Most of you know that I’m an old-style lefty from the 60s and that I’m a yellow dog Democrat. I vote the rooster, in the archaic early 20th Century way of saying it in Oklahoma (the rooster is the official insignia of the Oklahoma Democratic Party and was used when literacy wasn’t what it is today and all we could do was read icons, kinda like on the computer screens where people type “u” when they mean “you” … er …).
And I WANT the Dems to prevail on Election Day.
Charlie Cook, a respected bipartisan political polls reader expert type commentator guy, is talking in his latest (Oct. 17) column about a turnaround of 30-40 House seats from GOP to Dem and a 50-50 split or 51-49 for the Dems in the Senate.
Maybe.
I’d like for that to be true.
I want that to be true.
I think it would be good for the country if that were true.
I just don’t think it’s going to come out that way.
I look at the poll numbers available to me and the environment of the polls (how did those districts vote in the presidential election and/or last midterm elections) and who took the polls and how (person to person or by phone or by robo-call) and I come up with much more conservative numbers.
Yeah, I can see how it’s possible that Charlie Cook could be right.
I just have more caution about interpreting what’s going on.
I still think the GOP will retain the Senate. A 50-50 split would surprise me and set up what I think would be an interesting kabuki play about partisanship and the “go fuck yourself” vice president. I don’t see it. The Dems will pick up seats, to be sure, but they will not, in my opinion, sweep.
I still think the Dems will take the House. I think the Dems are going to pick up about 20-22 seats. Not 30-50. I think when you add up all the votes for Democratic House candidates and all the votes for GOP candidates, the Dems will have 55-57% of the votes. In another election, like the one in ’94 when the GOP swept away many years of Democratic Party rule, that would mean many more seats. This year, the GOP just got through redrawing and redistricting in several states. They locked in 5-7 additional seats in Texas alone. It was unfair and despite Supreme Court rulings otherwise, I think unconstitutional. Whether that is true or not, it was certainly important and this year’s election shows why.
In my opinion, the projection of Cook and others like him do not adequately take into account the push back of $100 million in GOP attack ads over the next three weeks.
That’s because the effects of those ads are not yet showing up in polls.
If you just look at the polls that are out there and try to use an averaging out to take out the bias of Dem polls and GOP polls and good polls and bad polls, you come up with Charlie Cook’s conclusion. The trend lines all go that direction. The “wrong track-right track” polls and generic party preference polls also go that direction. That’s good evidence for a persuasive case, and more than enough good evidence for a news column or a brief TV commentary.
From the perspective of someone who’s been inside a couple of campaigns, those seem like blunt instruments compared to the sharp pencils Karl Rove is using. I think he’s looking at those specific ad buys in specific markets and some under the radar closely targeted “smart bomb” mailers and phone bank calls and sees a chance to hold the Dems to no more than 15-17 seats and maybe save both the House and the Senate.
I also think there are some Republican incumbents who have distanced themselves from the White House who will regret the hell out of that decision next January because Rove and Bush will still have lots of power to reward and punish.
To my fellow left wing Democrats: just remember that we won both in 2000 and 2004 and that the GOP stole the elections. Do you think they’ve reformed?