Politics

It’s silly season for election watchers, that time of year where every uptick or downtick in the polls is assumed to have great meaning: the first tip-off to a last-minute comeback; the first sign that a candidate who seemed to have his race locked up won’t be able to close the deal.

Late comebacks in Senate races do sometimes occur — it was only at about this point in the 2006 election, for instance, when Jim Webb. a Democrat, emerged with a lead over George Allen in the Virginia Senate race, before going on to narrowly defeat him. In many or most cases, however, rumors of a candidate’s demise — or comeback — may be greatly exaggerated, given how little time there remains to make up even fairly small polling deficits.

Take the Senate race in California, for instance. There have been six independent polls released there in the last week or so. Five of the six show a lead for Barbara Boxer, the Democrat, but by margins ranging from 1 to 5 points. A sixth poll, from Wilson Research Strategies (ordinarily a Republican polling firm, but this particular survey meets our standards for being nonpartisan) shows Carly Fiorina with a 3-point lead.

If you look at just those polls, you’d get the impression that the race is — at most — leaning toward Ms. Boxer, and may even be too close to call. But is Ms. Fiorina — who had seemed to be down by 4 or 5 points in the polls before — in fact gaining ground?

Actually, it’s not so clear. Five of the six polls were also in the field in late September or very early October (Wilson Research Strategies is again the exception; this was the first time they’ve polled the race.) Four of the five Read more…

Proposition 19, a ballot initiative in California that would give local authorities the ability to legalize and tax marijuana for personal consumption, appears to have lost ground in the polls.

Calculating a trendline from all surveys on the initiative suggests that about 46 percent of Californians plan to vote in favor of Proposition 19 — a yes vote would legalize marijuana in the state — but 47 percent plan to vote no. This reflects a reversal from before, as the ballot measure had led in most surveys prior to this month.

The trend is fairly robust across different polling companies. Although SurveyUSA still has the yes vote favored, 48 to 44, their previous polls had shown the measure leading by a larger margin. The Public Policy Institute of California meanwhile, has the measure trailing by 5 points now after having led by 9 points before. And Ipsos, which had the “yes” side trailing by 2 points in its June survey, now has the initiative trailing by 10. Read more…

The latest FiveThirtyEight projection for the House of Representatives shows little overall change from our previous update, released this weekend, but the Republican position has improved slightly. They are now given a 75 percent chance of winning the House on Nov. 2, up from 73 percent previously. During an average simulation run, the Republicans finished with a total of 228 seats (up from 227): this would reflect a net gain of 49 seats from their current position.

As I have warned repeatedly in the past, we believe that the uncertainty in the forecast is intrinsically quite high, stemming from the unusually large number of seats in play, and from differences of opinion among pollsters in how to calibrate their likely voter models to account for the so-called “enthusiasm gap.” There are only 170 seats that the model thinks of as “safe” Republican — those where their chances of winning are 95 percent or higher. However, there are only 151 seats that the Democrats are at least 95 percent assured of winning.

The slight movement toward Republicans this week is not the result of shifts in the polling. Our estimate of the generic ballot remains unchanged, showing about 6 point lead for Republicans among likely voters. And some of the local polling has been decent enough for Democrats in the past few days, like a nonpartisan survey showing their incumbents ahead in two tight races in Michigan, and a poll suggesting that Ben Quayle, a Republican, could lose in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District — although our model is skeptical and still gives Mr. Quayle an 89 percent chance of prevailing. Read more…

Turn on the news or read through much of the analysis put out by some of our friends, and you’re likely to hear a lot of talk about “momentum”: the term is used about 60 times per day by major media outlets in conjunction with articles about polling.

When people say a particular candidate has momentum, what they are implying is that present trends are likely to perpetuate themselves into the future. Say, for instance, that a candidate trailed by 10 points in a poll three weeks ago — and now a new poll comes out showing the candidate down by just 5 points. It will frequently be said that this candidate “has the momentum”, “is gaining ground,” “is closing his deficit,” or something similar.

Each of these phrases are in the present tense. They create the impression that — if the candidate has gone from being 10 points down to 5 points down, then by next week, he’ll have closed his deficit further: perhaps he’ll even be ahead!

There’s just one problem with this. It has no particular tendency toward being true.

Read more…

We’re gearing up for a more rapid schedule of updates to our forecasting models. You can expect Senate and House updates later today. We’ll then update all three of our models — Senate, House, Governor — again on Friday, and then just about every day from next Monday through the election on Nov. 2.

That pace may mean that the posts accompanying these updates will be somewhat more circumspect. In that spirit, here is a quick rundown of some of the more dynamic governors’ races, based on forecasts we ran last night. Read more…

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about the Public Policy Polling survey in Pennsylvania’s Senate race that gives Representative Joe Sestak, the Democrat, a 1-point lead over the Republican Pat Toomey.

I wrote last week that a comeback by Mr. Sestak, who had been trailing Mr. Toomey by around 6 or 7 points in most surveys until now, was not more likely than the chances assigned to him by our model, which had been about 5 percent.

Obviously, we have new information in the form of the Public Policy Polling survey. But a few things to keep in mind:

• Usually, general elections don’t turn on a dime without good reason — and going from 7 points down (or 9 points, as Public Policy Polling had Mr. Sestak in its August survey) to 1 point ahead would be fairly unusual. It can happen, but it doesn’t happen that often.
• You’ll rarely make a mistake by holding out for more data. While pollsters have been distracted by states like Delaware that are unlikely to be close on Election Day, Pennsylvania has received uncharacteristically scant polling. So far, no other nonpartisan poll confirms Mr. Sestak’s surge, and the next-most-recent survey of the state, from Rasmussen Reports, gave Mr. Toomey a 10-point lead — the largest advantage Rasmussen had given him to date. One poll does not a trend make, and even when several polls do agree on a trend, it can often reverse itself. Read more…

With only 15 days to go until the election, we’re going to be upping the frequency of our forecast updates somewhat.

Today, we’ve rerun the numbers for the Senate, and they show little change in the overall likelihood of a Republican takeover. The model gives Republicans a 17 percent chance of winding up with at least 51 Senators after Nov. 2. That’s essentially unchanged from our previous update, from last Wednesday, when they were given an 18 percent chance.

There is modest movement in some individual races, however. Democratic chances are somewhat improved in West Virginia, where a new poll from Orion Strategies gives Gov. Joe Manchin III a 10-point lead over his Republican opponent, John Raese. Because West Virginia had been fairly heavily polled, however, and because the survey was issued by an unfamiliar pollster and had a small sample size, it does not have all that much influence in the outcome. Mr. Manchin’s chances are improved to 62 percent, from 57 percent last week.

Three additional polls are out in Washington State since our last update, and all of them show the Democratic incumbent, Patty Murray, with a small lead; her winning chances are improved to 84 percent from 78 percent. While her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, is far from out of the running, and while the polling has been inconsistent, the only nonpartisan polls since August to show Mr. Rossi with a lead are a series of polls from Rasmussen Reports — and their most recent survey now shows Ms. Murray with a lead. Read more…

Those of us hoping to get a good night’s sleep on Nov. 2 might not be pleased with the latest developments in the Alaska Senate race, where polls suggest a drop in support for the Republican nominee, Joe Miller. That could enable either Lisa Murkowski — the incumbent who lost the Republican primary to Mr. Miller but is running a write-in campaign as an independent — or perhaps the Democrat Scott McAdams, to win the race instead.

Most polling places in Alaska do not close until midnight, Eastern time. And vote-counting is always slow in the vast and remote state, which also has a high rate of absentee voting. The presence of a viable write-in candidate will create further delays, since these ballots will need to be reviewed by hand — election night counts may report the total number of write-in votes, but not how many of these were valid ballots cast for Ms. Murkowski. And once an initial count is in, a series of legal challenges may arise over different standards for counting the write-in votes. It’s plausible that the identity of Alaska’s new senator might not be known for weeks or even months.

The clearest path to victory had seemed to be Mr. Miller’s — since he does not have the handicap of being a write-in, like Ms. Murkowski — or, like Mr. McAdams, a Democrat in a state with few Democrats. But polls suggest that voters have grown less fond of Mr. Miller. A Rasmussen Reports poll issued late last week gave Mr. Miller 35 percent of the vote, down from 42 percent a month ago. Another survey, from Public Policy Polling, also had his vote-share decreasing, and found that 58 percent of Alaskan voters have a negative impression of him, up from an already-high 52 percent after his primary win. Read more…

Raúl M. Grijalva. Bennie Thompson. Jan Schakowsky.

Jim Oberstar? John Larson? Corrine Brown?

Peter DeFazio! John Dingell! Barney Frank!

These are some of the Democratic incumbents, most long believed to be safe by analysts. But in recent weeks, polls of their districts have suggested surprisingly competitive races.

Some of these polls show the Republican challengers leading; most show the Democrat ahead, but by a smaller margin than expected. Some of the polls are from independent researchers; most are issued by the campaigns themselves, or by other Republican-affiliated groups. Some of the companies conducting these polls have strong reputations; others have little track record.

What these polls have in common, however, is that each time one is issued, they make Republicans very excited — and Democrats very nervous. It’s time for a more sober look at them. Read more…

FiveThirtyEight’s projection for the U.S. House shows little change from last week. Republicans are given a 73 percent chance of taking over the House, up incrementally from 72 percent last week. During an average simulation run, Republicans finished with 227 seats, up from 226 last week; this would suggest a net gain of 48 seats from the 179 they hold currently.

However, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast because of the unusually large number of House seats now in play. A gain of as large as 70-80 seats is not completely out of the question if everything broke right for Republicans. Conversely, if Democrats managed to see a material rebound in their national standing over the final two weeks of the campaign, they could lose as few as 20-30 seats, as relatively few individual districts are certain pickups for Republicans.

In past weeks, we have written about the divergence between the various indicators that the model uses — for instance, the generic ballot, as compared against polls of individual districts. Increasingly, however, these metrics are falling into alignment.

Some generic ballot polls have shown incremental improvement in Democrats standing — although they still trail by roughly 6 points among likely voters on the generic ballot, according to our model’s estimate. According to one commonly used formula, a Republican lead of 6 points on the generic ballot would translate into a gain of about 50 seats. Read more…