issue and gain an edge here.

I guess it's just common "gut feeling" Republicans are better on that, and it's hard to argue with numbers and statistics against that.

I mean, Democrats literally want to raise taxes (mostly on the super rich, but raise taxes nonetheless) in order to fund social programs. By definition, Democrats prioritize social spending over the economy. The GOP is the opposite. Who the economy does better under is not a very useful metric because in general policy changes take a long time (often years) to be felt in economic terms, so while an incumbent party may get the benefit of a strong economy in an individual election, that doesn’t really change peoples’ perceptions of the parties’ relative prioritization of the economy vs social spending vs defense spending. The GOP is generally perceived as being Economy > Defense > Social, while Dems are perceived as being Social > Economy > Defense.

Dems’ best strategy on the economy honestly may be to emphasize the GOPs’ defense spending. If they can paint the GOP as being equally willing to spend money when in power then they can at least equalize the issue.

[UncleSam]

Certain people do like to try to build a narrative like that. Nate Cohn really strikes me as a concern troll (or maybe that's what the NYT wants right now). I saw this from him yesterday.

How is it even possible for a nonpartisan politico to be a concern troll? He doesn’t claim to be a Dem and that’s a central part of the definition.

At worst he is simply wrong, which is embarrassing considering his whole job is to be right about the current political environment and election forecasting, but that doesn’t make him a concern troll.

Completely aside from this, it does seem like Rs have a bit of momentum currently. Not a ton (nothing like Dobbs obviously), but economic concerns are kind of always present while abortion is really only rearing it’s head in MI and AZ currently. To be clear, I expect Ds to do quite well in those two states as a result (particularly MI), but Cohn’s overarching point still seems valid regardless of a few individual state circumstances.

[UncleSam]

Biden's approval being 39/56 in VA makes no sense. Even last November, it was 46/53 I believe on Election night.

It makes sense if his national approval is in the mid to high 30s, which isn’t far off from most polling we have seen. All these numbers have ranges of a couple points on them anyway, so I really don’t think this is a particularly crazy result - it’s probably like 42% in actuality in VA and a couple points lower nationally.

[UncleSam]

Evidence for a slight D advantage:

Dobbs
Post-Dobbs special elections
Democratic legislative accomplishments
Selzer poll
Some GCB
High-propensity voters shifting D
GOP still living in 2020 with Trump

Evidence for a slight R advantage:

Midterm with a Dem President
Inflation
Rising gas prices
Pre-Dobbs special elections
Voter registration trends
Early vote data relative to 2020
Potential for polling to miss Republicans
Some GCB

What am I missing? You can make either case with the evidence.

Ngl the first list can really just be boiled down to the first two points + the high-propensity voters point. I wouldn't count a single poll in a single state as evidence of much of anything, and 'living in 2020 with Trump' is kind of laughable.

Now one point you didn't raise is how bad the candidate quality is on the R side, even if that is a bit played up on this forum. There is no doubt that better R candidates in PA, GA, and AZ would have made all of those races tougher for Ds.

Overall I do think this year will be somewhat R-leaning, probably R+3 or so in the congressional vote. But without Dobbs it was probably going to be like an R+7 shellacking, and Ds will hold probably 20-30 seats that they otherwise would've lost (alongside probably 2 or 3 senate seats imo).

[UncleSam]

https://twitter.com/politics_polls/status/1585648868133412864

At this point RV is just not something that should even be considered in averages. We are within two weeks of the election, people know whether they’re gonna vote or not.

[UncleSam]

https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1586789028501901316
LOL RCP is a joke

This is all a conservative journalist project, not anything serious.

Given they have Utah as lean R as well, how is it a conservative journalist project.

I mean having WA as toss up is pretty clowny. While I think Lean R is also a bit silly for UT there’s reason to think that one is at least more variable than one might expect, while WA there is little reason to think Smiley can actually win.

I do think WA will have a Lean D final margin of like 6-8 now, down from the ~10 I thought it would be last week. But I’d still be beyond shocked if Smiley actually pulled it off.