Self-described “political operative” Les Francis, with real-world experience as former executive director of the Democratic National Committee:
I don’t need any polls to tell me that Republicans will do well in November. The “out” party almost always shows significant gains in the first midterm election of a new President.
Political scientists Joe Bafumi, Bob Erikson, and Chris Wlezien, from elite, out-of-touch, ivory-tower institutions Dartmouth, Columbia, and Temple Universities:
Game over.
P.S. The commenters at 538 were not happy with my explanation. Full story here.
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OK – I don’t get it.
Aren’t consultant and political scientist saying the same thing?
Consultant: The outparty does really well in midterms
Political Scientist: The outparty outperforms early polls in midterm elections.
What am I missing?
he’s doing himself no favors by dismissing the polls
He still doesn’t need polls to know that large Republican gains are likely, since midterm losses are a well-established empirical regularity.
Likewise, I don’t need a poll to know that people overwhelmingly prefer a dish of ice cream over being torn apart by a bear. Taking a poll that shows that, indeed, almost everyone except the fantastically lactose-intolerant prefers ice cream to violent death would not really be a “game over” comeback.
Honestly, the right comeback is probably that of course Francis knows that large Republican gains are likely; we all know that. What political scientists can do by analyzing polling data is begin to estimate just how large those gains are likely to be and where those gains are likely to be made. And, by connecting to other data, where the pivot actors in the new Congress are likely to be.
Careful: the regression would be less impressive if not for the rather significant exogenous effect of the loss of economic momentum and souring unemployment news, which almost completely explains the recent collapse of Democratic numbers in generic congressional polls.
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