2018 Congressional Recruitment/Fundraising/Ratings Megathread v2

[mencken]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

Multiple reasons: 1) Trump is president and midterms don't go well for the president's party unless a tragic event happens (2002) and/or the president is really popular (Clinton was at like 65% in 98) and the first part hasn't/hopefully doesn't happen and second half isn't true,

Define 'not well'. Republicans lost 26 seats (2 more than needed to flip the House) with Reagan posting similar approvals to Trump presently. That's an awfully small margin for error if taking the House is going to be considered Democrats' marker for success.

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Oh really? Because Democrats were up ~11% in May 2006, and only ended up winning by 8% (granted that was still sufficient in that year)

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The economy is still relatively successful compared to the Obama years (even if numerous campaign promises have been neglected), and I cannot imagine relitigating the 2016 election will be too popular after 1.5 years of investigation (much to the Democrats' chagrin)

I am not saying that GOP will hold Congress; I just think posters here are being silly when they treat it as a metaphysical impossibility.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I was going to mention it but 2006 is more exception than norm. Also the economy was bouncing back in 94 and 14 but didn't help

[mencken]

I was going to mention it but 2006 is more exception than norm. Also the economy was bouncing back in 94 and 14 but didn't help

You cannot ignore exceptions when you are dealing with such a small sample size. And again, I am not saying that a good economy will save Republicans; I am saying that it cannot be ruled out as a mitigating factor if Republicans end up doing better than expected.

[IceSpear]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

It's like you people seem incapable of comprehending that it's May, and the generic ballot polls at this time almost never actually reflect the November results.

[Maxwell]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

Multiple reasons: 1) Trump is president and midterms don't go well for the president's party unless a tragic event happens (2002) and/or the president is really popular (Clinton was at like 65% in 98) and the first part hasn't/hopefully doesn't happen and second half isn't true,

Define 'not well'. Republicans lost 26 seats (2 more than needed to flip the House) with Reagan posting similar approvals to Trump presently. That's an awfully small margin for error if taking the House is going to be considered Democrats' marker for success.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Oh really? Because Democrats were up ~11% in May 2006, and only ended up winning by 8% (granted that was still sufficient in that year)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The economy is still relatively successful compared to the Obama years (even if numerous campaign promises have been neglected), and I cannot imagine relitigating the 2016 election will be too popular after 1.5 years of investigation (much to the Democrats' chagrin)

I am not saying that GOP will hold Congress; I just think posters here are being silly when they treat it as a metaphysical impossibility.

Sadly I'm in complete agreement. The attempt at a Democratic majority is built on pretty shaky ground considering the seats actually open for contention - Only a few are solid gimmies for the Democrats.

[Babeuf]

I feel like the weirdo who is both skeptical of Morris’ model but also thinks LL and his ilk are utter hacks who only look at data that confirms their priors

You're not alone.

[mencken]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

It's like you people seem incapable of comprehending that it's May, and the generic ballot polls at this time almost never actually reflect the November results.

And yet special election results from the same time period do?

[IceSpear]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

It's like you people seem incapable of comprehending that it's May, and the generic ballot polls at this time almost never actually reflect the November results.

And yet special election results from the same time period do?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/special-elections-so-far-point-to-a-democratic-wave-in-2018/

Certainly more valuable than the notoriously noisy and frequently outright wrong generic ballot. But even if it wasn't, what's your point? That Dems won't win 80-100 seats? Most people already know that.

[Kodak]

Multiple reasons: 1) Trump is president and midterms don't go well for the president's party unless a tragic event happens (2002) and/or the president is really popular (Clinton was at like 65% in 98) and the first part hasn't/hopefully doesn't happen and second half isn't true,

Define 'not well'. Republicans lost 26 seats (2 more than needed to flip the House) with Reagan posting similar approvals to Trump presently. That's an awfully small margin for error if taking the House is going to be considered Democrats' marker for success.

The Republicans had fewer seats to lose in 1982 than 2018 (192 vs. 241). If the two are comparable then the Republicans will lose 33 seats this year.

[mencken]

So how are Democrats handwaving the significant shift toward Republicans on the generic ballot? Just by hoping that a handful of open-seat special elections are reflective of November election results? It seems that people here are unwilling to consider any possibility that does not involve the sky being the limit for Democratic gains (as if you have learned nothing from 2014 and 2016)

It's like you people seem incapable of comprehending that it's May, and the generic ballot polls at this time almost never actually reflect the November results.

And yet special election results from the same time period do?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/special-elections-so-far-point-to-a-democratic-wave-in-2018/

Certainly more valuable than the notoriously noisy and frequently outright wrong generic ballot. But even if it wasn't, what's your point? That Dems won't win 80-100 seats? Most people already know that.

LOLOL

I read that article before at face value, but after reading it again, I cannot believe they published this crap. They used a sample size of six election cycles (every midterm since 1994), two of which the special election average was significantly more friendly to the out-party Democrats than the midterm election actually ended up being¹. And color me skeptical of their 2010 finding - I remember NY-23 and PA-12 being huge disappointments for Republicans (I suspect Scott Brown and Charles Djou are skewing the average there a tad)².

If anyone at 538 had bothered to learn statistics, they would know that such a small sample size would warrant a t-test to calculate the confidence interval. Comparing the special election to the subsequent midterm for these six cases gives an average Republican overperformance of 2.5%, standard deviation of 3.1%, at t-statistic for 95% confidence and 5 degrees of freedom of 2.57. For a special election margin of D+12, that could mean subsequent midterm performance anywhere between D+17 and D+1 (spoiler: the House would not flip at the right tail of that distribution)

As far as those G. Elliot Morris tweets, I would want to know the same thing - what is his sample size of special elections being compared to midterms? From what I can tell it seems to be the same as 538 (1994 and on). Again, it is fine to make 'projections' based off of such data, but one should acknowledge how huge the confidence interval is going to be based on the limited number of data points.

¹In fact, now that I look at it even more carefully, Democrats did worse in the midterms than the special elections would predict in all but one of those six midterms, so using 538^TM logic, Republicans should probably outperform their special election performances.
²I am trusting that they were not dishonest enough to include the special elections held on Election Day of the following year, ideally it would only include the special elections held up to this specific calendar date in past midterms. It would be nice if they made the number crunching publicly available, rather than tasking any would-be fact-checkers with starting from scratch to check their work.

[Virginiá]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/special-elections-so-far-point-to-a-democratic-wave-in-2018/

Certainly more valuable than the notoriously noisy and frequently outright wrong generic ballot. But even if it wasn't, what's your point? That Dems won't win 80-100 seats? Most people already know that.

LOLOL

I read that article before at face value, but after reading it again, I cannot believe they published this crap. They used a sample size of six election cycles (every midterm since 1994), two of which the special election average was significantly more friendly to the out-party Democrats than the midterm election actually ended up being¹. And color me skeptical of their 2010 finding - I remember NY-23 and PA-12 being huge disappointments for Republicans (I suspect Scott Brown and Charles Djou are skewing the average there a tad)².

If anyone at 538 had bothered to learn statistics, they would know that such a small sample size would warrant a t-test to calculate the confidence interval. Comparing the special election to the subsequent midterm for these six cases gives an average Republican overperformance of 2.5%, standard deviation of 3.1%, at t-statistic for 95% confidence and 5 degrees of freedom of 2.57. For a special election margin of D+12, that could mean subsequent midterm performance anywhere between D+17 and D+1 (spoiler: the House would not flip at the right tail of that distribution)

As far as those G. Elliot Morris tweets, I would want to know the same thing - what is his sample size of special elections being compared to midterms? From what I can tell it seems to be the same as 538 (1994 and on). Again, it is fine to make 'projections' based off of such data, but one should acknowledge how huge the confidence interval is going to be based on the limited number of data points.

¹In fact, now that I look at it even more carefully, Democrats did worse in the midterms than the special elections would predict in all but one of those six midterms, so using 538^TM logic, Republicans should probably outperform their special election performances.
²I am trusting that they were not dishonest enough to include the special elections held on Election Day of the following year, ideally it would only include the special elections held up to this specific calendar date in past midterms. It would be nice if they made the number crunching publicly available, rather than tasking any would-be fact-checkers with starting from scratch to check their work.

They talked about two different sets of data there, legislative+federal special elections, which is a much bigger sample set, and federal only. You are only talking about the federal set, of which they had to say this:

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The legislative+federal was:

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I don't see what the big deal is. Your post would be more relevant if they left out certain statements and didn't do anything for legislative special elections, but they did, so..

[mencken]

They still only have six output datapoints (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014), which is ultimately what we are concerned with.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

[KingSweden]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Hmmm

[windjammer]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

Any good dem recruit in this district?

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

Any good dem recruit in this district?

Nah the dems did a convention and proceeded to nominate someone with skeletons. That said, if the seat becomes open, I suspect that nominee gets dropped like a rock in favor of Perrellio.

[LimoLiberal]

Perriello lives in Alexandria as of today. I doubt the voters of VA-05 would punish him hard for carpetbagging given he represented the district, but it wouldn't look great.

[Politician]

Ooh, VA-05 might become another Democratic pickup!

[heatcharger]

Nah the dems did a convention and proceeded to nominate someone with skeletons. That said, if the seat becomes open, I suspect that nominee gets dropped like a rock in favor of Perrellio.

That’s an interesting idea, and maybe to some surprise, I’d probably support that heavily. But like Limo said, he’s not a permanent resident of VA-5, and I heard from a friend of mine who worked on his campaign last year that he’s not interested in Congress anymore. Which is why I laugh when people suggest he primary Warner, since it would also be a colossal waste of time and money on everyone’s part.

Anyway Garrett sucks, and the person who the state GOP selects in his place will probably beat Cockburn by 10-15 points.

[Yank2133]

The Garrett stuff is strange. It has the be some sort of scandel, because he just won the nomination last month.

[Jeppe]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

Any good dem recruit in this district?

Nah the dems did a convention and proceeded to nominate someone with skeletons. That said, if the seat becomes open, I suspect that nominee gets dropped like a rock in favor of Perrellio.

They won’t do that, lol. The Democrats already held their caucuses and nominated their candidate, they could ask her to step aside, but she won’t.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

Any good dem recruit in this district?

Nah the dems did a convention and proceeded to nominate someone with skeletons. That said, if the seat becomes open, I suspect that nominee gets dropped like a rock in favor of Perrellio.

They won’t do that, lol. The Democrats already held their caucuses and nominated their candidate, they could ask her to step aside, but she won’t.

I agree that Cockburn wouldn't drop out; she's an anti-Semitic bigot, so clearly rationale thought isn't her strong suite.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/999373426795204630

Scandal watch!

Any good dem recruit in this district?

Nah the dems did a convention and proceeded to nominate someone with skeletons. That said, if the seat becomes open, I suspect that nominee gets dropped like a rock in favor of Perrellio.

They won’t do that, lol. The Democrats already held their caucuses and nominated their candidate, they could ask her to step aside, but she won’t.

I agree that Cockburn wouldn't drop out; she's an anti-Semitic bigot, so clearly rationale thought isn't her strong suite.

Is she really anti-semitic, or just critical of Israel?

I'm genuinely curious.

[LimoLiberal]

My parents told me the chatter is that it's a familial/domestic matter for Garrett... idk if that means a #metoo scandal or a messy divorce?