{"id":45722,"date":"2026-09-11T20:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=45722"},"modified":"2026-09-17T22:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T03:22:27","slug":"the-2026-senate-campaign-updates-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/09\/11\/the-2026-senate-campaign-updates-36\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2026 Senate Campaign: Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

ADMIN NOTE<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This post seems to have exposed a bug in my process, as I try to dodge a bug in WordPress<\/strong><\/em>. If this goes incoherent, just remember this is a post of ephemera.<\/p>\n

POLLING, POLLING, POLLING<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the beginning of August polling legend Nate Silver made available an open post which I thought was interesting. Here’s a single point:<\/p>\n

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  1. Just to put a finer point on this, the average error in polls in presidential primaries since 2000 is around\u00a09 points of vote margin<\/a>\u00a0(!), more than twice President Trump\u2019s (in)famous polling outperformance in 2016. And polling error tends to increase the further you go down the ballot. So if it\u2019s 9 points in a presidential primary, it might be who-knows-what in a congressional primary, but we\u2019re probably looking at something in the double digits.\u00a0Many people, including traders at prediction markets, tend to be much too crude in the heuristics they apply toward polling error, failing to recognize that polling is relatively accurate in some types of races but routinely quite inaccurate in others and that much of this is predictable. [Silver Bulletin<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Much of the rest of the post is in the context of the El-Sayed victory in the Michigan Democratic primary, including this:<\/p>\n

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    1. … Many of the pollsters in this race have\u00a0mediocre pollster ratings<\/a>, aren\u2019t rated at all because they\u2019re new, or aren\u2019t used by Silver Bulletin because they don\u2019t meet our standards for professional polling firms. There can sometimes be cases of the blind leading the blind in polling, producing a\u00a0lot of herding toward a sometimes very wrong consensus<\/a>. The constant,\u00a0frankly often very amateurish\u00a0<\/a>\u201cdiscourse\u201d about polling on Twitter and elsewhere on social media doesn\u2019t help matters either. There are fewer and fewer pollsters I trust to do their own thing, instead of being influenced by \u201cthe narrative\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      Which I might interpret as manipulation, or as pollsters overmatched in a challenging environment. Either way, it’s a cautionary tale concerning the predictions of pollsters, as I’ve noted before. Silver is far more qualified than I to pontificate on the matter.<\/p>\n

      POLLING, POLLING, POLLING, Part 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

      From the right side of the spectrum comes Erick Erickson, no doubt representative of many right wing pundits, trying, I think, to reassure the Republican flock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      The Republicans are ahead in Iowa and they are already writing off Georgia and North Carolina. Look at Patrick Ruffini\u2019s data again. \u201cPolling error peaks at 5.9 points too Democratic sometime in late July, and doesn\u2019t start coming down until late August, before settling into an average error of D+2.6 on election day.\u201d<\/p>\n

      If that\u2019s the case, and historically there is no reason to think this year is different from prior years, except for Georgia and North Carolina, the Republicans\u2019 worst polling here at Labor Day is the high water mark for Democrat polling, and the GOP is in a very good position.<\/p>\n

      That does not mean the GOP will win. But it does mean that the GOP is in a much more solid position than a lot of the panicked prognosticators would have you believe. Sure, they can say \u201cthis time is different,\u201d and yes, gas prices have never been this high in the run-up to an election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Yes, those are facts from the past, and I remember being surprised at the Democratic collapse. But as financial advisors like to say, past performance is not a predictor of future performance<\/em>. Yes, there are both conservative and liberal pollsters, who interpret their data to favor certain outcomes. But there are also benefits to being considered a good, disinterested pollster – and so yesterday’s liberal or conservative pollster may learn and improve, especially in an industry that appears to be on the edge of disappearance because of a lack of trustworthiness.<\/p>\n

      Erickson has a habit of dropping or misinterpreting facts, I’ve noticed. Here, I think he’s ignoring, deliberately or not, the collective GOP<\/strong><\/em> candidates’ vast burden of hauling the Trump narcissism along on their journey. Add in the frantic gerrymandering, Missouri being an object lesson<\/a> in the consequences of abject obeisance to the wishes of Trump, and the electoral and thus polling landscape is quite different from ’24, ’22, and ’20.<\/p>\n

      POLLING, POLLING, POLLING, Part 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

      In a gap I can’t recall seeing before, Quinnipiac Poll<\/strong><\/em> reports<\/a> a big finding<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      With the midterm elections less than two months away, voters give the Democratic Party an 11-point advantage over the Republican Party when it comes to who they would want to see win control of the United States House of Representatives, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll among registered voters released today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      This lesson in stressing tenets that are not supported by American citizenry could be quite painful for Republicans.<\/p>\n

      “I support anybody with an \u2018R\u2019 behind their name.<\/a>“<\/strong><\/p>\n

      This has to do with the Rep Max Miller (R-OH) ongoing debacle in which Senator Moreno (R-OH), the father of Rep Miller’s former wife, has demanded that Miller resign and leave politics because of domestic abuse allegations.<\/p>\n

      For a Party that claims to represent the higher morality in this and prior elections, back to probably Reagan, the above statement is problematic. It says, especially in out of context clips, that all a rapist must do is claim to be a Republican and Rep Lisa McClain (R-MI), the source of that remark, will support them.<\/p>\n

      I rather suspect she’d like to withdraw that statement. BUT<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

      The National Republican Congressional Committee is coordinating\u00a0new TV ad spending<\/a>\u00a0with Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) — the clearest sign yet that Republicans are panicking they could lose this House seat as Miller faces allegations of domestic abuse. [HuffPost<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Perhaps not.<\/p>\n

      The implication is that Power is the morality in this election, though, and that perception will overshadow the hard work of the GOP<\/strong><\/em> in removing such members as former Rep Santos (R-NY), expelled and jailed, former Rep Tony Gonzalez (R-TX), resigned under pressure for alleged sexual transgressions, and a couple of others.<\/p>\n

      The GOP<\/strong><\/em> might obviate this mistake by expelling yet another<\/em> GOP<\/strong><\/em> Member of Congress, but who that might be is not at all clear. Since Senator McConnell (R-KY) is rumoured to be returning from the hospital this week, I doubt it’ll be him, and expelling him because President Trump hates him is not a good look. Perhaps it could be Trump-creature Speaker Johnson (R-LA) himself, who seems to be nearly as mendacious as the President. That is no mean feat, except that it is.<\/p>\n

      PLAYING FAVORITES<\/strong><\/p>\n

      How will this affect voters?<\/p>\n

      Donald Trump\u2019s politicization of federal disaster relief funds has become one of the most important scandals of his second term. The president could at least try to keep up appearances and make it seem as if the White House is approaching the issue in a vaguely responsible way, but with nine weeks remaining before the midterm elections, the Republican is instead leaning into his abuses.<\/p>\n

      Late Tuesday afternoon, for example, over the course of roughly an hour, he used his social media platform to announce seven disaster relief requests that he had just approved. Their similarities were hardly subtle:\u00a0[Steve Benen, Maddowblog<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      All the approved disaster applications cited by Benen were for States that voted Republican; three applications, from States that voted Democratic, were denied. Will this be publicized? Will it affect voters, will they resent being pushed around by someone who, frankly, does not understand how the United States operates?<\/p>\n

      Due to visibility issues inherent in the question, I doubt it’ll have any sort of measurable effect on Senate elections.<\/p>\n

      DOWN IN THE TRENCHES<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Where trench foot<\/a> runs rampant? Oh, the visuals<\/a>….<\/p>\n