Our oncoming future, sigh.
And here we are at the last update for the 2022 Senate Campaigns from little ol’ me. The last update of news, rumors, and numbers is here. I’m thoroughly tired of collecting, transcribing, and speculating on the meaning of the various polls and pollsters, how the data source affects the data and its analysis, and all those other things that scientists also have to worry their heads about. There are a few more poll results coming in, but I don’t see them as really being relevant at this point.
As this was a new exercise for me, what have I learned, and what do I anticipate learning by the end of the week?
First, how did the ratings from FiveThirtyEight of the pollsters of 2020 apply to the pollsters of 2022? Is Siena College still an A+? Is Insider Advantage still a B? I hope FiveThirtyEight once again rates the pollsters, and makes it easy to compare the 2022 editions to the 2020 editions.
I mentioned data source evaluation, or data collection. How are its characteristics changing? Are voters still lying to pollsters, and, better yet, why? Is phone data acquisition still the gold standard, as I understand it, or is online collection, which I consider dubious and easy to game, not so easy and worth the effort? Are young voters really only available through online and SMS data collection, are they really shut out of voice/phone acquisition, and does it matter?
Who’s going to win? Sure, every pundit should try to answer that question, and I’d like to bow out right now. No? I can’t? OK, then I – we, you and I, reader, have to understand and select the model of polling we like best. Here’s the models I came up with.
- Naive interpretation. If we naively simply accept the poll reports, then we can probably expect seriously contested States NH, AZ, PA, WA, and GA will be won by the Democrat, NC, FL, WI, OH. NV, UT, and IA by the Republican. Note that Republicans had far more states to defend, and in these two lists “flips”, being PA and NV, balance out. Also note pollsters seemed shy of trying to poll Alaska, probably because of their ranked choice voting system, but I expect it gives the moderate the edge, so I believe the middle of the roader, Murkowski, will win there. Her only competition is a Trump-endorsed Republican, not the Democrat.
- Dishonest GOP polls influence the electorate. Back on Halloween DrFrink on Daily Kos expressed the opinion that GOP-aligned pollsters had put their thumbs on the scale to make it appear GOP candidates were ahead, all in hopes of influencing the elections. While it’s not the job of pollsters to influence, but to measure, I doubt we’ll ever know, absent a confession or leak, that this has happened. If it has and voters make the mistake of thinking that elections are, as former Governor Ventura (Reform Party-MN, at the time) put it, “horse races” (to clarify, he said “THEY’RE NOT HORSE RACES! VOTE FOR WHO YOU THINK WILL BE BEST, NOT WHO YOU THINK WILL WIN!”), then we may see AZ and even PA move to the Republican column. The idea of Senator Masters and Senator Oz would seriously compromise a Senate that already has a Senator Tuberville (R-AL).
- Michael Steele’s “pink wave” is real. If Steele is correct, then pollsters missed an important component of the electorate, namely non-voting women who, outraged by Dobbs, will vote for the first time. This might result in WI, OH, NV, and IA moving to the Democratic column, although Iowa would be a stretch. But would pollsters miss this?
- Pollsters are missing the “young voter” component of the electorate due to a flawed data collection method. Put forth by Rule of Claw on Daily Kos, if true then, again, WI, OH. NV, and IA might move to the Democratic list, as well as NC and FL on a really, really good day for the Democrats. Don’t count on it, though.
- Pollsters lean liberal! I only put this forth for completeness, and so I can underline that most of the top of the line pollsters, with the notable exception of Emerson College Polling, continued to show Democratic candidates leading in various contests while known GOP-aligned pollsters, typically in the second tier (“B+” and lower rating), began showing GOP candidates leading, sometimes by outlandish margins. Then again, unknown pollster University of Nevada – Reno showed Senator Cortez Masto (D) of Nevada leading challenger Adam Laxalt (R) by 12 points, when GOP aligned pollsters were assigning narrow leads to Laxalt. Not quite matching UNR in magnitude, but still surprisingly, B+ rated UMass’ Lowell Center gave Senator Hassan (D) of New Hampshire a 10 point lead over challenger and election-denier Don Bolduc (R), again when GOP aligned pollsters were assigning narrow leads to the challenger. Qualitatively, though, the liberal leaning outliers were pollsters who, for all I could see, had conducted one poll, while the conservative leaning pollsters were issuing multitudinous polls.
This was selected to look restful.
You can just decide which I prefer. Will they win? We should know by Friday, I should think.
But, honestly, I’m also interested in the non-competitive contests: California, Hawaii, Oklahoma (2), Idaho, Kentucky, CT, others. Will the victory gaps change significantly in the wake of Dobbs and January 6th? Hey, how about a shocking, drama-filled upset?
But most interesting will be seeing which of two deeply flawed parties will beat the other. Virtually any analysis of the Republicans finds they can claim no operational advantage over Democrats in terms of economy, national defense, law enforcement, social nets, and many other areas. But they do excel in messaging, in picking up isolated, unpopular policy suggestions and painting the entire Democratic Party with them, such as Defund the police!, a policy that was not only never official, but resoundingly rejected when placed in front of voters and from which Democrats learned. Later, Democrats proposed more funding at the Federal level, which Republicans opposed. The Republicans specialize in fear: fear of the unknown, of cheating, of the replacement of a way of life. As if it were perfect.
But Democrats have their own set of flaws, and Andrew Sullivan, sounding a trifle frenetic, listed a few:
[Biden] championed the entire far-left agenda: the biggest expansion in government since LBJ; a massive stimulus that, in a period of supply constraints, fueled durable inflation; a second welfare stimulus was also planned — which would have made inflation even worse; record rates of mass migration, and no end in sight; a policy of almost no legal restrictions on abortion (with public funding as well!); the replacement of biological sex with postmodern “genders”; the imposition of critical race theory in high schools and critical queer theory in kindergarten; an attack on welfare reform; “equity” hiring across the federal government; plans to regulate media “disinformation”; fast-track sex-changes for minors; next-to-no due process in college sex-harassment proceedings; and on and on it went. Even the policy most popular with the center — the infrastructure bill — was instantly conditioned on an attempt to massively expand the welfare state. What on earth in this agenda was there for anyone in the center? [The Weekly Dish, paywall]
I personally think his analysis is shallow in the economically linked subjects, and slanted in his omissions on the foreign policy front, but in other areas, such as transgenderism, there’ll be certainly enough to offend larger numbers of independents. Will independents be more appalled by the January 6th insurrection, Dobbs, election denying, and incessant shrieking fourth-rate candidates from the right, or by postmodern genders, mass migration, no restrictions abortion, and a bigger welfare state on the left? It’s a serious question, and while my answer is pick the Democrats and then trim off the parts that are madness, such as encouraging parents to abandon their duties to actually, you know, parent, others, like Sullivan himself, may pick the other way.
Looking past the obvious?
I refuse to be a hater, I refuse to condemn Sullivan for making an assessment that I think is wrong. The Democrats and their abrogation of the liberal democratic model, inspired as it might be by the Republicans, is something that cries out to be corrected, and the usual approach to correction is to vote against those making the mistake.
Unfortunately, I think the Republicans are worse, and we need to slap them down, and hard. Sullivan disagrees.
Incidentally, if you were to read only Sullivan’s post, you might think he’s a bulgy eyed Republican. He’s not. He has literally years of blogging critiques of the Republicans, predicting their own abandonment of democracy, their flawed model of discussion, etc, not to mention his defense of such liberal projects as the ACA (ObamaCare). The problem with blogging is that relatively short posts are not balanced discussions. They’re more like blurts overheard at a crowded, beery party.
And there you have it, my refusal to really predict anything. Enjoy. Let me know what you’re thinking.
