Politics

Democrats have made progress in several states in tonight’s gubernatorial forecast. Although it remains very probable that Republicans will control the majority of the nation’s governorships after Nov. 2, it is now more likely that Democratic and independent candidates can hold Republicans to victories in between 20 and 23 of the 37 contests that will be held on Election Day.

Most of the Democrats’ gains tonight come in blue states. In Maryland, the race appears to have shifted sharply for the Democratic incumbent, Martin O’Malley, who holds double-digit leads over Robert Ehrlich, a former governor, in three new surveys. Mr. O’Malley also has at least 52 percent of the vote in each of the surveys, and Mr. Ehrlich’s winning chances have dropped from 19 percent to just 4 percent, according to the model.

In Hawaii, a state that had shown some surprisingly close polling, a survey for the Honolulu Advertiser gives Democrat Neil Abercrombie an 8-point lead over the Republican Duke Aiona; three surveys conducted earlier this month had shown a lead for Mr. Abercrombie of just 2 to 3 points. Hawaii is a tricky state to poll and some of the work there has been odd this year — for instance, a Rasmussen poll that gave longtime incumbent Daniel Inouye just 13-point lead against a complete unknown in the Senate race there. I’m not going to pretend to know exactly how to untangle everything, but the model now has Mr. Abercrombie as an 85 percent favorite, up from 79 percent.

Although I’m not inclined to talk about momentum, it may be an apt term in California, where Jerry Brown has improved his position over Meg Whitman for seven consecutive forecasts, and is now about 90 percent likely to win, according to the model, his chances having been as low as 36 percent in mid-September. The newest survey in the state, from the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California, may be a modest outlier in showing Mr. Brown Read more…

While Republicans’ position is holding steady in the House — where they are 4:1 favorites to win control of the chamber according to our analysis — their chances of also taking over the Senate declined in today’s forecast. Those chances are now 16 percent, down from 19 percent in our forecast over the weekend.

The modest decline in the Republicans’ chances today is a result of new polling in two states. The first is Colorado, where two new polls, from Public Policy Polling and SurveyUSA, each show the exact same result, with the Republican, Ken Buck, and the Democrat, Michael Bennet, tied at 47 percent each. Colorado had appeared to slightly favor Mr. Buck for most of the cycle, with his winning chances peaking at 79 percent in our Sept. 30 update. Since then, however, he has endured some decline after a series of minor gaffes, with polls suggesting that Mr. Bennet may have improved his standing among female voters. We now project Colorado’s Senate race to be the closest in the country — slightly closer than others like Nevada or West Virginia. Mr. Buck is now an 0.4-point favorite, according to the model, and his chances of winning are 54 percent.

The other significant move today is in West Virginia, and it is toward the Democrat, Joe Manchin, as a Public Policy Polling survey gives him a 6-point lead over Republican John Raese.

The West Virginia forecast has been fairly volatile, as polls there have been relatively rare and as they’ve often been at odds with one another. In particular, 6 out of 10 polls from the firm Rasmussen Reports have shown Mr. Raese with a lead, while 6 out of 7 polls from firms other than Rasmussen have shown Mr. Manchin tied or ahead.

In this case, I’m inclined to put some credence in Public Policy Polling’s numbers, because they find the gain in Mr. Manchin’s support to have come from conservative voters, after he has tacked very hard to the right — for instance, in declining to endorse President Obama for a second term. One almost get the sense that Mr. Manchin is bound to win his race, but then be a thorn in the side of Democrats for at least the Read more…

Democratic chances of retaining control of the House are essentially unchanged in today’s FiveThirtyEight forecast. They have a 21 percent chance of doing so, up from 20 percent on Friday; that means Republicans have a 79 percent chance of instead claiming control. The average projection returned a result of 205 Democrats in the House and 230 Republicans, which would reflect a gain of 51 seats for the G.O.P.; this figure is unchanged.

There is little evidence of a change in the fundamental conditions of the race as the campaign enters its final full week.

The Gallup generic ballot poll, which publishes results using two separate turnout models, had its “enthusiasm gap” closing somewhat: it now has Republicans gain either a net of 5 or a net of 10 points when likely voters are accounted for rather than all registered ones, depending on which model is used. This enthusiasm gap is somewhat lesser for Democrats than in past surveys, when Gallup had found differences of as large as 10 and 16 points, respectively, and brings Gallup into better alignment with other polls.

Read more…

I’ve gotten a lot of pushback on my post from Sunday night about early voting figures. Michael P. McDonald of The Huffington Post, for instance — whose work I referred to in my article – calls it “fatally flawed” and suggests I have erred by comparing early voting totals in each state to party registration figures. Instead, he thinks, the proper comparison is to early voting figures from past years.

My article consisted of essentially two different parts. About 600 words were devoted to critiquing the notion that the early voting data – particularly in the way that some other analysts are using it — tells us much of anything at all. The other 600 words (the part that Mr. McDonald criticizes) were devoted to a comparison of the early voting figures against voter registration data in each state, which I suggested revealed a small “enthusiasm gap” in favor of Republicans.

If you take just one point from yesterday’s article, I’d really prefer it be the former,  more skeptical one. A lot of the analyses of early voting figures are quite flawed. I’ll take some blame here for having selected a poor headline, which did not emphasize this point enough. Read more…

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about early voting data, which is already available in a number of states. In most parts of the country, indeed, a voter is already able to cast a ballot if she wants do.

This early voting data is very attractive in one way: since many states track the number of early voters by political party, it reflects the first “hard” evidence we have about the turnout of actual voters in this year’s elections. Those of you who don’t trust the turnout estimates that pollsters are coming up with might therefore be especially fond of it.

I would, however, urge some caution when reading articles about these early voting statistics. Like most other types of political data, they can be prone to either misinterpretation or to “spin.”

First, early voting patterns seem to differ a lot from state to state this year — with Republicans posting terrific numbers in some states at the same time Democrats do surprisingly well in others. So there tends to be some cherry-picking in the analysis of results: Democrats, for instance, might point to their numbers in Iowa and Ohio, which are good, and Republicans theirs in Florida or Pennsylvania.

Second — even if we know how many people in each party have cast ballots so far — it’s not clear what the point of comparison ought to be to be. Is the benchmark supposed to be 2008, when Democrats put a ton of emphasis on early voting? (If so, this year’s numbers look really good so far for Republicans.) Or is then benchmark the years prior to 2008, when the conventional wisdom held that older voters — who are more likely to be Republican — were most inclined to vote early or by mail? (There are few statistics available for years prior to 2008, although the National Annenberg Election Study found that George W. Bush won 60 percent of the early vote in 2004, and 63 percent in 2000.)

Is the idea that, because Republicans are apparently more fired up in this election, they ought to be doing especially well among early voters? Or can the number of early voters be taken more or less at face value in terms of predicting the eventual turnout? Articles grounded in different assumptions about the comparisons may come to very different conclusions about what the early voting data implies.

That said, I do think there is some value in looking at the early voting numbers in what is probably the most straightforward way, and seeing who has voted so far. Generally, they seem to point toward an enthusiasm gap that is broadly consistent with what the pollsters are seeing.

The basis for this article will be the early voting statistics compiled by Politico’s Molly Ball in her article today. Some of Ms. Ball’s figures reflect official, statewide estimates, while others were provided to her by Democratic or Republican consulting firms.

I’ll be focusing here on the 15 states mentioned in Ms. Ball’s article that require voters to register by political party, where early voting estimates are subject to less error. Let me dump the data out to you first, and then I’ll walk you through it:

The first two columns reflect the early voting turnout as cited in the Politico article. A figure of “R+3″ indicates, for instance, that the percentage of early voters leans to Republican registrants by 3 points. I’ve also provided an estimate of the number of early votes tallied so far as a percentage of the eventual turnout. The benchmark is the number of votes cast in each state in the last midterm year in which the state had either a Senate or gubernatorial election on the ballot (this is 2006 in most cases, but 2002 in a few of them). Also note that the Politico article did not provide any guidance about the number of early votes cast so far in one state, Arizona, so I simply used the average turnout estimate from the other 14 states in that instance.

The next two columns provide for some points of comparison. First is the current party registration in each state, as compiled by Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Next is the party identification of the voters in the 2008 election, according to exit polls conducted that year.

The rightmost two columns reflect a comparison between a party’s advantage in the early voting, and the two benchmarks that I just mentioned. A figure of “D+4″ would indicate, for example, that the actual composition of early voters was a net of 4 points more Democratic than the registration in that state.

The bottom three rows provide summary statistics: specifically the median, a simple average, and a weighted average, where the weights are based on the fraction of the total vote that has been cast early so far.

So, what do we see? We see good news for Republicans — although not necessarily better news for them than is already implied by the polling.

If we compare the early voting statistics to the registration figures in each state, we see that Republicans are outperforming their registration figures by an average of about 9 points, or a median of 6 points. The median figure is arguably the more reliable figure in this case, since it will be less sensitive to outliers — as there might be, for instance, in Pennsylvania, where early voting figures show a very substantial edge for Republicans in a state where party registration favors the Democrats. Still, either figure is pretty good for Republicans.

The other comparison, between early voting turnout by voter registration, and 2008 voter identification, is less apples-to-apples. Still, it may be useful, since public polling firms almost always estimate the composition of the electorate by voter identification rather than registration, even in states where registration data is available.

These figures are slightly weaker for Republicans, but still pretty good. They are outperforming party identification figures by a median of 4 points, an average of 5 or 6 points, and a weighted average of around 7 points.

So, the various estimates of early voting data each show an edge for Republicans: their voters have been slightly more inclined that Democrats in most states thus far. Under the most favorable set of assumptions for them, their advantage is around 9 points; by the least favorable set of assumptions, it is more like a 4-point edge.

These figures ought to seem familiar to regular readers of this blog. How come? Because they are very close to the enthusiasm gap as inferred by the consensus of pollsters — who, on average, show Republican candidates performing about 6 points better among likely voters than among registered voters — although their advantage varies from state to state and from polling firm to polling firm.

Now, certainly, there are a number of ambiguities when conducting this sort of analysis. “Late” voters, for instance, could turn out to be systematically different than early voters for any of a number of reasons. And whereas the pollsters are comparing the standing of Democratic and Republican candidates under different assumptions about turnout, the early voting figures instead reflect the number of Democratic and Republican voters in each state.

Overall, however, the early voting data does not provide compelling reason to reject the consensus among pollsters, which is that the enthusiasm gap is most likely to manifest itself in a mid-to-high single digit turnout advantage for Republicans. When coupled with the edge that Republican candidates have among independent voters in most races, this suggests that they are liable to have a pretty good year.

At the same time, there is enough ambiguity in the early voting data that it can’t rule out a substantially larger, or smaller, enthusiasm gap. My point is simply that you should be suspicious of claims that it is manifestly good or bad news for either party, in a way that contradicts the other information that we have about the upcoming election. The notion that the turnout gap is illusory and will entirely evaporate by Election Day, or that it will be as large as the roughly 15-point edge that Gallup’s traditional likely voter model suggests that it could be, do not seem like the most prudent assumptions to us.

Our latest forecast shows little change in Republican chances of taking over the Senate after the Nov. 2 election. 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…