Prediction Roundup
Here's a quick and handy round-up of Sunday morning predictions:
* Washington Post: "In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority...A three-seat gain [in the Senate] is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana."
* Charlie Cook: "It's very hard to imagine how the House majority does not turn over...Let's just say it's 20-35, but that the possibility of this getting bigger, is very real...The bottom line [in the Senate] is that it is more possible today than a couple weeks ago that Republicans could hold their losses to just four, or it could end up being the six."
* Associated Press: "A miracle day for us would be 14 seats lost," said Joe Gaylord, who was the chief strategist for Newt Gingrich in 1994 when Republicans swept to power. "A good day would be around minus 20, and a bad day would be over 30."
* New York Times: "Republican Party leaders [were] saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House. But they were increasingly steeling themselves for the loss of at least 15 seats...Democrats said they thought they were almost certain to gain four or five [Senate] seats and still had a shot at the six they need to take control."
* Columbus Dispatch: "Fueled by a huge margin favoring gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland at the top of the ticked, Democrats [are in a] position to sweep all [Ohio] nonjudicial offices."
Re: A three-seat gain [in the Senate] is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana
How much of a tossup is Montana? Most polls still show Tester ahead, just the Zogby poll shows it tied. I'm wondering if this is just a case of the GOP exaggerating a single anomalous poll in order to spook the Democrats into dumping money into Montana rather than spending it on the much closer races in MO and VA. They did something very like that in 2004, producing weird polls showing Bush ahead in NJ, MI and even HI, forcing the Democrats to waste money needlessly in those states when they really needed to spend it in FL, OH and IA.
November 5, 2006 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Democratic money dump into MO & VA is already maximized... there's a finite amount of TV & radio time that can be bought... keep in mind the Democrats essentially have money parity with the Republicans this cycle (and the Republicans have more races over which they must spread their money)... Now, it becomes useful to look at Tuesday's weather forecasts across the country...
November 5, 2006 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Democratic takeover of the House appears a given with a gain of at least 15 seats, but there are still too many tossup races. It's nice to see so many races in play, but it doesn't guarantee that they will end up in the Democratic column. No votes have been counted yet. November 7th will be a very long day.
Charlie Cook is right, the Senate is a different animal. The Senate race in Tennessee was always a long shot for the Democrats even with a perfectly run campaign. Tennessee is in the South and Harold Ford is African-American. In the privacy of the election booth, prejudice has free rein. Of course the Ford family's legal difficulties didn't help along with campign missteps, Corker's negative ads and push polls.
The Virginia and Missouri senate races will be interesting to watch. Can Webb hold the northern part of Virginia and get enough votes in the southern part to win? Can McCaskill break out of her bases in the St Louis and Kansas City areas and get enough rural votes to win? Again it could be a long night.
Montana is not a typical rural guaranteed-Republican state. Montana is not Idaho, Wyoming or the Dakotas. Max Baucus (a Democrat) has held the other Senate seat since the 1970s. John Tester still has a chance of winning on Tuesday.
November 5, 2006 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
As A life long southerner, I know that there are few things that Southerners fear more than their own image as ignorant and stupid. Most modern southerners are opposed to racism, not because of the moral issue, but because of the image issue. The Democratic Party would do well to go to a trailer park, interview a tobacco chewing redneck and put that in all of their ads. Though it would involve a certain level of hypocrisy, it would have people flocking to vote for Ford lest someone think them a drawling buffoon.
November 5, 2006 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
JPF311, Mason-Dixon polls released both today & yesterday show both Tester & Burns @ 47.
Looks like we need both VA & MO, plus a lot of luck.
November 5, 2006 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. By 'any means necessary'...should be the Dem motto when it comes to TN.
November 5, 2006 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
The Democratic Wave has Crested
Charles Franklin
"While race-by-race estimates still show an 18 seat Democratic gain, and 27 seats as tossups (see our scorecard at Pollster.com here), this reduction in national forces makes it less likely the Democrats sweep the large majority of the tossup seats and could result in total gains in the 20s rather than the 30s or even 40s that looked plausible 10 days ago.
This cresting of national forces has taken place across Senate, House AND Governors races and occurred essentially simultaneously around October 25th."
Franklin goes on later to predict a tightening of the National Generic Ballot....He wrote this before the Survey USA, WaPo, and Pew - all released today - showed the same thing
November 5, 2006 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The money is equal b/t the Democratic and Republican congressional committees, but the RNC still has a lot more money that they are spending on this election than the DNC does (thank Howard Dean), and the 527 independent spending also appears as if it will favor the GOP.
November 6, 2006 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, that's really not a bad idea. The Dems and/or Ford would never make it themselves, but it would make a great amateur YouTube video. "Harold Ford? I ain't votin' for no damn n-word." It's not like it's not happening that way in TN. I know what it's like in rural areas still today.
November 6, 2006 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Things are looking better since then in surveys that ended later. Might have been a momentary pause before the big day.
If we win 18 and 1/2 of 27 tossups, isn't that a gain in the low 30s? Just asking.
November 6, 2006 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know. This still smells like the odd polls that showed Bush leading Kerry (within the margin of error) in several blue states (MI, NJ, etc.) late in the election in 2004, polls which turned out to be quite wrong on election day but which still distracted the Democrats from other crucial states. The new RI poll (Chaffee catching up to Whitehouse) is somewhat more believable since Chaffe is a moderate and more in tune with his voters. Burns however has alienated large blocks of otherwise conservative folks (by cussing out firefighters etc.) and the corruption thing can hardly be forgotten. If Burns does win I would seriously look into the possibility of election fraud.
November 6, 2006 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink