Don't get me wrong, I still do. But there's an element of unpredictability in polls, and it's been there since at least 2012, when President Obama won a solid, convincing re-election bid over Mitt Romney. Republicans were sincerely expecting that Romney would eke out a narrow electoral college win, based on polling data from Ohio and Florida that gave him a slight edge. But he didn't carry either state, in fact, he lost Ohio outside the margin of error of the poll, though Florida was much closer, Obama still carried the state. As it turned out, with Ohio, he didn't need it.
Then there was 2016, when Hillary Clinton was given better than a 70% chance to win the Presidency. But the polls were off in the blue wall states, notwithstanding a little Russian interference. And again, in 2020, state by state, they were off again. And while there are plenty of theories about what went wrong, I don't believe any of the pollsters has yet figured out why the composite numbers are out of balance, and the margins of error seem skewed.
But in Spite of All of That...
Democrats have a lot of reasons to be optimistic about their chances of keeping control of Congress, and expanding their control of the Senate. When I first started looking at the composites back in February or March, we were down by nine points in the generic ballot, and Pennsylvania was the only really bright spot in the senate races. But looking at the 538 polling composites today, Democrats lead the generic ballot, it's close, one point, but that's a ten point improvement since the low point last winter. The numbers in the senate races, if the election were held tomorrow, would yield a gain of three for the Democrats, with Nevada being the closest thing Republicans have to a possible flip, and I wouldn't bet on that. Beasley and Demings, in North Carolina and Florida, have moved the needle to well within the margins in their races within the past two weeks, and if they can pull it off, that's a net gain of five for the Democrats.
Florida may prove to be interesting, with a large number of displaced voters from heavily Republican areas of the state. And what has really fascinated the poll watchers there, among other things, is that neither of the candidates at the top of the ballot have crossed the 50% mark in the polls. That's DeSantis and Rubio, by the way. And that's a drop in the support that both of them had the last time they ran for election.
Then there's this, from Michael Moore: Michael Moore Predicts Democrats Will Win Big in the Midterms
Being one of those who didn't listen to Moore when he predicted Trump would win in 2016, noting that he pointed directly at what he saw as flaws in the polling data, which is the same sort of thing he's pointing to now. Abortion rights have gone from near zero in priority for voters to double digits, which represents a significant shift in what voters are thinking, and as a motivating factor, it's 5 to 1 odds, Democrat to Republican, as far as those in polls have expressed themselves. There were polls on the ballot issue in Kansas, perhaps not in the same class with Quinnipiac, Marist, YouGov or Morning Consult, though the latter leans toward Democrats maintaining control of congress and making a few gains in senate seats, but no one saw that coming.
And when it comes down to it, it does take a little time for people to see extremists for what they are. But once they do, it's hard not to see it and harder still to cast a ballot for it. The Democrats drawing even in a mid-term year when they control the White House and Congress is a good sign. The extremists have another month to pull another Herschel Walker or two. I'm looking forward to seeing who the next one will be to open their mouth and insert their foot.
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