Thread by @SeanTrende on Thread Reader App (2024)

One of the quiet stories under the hood is that Republicans are looking like they'll win the popular vote. Probably a popular vote swing of 5% (depending on how CA votes work out), swinging about 2% of the chamber. IOW, the generic polls are likely to be about spot on. Why? 1/

An easy story is uncontested seats; there were about 8 more GOP uncontested than Democrats. But in some of those, they don't count any votes, so it net hurts the GOP. And there are seats where two Democrats ran against each other, so Ds double dip. 2/

CA has a lot of votes left to count, but I'm building that into my estimate. Rs are up six in the generic ballot right now; a 5 point swing would have them win by two. CA had a gap of 4 million in the popular vote, and it looks like about half the ballots are counted already. 3/

Basic take on the Senate: There are 5 true tossups, with a handful of states on the periphery. Most of the R states have broken away in the last couple of weeks. So, for example, Budd v. Beasley might have been an upset pick, but it is going the wrong way. 1/

Laxalt v. Cortez Masto is one that I think a lot of people assumed a month ago was on the NC race trajectory, but Laxalt's momentum stalled early. Early vote isn't what he wants to see, but we also don't know how Indies are voting this time. Thought it would tilt, but pure TU. 2/

To pre-empt, I know what the polling says, but the term "independent" is variable and there's no guarantee that the people who respond independent to the poll are the same as the people who registered independent however long ago. 3/

My basic view of this election hasn’t changed over the cycle; it’s the same frame I carry into every election: they are referenda on the party in power, not choices. 1/

And presidential job approval is a great predictor of things, although it is bounded (eg eventually you rise to partisan who will never vote for you or dip into those who always will). 2/

Maybe it’s different this time. There are serious arguments for it. But there are *always* serious arguments for it. Sometimes it is different — Trump winning the GOP nomination comes to mind. It’s just that usually it isn’t. 3/

Book titles/reviews get lots of attention from people who don't read books but want to sound smart. Emerging Democratic Majority isn't a "Democrats will rule for 30 years b/c demographics book," it's a "coalition is emerging that, if Ds govern carefully, will help them" book. 1/

But because of the title/reviews, the former interpretation took over. Which brings me to "What's the Matter with Kansas." The thesis of that book isn't that voters in Kansas are rubes who confuse social issues with their best interest. 2/

That's the interpretation from people who read the book jacket. The theme of the book, written in the early-200s is that, is that GOP politicians use social issues to gin up the base, then ignore those issues to accomplish economic goals and perpetuate the party. 3/

Since Twitter seems reasonably likely to go away in the next couple of years, my 2c: Obvs the site is miserable, but there's an entire generation of top-notch young analysts like @JMilesColeman who probably would have gone unnoticed but for Twitter. 1/

For me, it is/was a way to get on the radar screens of the truly big accounts and network with people even though I don't live in DC. Of course, there's a lot of clickbait-y analysts who owe their careers to Twitter, but whatever. There is a real value-add from this site. 2/2

And I've, of course, made a large number of "friends" I probably never would have but for this. It's almost enough to make getting dunked on by someone who took "Rumpleforeskin" as their handle worthwhile. 3/2

When elections analysts point to previous times when polls have been way off, particularly in the Midwest, the lesson isn't "don't pay any attention to polls."The lesson is to remind people that polls are imperfect instruments and have had trouble recently in particular areas. 1/

In 2012 and 2016, the mantra was to treat polls as akin to God's spoken word. The polls were unusually good in 2008, and of course we had Nate Silver's breakthrough going 100 for 102 or whatever (in his defense, Silver was always forthright about poll uncertainty) 2/