2020 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread

[libertpaulian]

Ipsos/Reuters weekly, week ending Nov. 4, 408 LV

D: 50 (+1)
R: 40 (-3)

This is the pollster that's been typically bearish on Democrats this year, right?

Perhaps somewhat bearish, but on the whole they've been really bouncy. 

Wow, it's almost like all of the movement in the polls is just noise and these are all going to cancel each other out.

Ipsos is a low quality pollster, I recently learned. It's not gonna balance out NBC nor will it balance out ABC.

The point of my question is that given Ipsos/Reuters have given Dems smaller GCB margins than other mainstream pollsters have, and now they're showing a wider[/b] margin for the Dems compared to mainstream pollsters at the 11th hour is pretty good for Dems.

[IceSpear]

If y’all are freaking out over one percentage point hanged in the GCB, I can’t imagine the whiplash you’ll show on Election Night. Fortunately I won’t be on Atlas at all that day. You can only take so many hottakes

Seriously. I know Atlas loves to overreact to things, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

People are having a hard time coping with the fact that the megagigaultratidalwave they've all been expecting might not happen.

[Xing]

If y’all are freaking out over one percentage point hanged in the GCB, I can’t imagine the whiplash you’ll show on Election Night. Fortunately I won’t be on Atlas at all that day. You can only take so many hottakes

Seriously. I know Atlas loves to overreact to things, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

People are having a hard time coping with the fact that the megagigaultratidalwave they've all been expecting might not happen.

It's well-documented that Democrats are terrible at the expectations game.

[Wisconsin SC Race 2019]

If y’all are freaking out over one percentage point hanged in the GCB, I can’t imagine the whiplash you’ll show on Election Night. Fortunately I won’t be on Atlas at all that day. You can only take so many hottakes

Seriously. I know Atlas loves to overreact to things, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

People are having a hard time coping with the fact that the megagigaultratidalwave they've all been expecting might not happen.

Yep, and they're resorting to insulting me rather than acknowledging that the tide is heading the other way when it counts the most.

[Comrade Funk]

So yesterday we were high off hopium. Today we are are back in Dems in Disarray mode. How many more times will we change back and forth until Tuesday?

[IceSpear]

If y’all are freaking out over one percentage point hanged in the GCB, I can’t imagine the whiplash you’ll show on Election Night. Fortunately I won’t be on Atlas at all that day. You can only take so many hottakes

Seriously. I know Atlas loves to overreact to things, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

People are having a hard time coping with the fact that the megagigaultratidalwave they've all been expecting might not happen.

It's well-documented that Democrats are terrible at the expectations game.

One need look no further than this forum to prove that truism, lol.

[GeorgiaModerate]

So yesterday we were high off hopium. Today we are are back in Dems in Disarray mode. How many more times will we change back and forth until Tuesday?

27, with a MoE of 3.8.

[Politician]

This thread is such a joke.

[Virginiá]

I define the "incumbent party" as the party that controls the House on Election Day. In examining the history of the GCB compared to the final results, using that definition of incumbency results in a very clear correlation of overperformance compared to defining "incumbency" as controlling the White House. Everyone thinks of midterms as being about the White House, but in reality whoever controls the House of Representatives has a much stronger connection with GCB overperformance than who controls the White House.

The link between approval of the president and midterm elections goes back generations. This is widely acknowledged. The fact that there is a correlation with the House is basically a coincidence. Is it any surprise that unpopular presidents cost their parties downballot? Or how Obama is in office for 8 years, Democrats get decimated downballot, and then the White House switches hands and suddenly Democrats are rebounding? I mean the correlation there is as a plain as day. Further, you don't even need spreadsheets and copious amounts of data to know this country is obsessed with the president. They are either too stupid, too lazy or too indifferent to care about anything else. The only difference is when a candidate manages to break through this presidential obsession and gain a foothold in the minds of the voters, and that doesn't happen that often, and when it does, it's usually with statewide candidates.

You should shop this around to the major prognosticators or something, because I've never seen anyone try to argue that the House majority party is driving these elections.  I think you're reading into it too much.

Edit: This also doesn't really seem to hold up earlier than 1994 either. Democrats were absurdly dominant in the House for that time and yet the midterms still seemed to operate like clockwork against the president's party.

[Hindsight was 2020]

This thread is such a joke.

[Brittain33]

I’m so confused. Where is the presumption that Dems are lagging coming from? Not from two D+7 polls, surely?!

[Ebsy]

The JMC poll of WI-06 has got to be the most ridiculous poll I have seen all cycle:

https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1059164958464851970

Yes, of course Republicans have a 30 point ID lead in WI-06! Makes perfect sense!

[DataGuy]

I define the "incumbent party" as the party that controls the House on Election Day. In examining the history of the GCB compared to the final results, using that definition of incumbency results in a very clear correlation of overperformance compared to defining "incumbency" as controlling the White House. Everyone thinks of midterms as being about the White House, but in reality whoever controls the House of Representatives has a much stronger connection with GCB overperformance than who controls the White House.

The link between approval of the president and midterm elections goes back generations. This is widely acknowledged. The fact that there is a correlation with the House is basically a coincidence. Is it any surprise that unpopular presidents cost their parties downballot? Or how Obama is in office for 8 years, Democrats get decimated downballot, and then the White House switches hands and suddenly Democrats on top? I mean the correlation there is as a plain as day. Further, you don't even need spreadsheets and copious amounts of data to know this country is obsessed with the president. They are either too stupid, too lazy or too indifferent to care about anything else. The only difference is when a candidate manages to break through this presidential obsession and gain a foothold in the minds of the voters, and that doesn't happen that often, and when it does, it's usually with statewide candidates.

You should shop this around to the major prognosticators or something, because I've never seen anyone try to argue that the incumbent House party is driving these elections.  I think you're reading into it too much.

Of course the president's approval rating affects the midterms. But I'm not talking about who will actually win the House popular vote or even the House itself. I'm talking about who will do better than expected. There is a very strong correlation between the president's popularity and the opposite party gaining seats. Everyone knows that.

But I'm talking about a completely different question: Does the generic congressional ballot polling average generally exaggerate or underestimate wave elections? Sure, the opposition party will make gains, but how big will it be? That is a question completely different from the foregone conclusion of who will simply gain seats.

In that sense, the historical evidence is clear that the opposition party, defined as the party trying to retake the House, usually does not do quite as well as the GCB average showed. They certainly might win overall, but they just underperform their very high expectations.

That has at least been true in this century, when the practice of polling averages really began. It might not have been true a few decades ago, when the Democrats had a 40-year lock on the House. But ever since the House has become competitive again, that pattern has clearly developed.

If it holds true on Tuesday, then it will be hard to argue against it. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. But I'm just describing what has objectively happened since polling averages became commonplace. The past isn't a perfect predictor of the future, but it's the best we have to sort out trends and patterns.

[Virginiá]

Oh, yes, that makes more sense. Wouldn't the effect you are hinting at being at least partially incumbency? Regardless of current memes on Atlas, the incumbency effect is a real thing and it's also something that generic ballot polls wouldn't capture. People talk about generic party pols one way but often can have different opinions about their representative.

A good way to test this would be to hold a few consecutive House elections with all 435 seats up. If only... 

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/1059194100199682049

[libertpaulian]

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/1059194100199682049

Someone asked "Missouri?  Florida?  Texas?"  He responded "Two out of those three, yes."

[Zaybay]

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/1059194100199682049

Someone asked "Missouri?  Florida?  Texas?"  He responded "Two out of those three, yes."

Probably TX and MO then. They already did FL recently.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

LOL chill out! R's are screwed. Enough with the dems in disarray narrative.

[OneJ]

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/1059194100199682049

Someone asked "Missouri?  Florida?  Texas?"  He responded "Two out of those three, yes."

I’m hoping for Missouri and Texas. I wouldn’t mind Florida as long as it’s paired with Missouri.

However, it does sadden me that these might be the last few polls for this season, especially since the higher quality pollsters haven’t sprung up, at least not yet.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I know one is Missouri cause a guy from Marist was on Chuck Todd last Tuesday and mentioned they were working on a Missouri poll

[Comrade Funk]

LOL chill out! R's are screwed. Enough with the dems in disarray narrative.

Dems in Disarray narrative is only gonna get worse until Tuesday night. There will be injections of hopium from time to time however.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1059204932694360065

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1059208054745587712

[wbrocks67]

I'm not sure how WaPo ends up with +7/8 nationally after getting D+4 in 70 battleground districts that Trump won by *15* on average.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

I'm not sure how WaPo ends up with +7/8 nationally after getting D+4 in 70 battleground districts that Trump won by *15* on average.

Because the biggest shifts seem to be concentrated in the more competitive districts. Solidly blue districts are not getting much more blue, and solidly red districts are probably not getting much less red. We are not dealing with a uniform national swing.

This is actually really good news, because it suggests Democrats could (emphasis on could, we won't know until Tuesday) win the House without the large national majority that seemed required a few months ago.

[JG]

I'm not sure how WaPo ends up with +7/8 nationally after getting D+4 in 70 battleground districts that Trump won by *15* on average.

Because the biggest shifts seem to be concentrated in the more competitive districts. Solidly blue districts are not getting much more blue, and solidly red districts are probably not getting much less red. We are not dealing with a uniform national swing.

This is actually really good news, because it suggests Democrats could (emphasis on could, we won't know until Tuesday) win the House without the large national majority that seemed required a few months ago.

And we do see this at the senate level, where blue-state democrats like Gillibrand, Murphy or Warren do barely even better than purple-states like Casey, Brown or Stabenow.