2022 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread

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Disaster poll. This poll would be something like a 60-70 seat gain for Republicans regardless. This is the "Pascrell in danger" scenario. The only saving grace for Democrats at this point may be gerrymandering CA and NY as much as possible to keep gains minimal.

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1459902596693602311

[Senator Incitatus]

Disaster poll. The only saving grace for Democrats at this point may be gerrymandering CA and NY as much as possible. This poll would be something like a 60-70 seat gain for Republicans regardless. This is the "Pascrell in danger" scenario.

This would likely be more like R+50.  Something like that would pretty much relegate the Democratic Party to the minor party Republicans were from 1932-1938.

Pascrell's seat is only D+13, is overloaded with white Hispanics, and he's not a particularly popular incumbent. Still waiting to see how Ciattarelli did there overall, but several large towns trended strongly R in both 2020 and 2021. It feels like the exact sort of place where you'd have even stronger swings than nationwide.

(His seat being competitive is a personal obsession of mine, which is why I used his name, but is a very realistic option for the last domino to fall in an absolute tidal wave. Of course, redistricting may take it off the table in even the craziest scenario.)

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We’re basically at the point where even a series of Republican recruitment failures, flawed Republican campaigns, and very aggressive Democratic redistricting decisions/gerrymanders would result in a 54R-46D Senate as well as a healthy GOP majority in the House. This one increasingly looks like it’s set in stone.

We're getting to the point where a 60R-40D Senate in 2025 looks more likely than not.

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Prettymuch the only good news for Democrats at the current moment is that this round of redistricting will leave them with far more districts able to withstand an R wave than 2010.

This is why people need to stop the whole "GOP will win 60 seats!!!!" thing. There aren't going to be anywhere close to that up for grabs, even in a red wave.

edit: Totally misinterpreted the post as being about the Senate not the House. Sixty seats is within reach for Republicans but obviously not expected. But read on for a discussion of just how out of reach the Senate is about to become for Democrats.

I'm pretty sure the "60 seats" talk is in reference to post-2024, in which case it actually looks more likely than not. They need ten of the following thirteen seats, all of which Biden won by single digits or lost:

AZ-2022
GA-2022
NH-2022
NV-2022
---------
AZ-2024
ME-2024
MI-2024
MN-2024
MT-2024
NV-2024
OH-2024
PA-2024
WI-2024
WV-2024

This assumes no losses. Losses are definitely possible in 2022 with the wrong candidates in PA and NC but are likely not happening in 2024, where Republicans just need to defend TX and FL.

It also assumes in the opposite direction that none of the roughly Biden +15 states (OR, VA, CO, NJ, NM) become surprisingly competitive, which they of course could if it's a true landslide environment with the right candidates. (I'm keeping my eye on Bremer in Colorado.)

The map is really against them and the saving grace might be that 2024 gives some of those states time to distance themselves from Biden if he's not running or looks like a goner.

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NJ map is a major loss for the Republican Party and people who like competitive elections. Probably should have seen this coming when Rabner appointed the man Christie screwed off of the Supreme Court.

Haven't actually seen the Republican map to compare it so I'll hold off on saying the process was blatantly rigged; early indication to me is that they pushed for too much.

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NJ map is a major loss for the Republican Party and people who like competitive elections. Probably should have seen this coming when Rabner appointed the man Christie screwed off of the Supreme Court.

Haven't actually seen the Republican map to compare it so I'll hold off on saying the process was blatantly rigged; early indication to me is that they pushed for too much.

But what Republicans did in OH and NC is just fine?

Absolutely braindead reply. Handle yourself.

NJ map is a major loss for the Republican Party and people who like competitive elections. Probably should have seen this coming when Rabner appointed the man Christie screwed off of the Supreme Court.

Haven't actually seen the Republican map to compare it so I'll hold off on saying the process was blatantly rigged; early indication to me is that they pushed for too much.

NJ-02 and NJ-07 will likely be competitive in presidential years though

NJ-02 will not be competitive again; it's now even more strongly Republican and trending only further in that direction. NJ-07 may be. Either way, we went from four competitive seats to one here.

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Found the R map here: https://newjerseyglobe.com/campaigns/we-have-the-democratic-and-republican-congressional-maps-heres-whats-being-proposed/

Looks like it largely kept things the same except for really going after Malinowski hard, which is what you'd expect given Tom Kean Jr.'s strength in the party.

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R +13 is probably neither the final result nor the actual current temperature, but double-digits are not out of the question.

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Would Katie Porter Survive an R+13 margin?

Almost definitely not; if she did, she would be relying on a level of personal appeal that I don't think is possible (1) for her personally, (2) in her district, which has a large percentage of transient voters, or (3) for any candidate in a redistricting cycle.

With that said, I expect that GCB polling will overstate Republican gains given recent trends, i.e., a gain of 15 or 16 points nationwide (as in this poll) would point to a much smaller swing in Porter's district. On that basis, I think she'd be losing by a solid 3 or 4 points.

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The burden is on abc/WAPO to explain why the hell the GB went from R+10 to D+1

Why? The poll is what the poll is. Did you demand explanations when the polls started dropping for Democrats?

Probably not since that was around the time both inflation and Afghanistan got out of hand (and was a smaller shift). In any case, individual polls can bounce around but one polling bouncing once isn't going to change anything.

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Extremely relevant to the "Dobbs will change everything narrative": https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3543728-55-percent-oppose-supreme-court-roe-decision-poll/

• Dobbs opposed by a divided 55 to 45 percent majority
• but most would not have continued Roe/Casey's 23-week viability standard and would favor reducing it to 15 weeks, as in much of Europe
• and only 10 percent support the most liberal abortion policies permitting termination through the third trimester
• widest public support would have been for Justice Roberts’ position to revisit viability standard
• voters think state legislatures are the best forums to decide abortion policy (44%) followed by Congress (31%) and the Court (25%)

The truth is that Roe was never popular once people knew what it really said. The early polling was largely from the false belief, still persistent in some of the more ignorant circles, that the Court outlawed abortion. Thus the contradiction in high support for what Dobbs actually does versus the decision as a symbol.

If anything, the devastatingly low support for extreme NJ and CO-style abortion deregulation affirms my hunch Democrats might unexpectedly face some blowback in those states' legislatures.

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John has been smuggling cocaine in that mustache of his again.

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Huh. I hadn't actually looked at GCB polls recently and was under the impression from the rest of the forum that Democrats were consistently leading. (edit: Maybe that was the case, but I saw that tweet that showed Republicans up small or big in four polls and was shocked.)

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Does the YouGov poll really use a D+9 sample?

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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.

Yes, journalists do make up "stories" where there are none to drive engagement, and "data journalists" are not exception, but search trends have also been a relatively reliable (and more importantly, rapid) indicator of political shifts that polls don't catch—though there's still not a reliable hard quantifier, AFAIK.

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There was ample polling evidence during the campaign supporting the idea that Bush could win big. It wasn’t a consensus and it wasn’t the case in the final weeks, and some polls turned out to be duds, but data was there. [...]

Red California, Illinois, and Washington were unlikely in 2000 but not nearly as unthinkable as they are now.

This is off-topic, but since I also discussed this with another user recently, I’d again note that it cannot be overstated how close the Bush campaign came to blowing a solid lead/utter EC rout in the final 2-3 weeks of the 2000 campaign-

https://youtu.be/Cmu_2TWgTXc

We’re very used to Republicans making up ground as we get closer to the election or undecideds breaking heavily Republican, and usually at least one of those things does happen, but 2000 was a truly remarkable exception to that pattern.

Good stuff, thanks. If you want more, there's this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXhGjmFhHbI

This channel has nightly news clips from the entire race (and for many other races), but this video is the last week. Surprisingly, he hasn't made a playlist for Campaign 2000 (only election day and the aftermath) but did just put out one for 2004.

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SLF has dumped a lot of money into Alaska on a per capita basis to defend Murkowski. It's certainly an interesting choice. Murkowski is allied with McConnell, but she is a thorn in his side when it comes to legislating. Maybe Tshibaka would be even more troublesome, but spending so much money on an R vs. R race is intriguing.

I think McConnell would choose having a caucus of 49 Murkowskis over 49 Tshibakas without a second thought.

One Murkowski is all you need for some legislation to be killed. While One Tshibaka doesn't do much. Who knows if McConnell actually cares about legislation or any other policy though.

McConnell cares about legislation and largely agrees with Murkowski on what it should look like.