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The house is done for. RCP has Clinton up 6.6, Huffpost Pollster (uses more polls) has her up by 8.
Sam Wang of Princeton Election Consortium had this to say about flipping the house back in august:
Note that he cites Kyle Kondik of Center for Politics giving an "extreme" estimate of +10 needed. Recent polls are coming in with HRC in the 9 to 10 point range, and some higher than this. We are already at or beyond the point necessary for democrats to flip the house, even under "extreme" assumptions- the only question is if HRC can sustain this level of support, and given that we have a third debate coming and doubtless more women lined up to accuse trump of sexual assault this is a very safe bet- if anything polling will only get WORSE for Trump as the narrative solidifies that it's impossible for him to win, and states like Arizona and Georgia start polling D.
I noticed you mentioned gerrymandering- This WOULD normally be a concern for democrats, but actually helps them this year.
I can hear you right now, calling me crazy. Hear me out.
Gerrymandering is a process that redraws district lines to pack democrats into a small number of heavily democratic districts, but it also spreads out republican influence into a larger number of districts that go republican by smaller margins. A simple example would be to take an R+12 district and an "even" district, and redraw lines so that both R districts are +6.
normally something like a +6 advantage is VERY difficult for democrats to overcome, so there's no risk in reducing a heavily republican district down to reinforce one that's even or trending D. Democrats don't have that kind of pull in the popular vote even in election years- even Obama 08 was only 7 points, and that year had record breaking turnout.
THIS year we're looking at a situation where the democratic popular vote margin is SO HIGH that strategy is going to backfire.
The GOP created 55 districts that are lower than R+4 when gerrymandering, and they sacrificed heavily republican districts that would normally be R+9 or R +10 to do it. In a wave election where Clinton's popular vote margin is 9, 10, 11 points or higher ALL of these seats are wiped out.
This is the scenario we're looking at, and this is why the GOP is completely panicked.
Great explanation! Makes sense. I still have my doubts but going from forget it to maybe is still a big jump.
Great explanation! Makes sense. I still have my doubts but going from forget it to maybe is still a big jump.
There's other things I didn't quite get into because the post was getting long- but there is a significant chance that the polling we're seeing isn't correct, and is undersampling democrats. Fivethirtyeight had this to say back in September, before the Trump Tape business and the first debate happened.
Quote:
Hypothesis #1: The polls are underestimating Clinton because they don’t factor in her superior ground game. Mostreports (and we’ll have an article with some extensive data on this soon) suggest that Clinton is far better organized than Trump, with more field offices, for example, and a better get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation. Isn’t that reason to think the polls are underestimating Clinton by a bit?
natesilver: That’s one of the better arguments, yeah.
harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Well, the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the field game is being picked up by the polls. In a wonderful, perfect universe, it would be. In reality, I have my doubts. That’s why I’m not entirely sold on polls showing a large gap (in Trump’s favor) between registered voter results and likely voter results.
natesilver: The empirical literature on the ground game is messy because there are so many conflating variables. But what would worry me if I were Trump is that the race isn’t that close if everyone turns out — and I have the worse turnout operation.
micah: How would the polls pick up on a better ground game?
harry: A ground game is supposed to get people to vote. So, if Clinton’s campaign is getting more people engaged, then polls that are aimed at identifying likely voters should pick up on that. More of those voters should make it through the likely voter screen.
natesilver: Well, maybe they’ll make it through the likely voter screen, but a lot of likely voter screens rely on past voting history, and may or may not have adequate provisions in place to capture new voters.
harry: Right.
natesilver: Also, a lot of likely voter screens do something that’s probably dumb, which is to set a hard cut-off for voting propensity instead of doing it probabilistically. Clinton has a “long tail” of semi-likely voters that she could potentially draw from.
harry: Also correct.
micah: Clare, have you seen evidence of a superior Clinton ground game on your travels?
clare.malone: Clinton and the Democrats certainly have a more traditional, organized field operation. This is not to say that Trump doesn’t have some of the basics — the campaign has, for instance, phone-banking apps that their volunteers can use from home, along with walking apps for door-to-door stuff. But Trump is still substantively relying on the Republican National Committee’s operation, and they’ve been suffering from a lack of enthusiasm in some of the management-level types who usually run campaigns.
Likely voter polls (which is pretty much all of them) aren't very good at picking up people who are new or inconsistent voters. Many of them simply count someone 50% likely to turn out as "zero percent likely" and don't count them.
Clinton has a rather robust ground game designed to turn out unlikely voters...and this is almost entirely absent on the Trump campaign end. Most of the field offices he has are actually RNC offices, not Trump offices per se, and they haven't gotten anywhere near the kind of response to registration and early voting that the democrats have because of this. Trump's strategy was to rely on phone banking and "earned media" (i.e. outrageous headlines) to drive turnout...and this isn't nearly as effective as an actual street team going door to door.
Fivethirtyeight estimated this effect was probably worth "a couple of points" on Clinton's end, but this was before the Trump Tape business, two disastrous debates, and the sexual assault allegations against Trump. These things ABSOLUTELY HAVE caught the attention of voters who would otherwise be inconsistent or unlikely- mostly women.
So far democratic early voting is up significantly over 2012...meaning those "unlikely" voters that aren't reflected in polls are turning out, and not in small numbers.
Quote:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Democratic voters in Florida and North Carolina are requesting mail-in ballots at a significantly higher rate than they were at this point in the 2012 campaign, a promising sign for Hillary Clinton in what could be two of the closest swing states in the country.
Democrats appear to be outpacing their 2012 early vote performance in several critical swing states, giving Hillary Clinton a head start on Donald Trump in some of the most important presidential battlegrounds.
In two must-win states for Trump, North Carolina and Florida, Republicans are clinging to narrow leads in the total number of mail-in ballots requested. Yet in both states, Clinton is ahead of President Barack Obama’s pace four years earlier — and the GOP trails Mitt Romney’s clip.
Any diminishment of the GOP’s mail-in ballot lead is a matter of concern for Republicans because Democrats typically dominate early in-person voting in both states, which will begin over the next 10 days.
Quote:
So far, women are requesting ballots at a far faster rate than men in both North Carolina and Florida. That works to Clinton’s advantage — according to the most recent Fox News poll, Clinton had a 19-point advantage over Trump with female voters.
And Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters in a press call Thursday that 180,000 Hispanic Floridians who didn’t vote in 2014 had requested mail-in ballots. (Clinton leads Trump by 24 points among likely Hispanic voters in Florida, according to a recent poll conducted for the conservative-leaning Associated Industries of Florida business group.)
Actual results will be ahead of polling for all but the most optimistic democratic pollsters. No one expected democratic turnout for Clinton in 16 to be on par with Obama 08 levels.
Last edited by Burger Fan; 10-19-2016 at 01:15 PM..
Not to mention the polls in 2012 under polled Obama. Very few had him at 51% where he actually ended up.
It's a good theory, I'll say that much. Trump has gone so unconventional that he has lost the ability to know what actually works. So on election day when he has no one getting people out to vote and Hillary has a well organized machine it could get pretty ugly for Trump and the GOP. Still nothing is in the bag until it's in the bag.
It's nutty. I think after the election is done a lot of the bite that the Alt-right thought they had will be gone. There will be a few rabid House members, but by and large the House will need to bring it back to center or they know they will lose future contests.
The Alt-right very well may lose their 'voice' in all of this. That would be the ultimate blessing in this entire mess.
Hard to say. As long as people keep voting the Alt-right into the House by definition they will have a voice, and by their nature they will continue to rip the conservative block apart. It is a nightmare for centrist Republicans.
Since Trump has a long history of buying perfectly good real estate, running it into the ground, declaring bankruptcies and then walking away with all the money, I'd say yes, the house is in big trouble. Trump seems to have a personal vendetta for the present owner of the house, Paul Ryan and most the representatives there, with his threat of terminating their limits of service. There are a lot of congress members in the house who support D. Trump and will continue to do so after the election is done.
Not to mention the polls in 2012 under polled Obama. Very few had him at 51% where he actually ended up.
It's a good theory, I'll say that much. Trump has gone so unconventional that he has lost the ability to know what actually works. So on election day when he has no one getting people out to vote and Hillary has a well organized machine it could get pretty ugly for Trump and the GOP. Still nothing is in the bag until it's in the bag.
Correct, and most analysts including Romney's own team credited Obama's massive GOTV operation in the discrepancy between the poll average (about .7 or so) and the final result (about 3.6%).
Trump's campaign is in even worse shape than Romney's was. It's not just worse than Clinton's, it's completely nonexistent- and Clinton is using the exact same GOTV operation and staff that Obama was in 2008 and 2012.
The effect of this isn't something that modern polling has managed to account for- especially not when the gap between ground game is THIS lopsided.
I should probably be more conservative in my estimate that the democrats take the house- nothing is 100% certain...but if the race ended today they would be favored to flip it. If somehow the race tightens and reverts back to some kind of mean of +5 or +6 Hillary in the next three weeks republicans can retain it...but I don't think that scenario is all that likely.
Last edited by Burger Fan; 10-19-2016 at 01:59 PM..
In the event that the Democrats do win the House, there are a couple of very important points to keep in mind:
*The Democrats will only have the slimmest of majorities, and many of the new Democrats will know that they are going to be very vulnerable in 2018. The effect of this is that a Democratic House will have a very hard time implementing a far-left, Sanders/Warren kind of agenda.
*If a Democratic House actually does pass everything that the far-left wants, such legislation will be DOA in the Senate. Because there is zero chance of the Democrats attaining 60 Senate Seats, the GOP will be able to filibuster the "progressive" agenda. (Remember that ObamaCare only passed because there were 60 Democratic Senators at the time.)
In the event that the Democrats do win the House, there are a couple of very important points to keep in mind:
*The Democrats will only have the slimmest of majorities, and many of the new Democrats will know that they are going to be very vulnerable in 2018. The effect of this is that a Democratic House will have a very hard time implementing a far-left, Sanders/Warren kind of agenda.
*If a Democratic House actually does pass everything that the far-left wants, such legislation will be DOA in the Senate. Because there is zero chance of the Democrats attaining 60 Senate Seats, the GOP will be able to filibuster the "progressive" agenda. (Remember that ObamaCare only passed because there were 60 Democratic Senators at the time.)
I believe that the 60 vote requirement was abolished in 2013, I could be wrong though.
In the event that the Democrats do win the House, there are a couple of very important points to keep in mind:
*The Democrats will only have the slimmest of majorities, and many of the new Democrats will know that they are going to be very vulnerable in 2018. The effect of this is that a Democratic House will have a very hard time implementing a far-left, Sanders/Warren kind of agenda.
*If a Democratic House actually does pass everything that the far-left wants, such legislation will be DOA in the Senate. Because there is zero chance of the Democrats attaining 60 Senate Seats, the GOP will be able to filibuster the "progressive" agenda. (Remember that ObamaCare only passed because there were 60 Democratic Senators at the time.)
Maybe but talk about a mandate! If Hillary annihilates Trump and they flip the Senate and the house no GOP official can suggest that the people haven't spoken loud and clear. I think Trump did exactly what he set out to do and that would be to eviscerate the GOP.
Looks like it will be in play even more now after this last debate.
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