IA: Selzer: RIP Braley

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Quinnipiac and PPP will both have polls out probably Monday. But you don't need them to know that Iowa is likely going Republican. Ernst has been leading for a while.

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Looks like Tuesday is a big make or break for the reputation's of Selzer and Marquette.

Or possibly PPP here.

You have two differing visions about what's going on with the 2014 electorate. The state Gold standard polls are detecting a very noticeable shift to the Republicans in WI and IA at least.  Some of the other pollsters seem to think more Democrats will head to the polls.

PPP is kind of hedging with predictions on states like KY and AR to make make them look more favorable to the Rs. It will be interesting to see what they do with IA when they release their own final poll.

As far as Iowa goes, Ernst has had a small, but persistent lead for a while now. The race was leaning in her direction. Seltzer confirms that.

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Not a wave when you have someone like Brandstand helping Ernest, the weaker candidate. 

Hope remains AK, KS and La. Tillis is finished.

R+4, R+5, R+6, R+7, R+8, R+9 is a wave. A 55-45 Senate, which at best is Democrats at 49 or 50 is a wave. It's just a matter of how big the wave is and if the Republicans end up controlling the Senate.

Again, this is not unexpected in the six-year itch election cycle.

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Not a wave when you have someone like Brandstand helping Ernest, the weaker candidate.  

Hope remains AK, KS and La. Tillis is finished.

R+4, R+5, R+6, R+7, R+8, R+9 is a wave. A 55-45 Senate, which at best is Democrats at 49 or 50 is a wave. It's just a matter of how big the wave is and if the Republicans end up controlling the Senate.

Again, this is not unexpected in the six-year itch election cycle.

If the Republicans win all the Republican states but lose purple states like IA, CO and NC, is that really a wave. What does that portend for the Republicans in 2016? Only if NC and NH fall am I calling this a Republican wave. We would also see the Republicans win most of the tossups in the governors race and gain more than 10 seats in the house. I am not saying that isn't a possibility, but that is what a wave looks like. Republicans winning seats in AR, AK and LA isn't a wave.

Nonsense.

The Democrats controlled the Senate by a 55-45 margin.

There were 21 Democrat seats up for grabs this cycle and 15 Republican.

If the polling stands (throwing tossups the way they are dispersed right now in the polling), this class will shift to 22R, 13D, 1 I.

Of course it's a wave. Even at R+4, Democrats go from a 21-15 to 17-18-1 in this cycle. And as the Times pointed out, right now, it's more likely to be an R+9 election than a R+4 or R+5 where the Senate remains in Democrat control.

In the worst case scenario it's 55-45 D to 54-46 R is a tsunami.  (Assuming Shaheen holds on).

As far as the House goes, a gain of 6-14 seats would likely by the max of Republican possible gains this cycle. Republicans pretty much have as much turf as they possibly can, except in marginal districts in blue states (like MA-6, NY-1, NY-24 with GA-12 being an exception).

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Not a wave when you have someone like Brandstand helping Ernest, the weaker candidate.  

Hope remains AK, KS and La. Tillis is finished.

R+4, R+5, R+6, R+7, R+8, R+9 is a wave. A 55-45 Senate, which at best is Democrats at 49 or 50 is a wave. It's just a matter of how big the wave is and if the Republicans end up controlling the Senate.

Again, this is not unexpected in the six-year itch election cycle.

If the Republicans win all the Republican states but lose purple states like IA, CO and NC, is that really a wave. What does that portend for the Republicans in 2016? Only if NC and NH fall am I calling this a Republican wave. We would also see the Republicans win most of the tossups in the governors race and gain more than 10 seats in the house. I am not saying that isn't a possibility, but that is what a wave looks like. Republicans winning seats in AR, AK and LA isn't a wave.

Nonsense.

The Democrats controlled the Senate by a 55-45 margin.

There were 21 Democrat seats up for grabs this cycle and 15 Republican.

If the polling stands (throwing tossups the way they are dispersed right now in the polling), this class will shift to 22R, 13D, 1 I.

Of course it's a wave. Even at R+4, Democrats go from a 21-15 to 17-18-1 in this cycle. And as the Times pointed out, right now, it's more likely to be an R+9 election than a R+4 or R+5 where the Senate remains in Democrat control.

In the worst case scenario 55-45 D to 54-46 R is a tsunami.

As far as the House goes, a gain of 6-14 seats would likely be the max of Republican possible gains this cycle. Republicans pretty much have as much turf as they possibly can, except in marginal districts in blue states (like MA-6, NY-1, NY-24 with GA-12 and UT-4 being an exception).

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If you put these seats in context, I don't see how you could realistically call R+4 a wave.

I mean, you are, but I disagree that it is.

It's an expectation game, that's really all it is.

My argument is even if the Republicans don't take the Senate (which is looking increasingly unlikely at this point), their cycle is better than the Democrats. If the goalpost wasn't considered a Senate takeover, +4 would be a good result in most cycles for either party.

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Not a wave when you have someone like Brandstand helping Ernest, the weaker candidate. 

Hope remains AK, KS and La. Tillis is finished.

R+4, R+5, R+6, R+7, R+8, R+9 is a wave. A 55-45 Senate, which at best is Democrats at 49 or 50 is a wave. It's just a matter of how big the wave is and if the Republicans end up controlling the Senate.

Again, this is not unexpected in the six-year itch election cycle.

If the Republicans win all the Republican states but lose purple states like IA, CO and NC, is that really a wave. What does that portend for the Republicans in 2016? Only if NC and NH fall am I calling this a Republican wave. We would also see the Republicans win most of the tossups in the governors race and gain more than 10 seats in the house. I am not saying that isn't a possibility, but that is what a wave looks like. Republicans winning seats in AR, AK and LA isn't a wave.

Nonsense.

The Democrats controlled the Senate by a 55-45 margin.

There were 21 Democrat seats up for grabs this cycle and 15 Republican.

If the polling stands (throwing tossups the way they are dispersed right now in the polling), this class will shift to 22R, 13D, 1 I.

Of course it's a wave. Even at R+4, Democrats go from a 21-15 to 17-18-1 in this cycle. And as the Times pointed out, right now, it's more likely to be an R+9 election than a R+4 or R+5 where the Senate remains in Democrat control.

In the worst case scenario 55-45 D to 54-46 R is a tsunami.

As far as the House goes, a gain of 6-14 seats would likely be the max of Republican possible gains this cycle. Republicans pretty much have as much turf as they possibly can, except in marginal districts in blue states (like MA-6, NY-1, NY-24 with GA-12 and UT-4 being an exception).

So in your opinion, if the Republicans can't win CO, IA, NC and NH, that is still a wave election? Do you think 2012 was a Democratic wave year? Do you find it impressive that Republican candidates are winning in places where Obama lost by double digits?

Those were seats that Democrats could have chosen to defend with incumbents, so yes. Those incumbents somehow managed to beat the Republican six years ago, right?

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Exactly, this is a mid-term election, more than that, the second mid-term. Add in the retirement of strong incumbents and the fact that once the personal vote is gone, they revert to their general voting mood...

Let's look at the second mid-term results for Presidents since the war, who were in office long enough, results are for the Party of the president.

1950 (Truman) - lost 28 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate
1958 (Eisenhower) - lost 48 seats in the House and 15 in the Senate
1986 (Reagan) - Lost 5 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate
1998 (Clinton) - No change in the House and picked up 5 seats in the Senate (special circumstances)
2006 (Bush II) - lost 30 seats in the House and lost 6 in the Senate

Note 1974 was Ford and was also a special circumstance wipe-out.

So the average of those 5 elections is 22 house seats lost and basically 6 Senate seats.

At the end of the day, you will likely see a 6-14 seat D loss in the House and probably net -7 or net -8 in the Senate (depending on Orman in KS). This should fall in line with the other six-year itch elections.

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Outlier.

Nope!

Don't mess with Selzer!

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Outlier.

Nope!

Don't mess with Selzer!

Well, it was still an outlier. It just so happens that the outlier was correct.

Not really, the rest of the herd was modeling the race around the same result so as to not get embarrassed. Selzer stuck her neck out there, polling without special sauce, and got it right.