Change Research (D internal): Cruz +0 in TX, Nelson +2 in FL

[Person Man]

I don't believe the Texas numbers but the Florida numbers just reinforce the narrative that Nelson is slightly up but Scott could win if enough Democrats stay home and enough Independents get cold feet once they get in the booth.

[Person Man]

Texas race is tightening, that Cruz +10 poll seemed like an outlier compared to other polls showing a Cruz lead of 3-6 points, and now this one showing it even more narrow with a tie.

And the polls from the same people have been all over the place. Some pollster have Tester and Donnely up by a lot, have McCaskill and Rosen doing pretty well and then have people turning their backs on Sinema and Nelson...and vice versa.

[Person Man]

538 says it has a R+0.8 House Effect

[Person Man]

That makes it still really close for both races.

[Person Man]

538 says it has a R+0.8 House Effect

So is that (D internal) thing real or just editorializing?

FiveThirtyEight does label it a Democratic internal, so they assume by default it's probably biased toward the Democratic candidates. That's why their house effect calculation moves it toward Cruz by 1.4%, although their poll rankings show that Change Research has a mean-reverted bias of R+0.8.

They are very different things, as house effects judge polls against the average of the other polls (in other words, it tries to make all polls conform to the polling average, thus making the assumption that the average is right), while bias measures polls based on their performance relative to actual historical election results. I prefer to use the latter, so in my opinion this poll really is something to worry about for Cruz.

Of course, campaigns do have a tendency to release their very best internal numbers to try to shape public perception of the race, which is why publicly-released internal polls are generally viewed with suspicion.

Beto will win if people show up. Nelson wins in Independents follow through. Democrats MAY have a problem with people who change their votes at the last minute...even in the voting booth. anecdotally, in college I heard of girl say "I was going to vote for Kerry and then I got in the voting booth and then felt this 'presence' that made me vote for Bush instead". For all we know, she could have just been trying to annoy democrats on election night but you never know. Maybe democrats have a problem with closing or the Republicans are just better closers.

[Person Man]

Beto will win if people show up.

Not true.  Beto will lose if only Republican people show up.

And they are the only ones who have shown up.