Things are not looking great for Republicans right now if you look at polling. Most observers are saying Democrats have a strong chance of taking the House and their chance of taking the Senate is looking much better than many thought it would a year ago.
Let’s look at some numbers. Real Clear Politics has Democrats with a +8.2 generic average. That’s not great but it may be coming down a bit from where it was just a couple weeks ago when some pollsters were seeing results like +11 and +10.
Lots of individual races in the Senate have Democrats leading, but the races are tight. In Maine, Jackson is up 1.2 over Collins. In Texas, Talarico is up 1.8. And in Michigan El-Sayed is up 2.5. All of those are within the margin of error. A swing of two points in either direction would make a big difference in the final outcome.
Today, there’s a new interview with polling analyst Nate Silver who offered his take on how things look. The story was published today but the interview happened several days ago. It’s a long interview so I’m going to skip around a bit. Here’s his take on Maine and Michigan and their overall importance.
Look, you have these big fights in Maine and Michigan. I would share Democrats’ concern about Maine a little bit. I mean, that’s based on nothing but just the fact that Susan Collins beat her polls by literally like nine points in the last election.
There’s a whole argument about how persistent polling error is. We tend to assume that it’s not, but that’s when races for the polls have gotten maybe closer by a point or two.
There hasn’t been a lot of polling in Maine. Michigan. Look, I’m one of those people who says that, all other things held equal, a moderate will be able to do better than a progressive, at least in a purple state like Michigan, right?
And if you compare the governor’s race there, where Jocelyn Benson is ahead by eight points, Abdul El-Sayed is ahead by three, or three and a half or something. Again, there is a four or a four-and-a-half-point candidate quality gap that is, again, within that range of what, and how, we think candidates can matter in an environment like this one.
But if you have enough wind at your back, then you can overcome some of those problems…
Michigan and Maine — if Democrats were to lose one of them, they’d still have a chance. If they were to lose both, then probably game over for a Democratic Senate flip.
A bit later, Silver argued that he expects high turnout from Democrats and the outcome will really depend on whether Republicans turn out as well.
In midterms, there are basically three big questions: Will your voters turn out? Will the other side’s voters turn out? And then: How much persuasion is taking place among the 15 percent of the electorate that are possibly swing voters?…
I mean, the persuasion part of this is done. I’d be shocked if Democratic turnout wasn’t high by midterm standards. We don’t know if Republicans are going to turn out, and that will determine the range between a Republicans hold the Senate and keep Democrats to 10 seats in the House and a complete 1994-style disaster.
Silver was asked about the possibility of polling error, i.e. will Republicans outperform what polls are currently saying?
Look, the first thing I always tell people is that, whenever you’re looking at a series of polls in a Senate race or in Senate races, plural, always ask yourself: What if they’re off by three or four points in the same direction in every race?
Democrats have a lot of three-point leads in races like Ohio and Texas, more or less, right? If you had a three-point polling error, you would have a very long night, where we might be waiting for ranked-choice voting in Alaska.
But the House is different. If Democrats were not to win the House, then there would be profound questions about what’s going on with the polling, and in some ways, what’s going on with the country, too.
In other words, Silver thinks it’s very unlikely there will be enough polling error that Republicans will hold the House, but the possibility that they hold the Senate is different. As I said above, a two point swing or just a two point error in the polling could make a huge difference.
But Silver points out that while polls have underestimated Trump several times, you can’t automatically assume that’s happening this year when Trump himself isn’t on the ballot.
The critique I have of some of the people who say: Well, you’re undersampling Republicans in these polls. And Democrats are much more enthusiastic and much more likely to respond to and trust the pollsters — every single person in the industry is aware of that. I think every pollster is aware that polls missed low on Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
Anyway, I think Silver is interesting and usually worth listening to even if you don’t always agree with him. We’ll know a week from today how accurate the polling was and, if it’s wrong, who it underestimated.
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