Politics

Our latest forecast shows little change in Republican chances of taking over the Senate after next Tuesday’s elections. They now have a 19 percent chance of doing so, according to our forecast model; their chances had been 18 percent in our previous update on Thursday.

There are, however, some important states where Republican prospects have been improving, albeit slightly. One is Illinois, where the last three nonpartisan polls each give the Republican, Mark Kirk, a small lead; he now has a 1.7-point edge in our adjusted polling average.

Because the number of undecided voters in Illinois remains high — which contributes uncertainty to the forecast — a small lead is less meaningful than it would be ordinarily. Still, our model has Mr. Kirk’s chances of victory up to 64 percent, the highest they have been all year in a race that has been essentially tied for months. Read more…

Here are the candidates for governor who find themselves in a materially stronger position from earlier this week.

• We yet again have a new leader in Florida, and it’s the Republican Rick Scott, although by about the slimmest possible margin: our program currently projects him to win by one-tenth of a point, which could trigger another recount in a state that has had a few too many of them. There appears to be a fairly large enthusiasm gap in Florida, while there are also a goodly number of voters who have tepid views of Mr. Scott; that may be what’s driving some of the disparities in the polling, as recent surveys show everything from a 6-point lead for Mr. Scott to a 7-point edge for his opponent, Alex Sink.
• The other state with a new leader is Rhode Island, where Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican senator who is running as an independent, has pulled ahead of the Democrat Frank T. Caprio on the strength of a Rasmussen Reports poll that gives him a 7-point lead. Given that three-way races are volatile, and that Rasmussen is the only pollster yet to show Mr. Chafee with a lead, we could use another survey to confirm this result. Still, he is a familiar face to Rhode Islanders, and the state has one of the nation’s highest percentages of independent voters, so his fundamentals are reasonably sound. Read more…

Republican chances of taking over the House are now up to 80 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model; they had been 75 percent two days ago.

In an average simulation, the model projected that the Republicans will control 230 seats when the new Congress convenes in January; that would reflect a 51-seat gain from their current standing and would be close to the 54-seat gain that they achieved in 1994. This is the first time we have published a forecast putting the Republican over-under line at a number higher than 50 seats.

As we remind our readers with each update, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast. Democrats have a 20 percent chance of holding the House — but Republicans have a 30 percent chance of winning at least 60 seats, a 12 percent chance of winning at least 70 seats, and a 3 percent chance of winning 80 or more seats. We would advise against interpreting our forecast as a prediction that Republicans will win some particular number of seats. Instead, it should be thought of as being equivalent to a point spread.

The individual districts to show the largest improvement in the chances for Republican control are as follows: the Oregon 5th (to 66 percent from 38 percent), the Mississippi 4th (to 65 percent from 48 percent), the Texas 23rd (to 55 percent from 40 percent), the New York 22nd (to 12 percent from 4 percent), the Colorado 3rd (to 61 percent from 53 percent), and the New York 20th (to 42 percent from 34 percent).

Their forecast is also improved in North Dakota’s at-large district (to 88 percent from 81 percent) and in Alan Grayson’s district, the Florida 8th (to 75 percent from 68 percent). These changes mostly reflect new polling, or changes in the prognoses provided by experts like Cook Political and the Rothenberg Political Report, which continue to move batches of seats toward Republicans.

Few individual seats moved materially toward the Democrats with this update; their best result was in the Pennsylvania 17th, where their chance of holding the seat improved to 99 percent from 93 percent.

Democrats also got some good polling news in the Michigan 15th Congressional District, where a new nonpartisan poll shows Representative John Dingell with a reasonably safe, 17-point lead, contradicting a dubious survey that had shown the Republican Rob Steele ahead. However, because the model had not considered a defeat for Mr. Dingell to be very likely in the first place, this does not do much to do to improve their overall forecast.

A nonpartisan poll was also released for the first time in another closely-watched district, the Massachusetts 4th, where Barney Frank is running. It gave Mr. Frank a 12-point lead, which is fairly safe. Nevertheless, as the model had considered Mr. Frank about a 17-point favorite before, it has the Republican Sean Bielat’s chances improving slightly to 4 percent from 2 percent.

One group of candidates who have struggled of late are those who are largely self-financed:

• Connecticut’s Linda McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, stalled out in the polls against Richard Blumenthal a few weeks ago after having gained significant ground on him during the summer months. She trails by double digits in most surveys of the state and now appears bound to lose.
• In California, Meg Whitman’s chances have deteriorated against Jerry Brown over the course of the past month, and if she were to salvage her campaign, it would be a bona fide upset — not the position that she would have hoped for after investing more than $160 million in her campaign.
• Carl P. Paladino, who had promised to spend $10 million out of his own pocket on the governor’s race in New York, will almost certainly lose to Andrew Cuomo; the question is whether he can hold Mr. Cuomo’s margin of victory to within 20 points.
• Rick Scott’s position in Florida, where he is the Republican nominee for governor, remains viable; his race is a toss-up against Alex Sink. But with the G.O.P. poised to win a clear majority of open-seat governor’s races, and with the Republican Senate nominee Marco Rubio seeming to have his race well in hand, Mr. Scott is probably underperforming.
• Tom Ganley, who tops House candidates in out-of-pocket spending, appears bound to lose his race in Ohio’s 13th Congressional District now that sexual harassment allegations have emerged against him.

Several other self-financed candidates, like Nevada’s Sue Lowden, New Mexico’s Allen Weh, Florida’s Jeff Greene, and New Hampshire’s William Binnie, failed to win their primaries. And 2009 had been rough year for self-financed candidates as well, with Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey losing his re-election bid in spite of having invested $28 million in it, and Mayor Michael R, Bloomberg of New York City nearly doing so despite spending in excess of $100 million.

Some of this, perhaps, has to do with the mood of the country at a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet. Depending on one’s line of business, having been a successful chief executive or entrepreneur is not the unambiguously positive credential that it can be during boom years.

But the fact is that such self-financed candidates have a long history of struggling to win election. Read more…

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, or 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 at about this point in the 2006 election, for instance, that 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 show a lead for Barbara Boxer, the Democrat, but by margins ranging from 1 to 5 points. The 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? 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…