Comments on: Prognostications on the House in November 2018

By: Kai Akker

Kai Akker — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 18:11:31 +0000

I’m with Stan on this. Everyone and his brother had an opinion on the Kavanaugh hearings, Art Deco! Although I noticed that the only people who didn’t talk about it much were lefties — I think even many of them knew the Blasey Ford fantasies were untenable.

So, if Trump’s supporters are more motivated than his opponents, it will show up in the voting, not necessarily the polls. I’m with Ackler on that. But a little more optimistic. Put me down for the current House majority +2 additional Rs, come Nov. 7, despite the rigged PA districts. This wave has not crested.

By: Ackler

Ackler — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:23:09 +0000

My position has been consistent throughout the last year; and it remains so:

Democrats gain 5-15 in the House.

Republicans gain 1-3 in the Senate.

Thus: A reduced (but still workable) GOP majority in the House and a Senate with more breathing room (and without Jeff Flake!)
T
I’ve gone from treating all polls and all pundits’ “methodologies” skeptically, to ignoring them entirely. The ascent of Trump utterly destroyed any faith in polling one should have. Now, even more than in 2016, there is a large portion of the population who thoroughly distrust and detests the mainstream media (including pollsters). They cannot be quantified or measured with any degree of accuracy. This “silent majority” is overwhelmingly conservative. Whether they will turn out in great numbers is anyone’s guess. But their existence urges one to not take any MSM prognostications seriously.

By: Timw

Timw — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:07:27 +0000

Apropos of the discussion, using the armed forces to secure our own borders is not a violation of posse comitatus–never has been. That is one of the most poorly understood laws we have on the books and it’s frequently cited for all sorts of things where it has no relevance.

As for November? Hard to tell. Much of the media is actively supporting the Dems and working to deliberately demoralize conservative voters, so take any polling data cum grano salis, as they say.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:05:33 +0000

Who are all these people showing up at Trump rallys?

Trump supporters, presumably, except for the sorosphere rent-a-claque-of-antifa. People who show up at rallies are a modest minority. I take that as an indicator that his supporters are more motivated than the opposition. Pollsters use likely-voter screens late in campaigns to try to assess that.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:02:11 +0000

On polls, there are a vastly larger number of them than there were 40 years ago (when you had Gallup, Harris, Roper, and Yankelovich). The evolution of telephone technology and habits of living have made it more challenging to set up valid sampling frames. Also, you have the phenomenon of media push-polling, for which you can correct by ignoring polls from outfits like the Sulzberger Birdcage Liner. For all that they’re much less reliable, they’re still more reliable than ass-pulls. So, i’d take the median of a batch of them. Not sure what Rothenberg’s methodology is.

By: Stan

Stan — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:00:47 +0000

Art Deco, Who are all these people showing up at Trump rallys? They’ve never been involved in politics before.

As far as following Kavanaugh?! All the people who normally fill my Facebook feed with pictures of their cats and their grandchildren were talking about nothing else.

By: Stan

Stan — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:58:32 +0000

I think the smartest bet in this election would be to bet against the polls put out by the most left wing of the press homers. They don’t have a record of competence.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:57:58 +0000

The core electorate is about 37% of the adult citizen population. The corps of people so interested that they follow things like the Kavanaugh imbroglio is much smaller and few of them are swing voters. Might move the need a bit, but so for not so much that it has more than a mild counteracting effect on the usual vectors. Usually the vectors run against the incumbent President. It’s just a question of the strength of the vector. If you look over the last 40-odd years, I think you see that the size of midterm losses is bimodally distributed, with peaks around 40 seats and 10 seats. My suspicion is that this will be a ‘large loss’ year like 2010, 2006, 1994, 1982, and 1974, but at the low end of that set. Rothenberg suggests almost a precise replication of 1982.

By: Stan

Stan — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:54:41 +0000

The polls are even worse this election because we know there have been some serious demographic changes. All polls have to be adjusted in order to make the sample representative of the underlying electorate. Anybody who thinks they have an accurate understanding of the new changes is either a fool or a liar. So the pollsters are making adjustments which often have a larger margin of error Than they are predicting for the race. So the polls are more guesswork Than survey.

By: Kai Akker

Kai Akker — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:49:08 +0000

The position of the Republicans has been deteriorating for the last 3 months.

According to them, I assume that means. But… do you yourself, Art Deco, think that is possible — that with Kavanaugh, Korea, economy, the Republican electoral probabilities have diminished in the last three months? They have strengthened per some other polls as well as common sense, it would seem. Unless this reflects very pro-D new registration totals across most states that I am unaware of.

I (still) suspect that any surprise in the results will be in favor of (Trump and) Republicans. There will be setbacks, downticks in the uptrend; but the wave that is still young is the trend toward Trump and the GOP, seems to me.

The other view would be that we have been seeing Peak Trump for the past three months or so.