IA is likely going down to the wire. Trump has a narrow lead in the state and also since Steve King isn't on the ballot that helps Ernst.
Yup and losing Peterson will be a loss for all farmers. In 2014, there was a real fear that the farm bill wouldn't pass at all. Peterson played a huge role in brokering the final legislation and cobbling together a coalition in the House to pass the bill. The hollowing out of farm expertise will have real problems down the road. We also forget that SNAP is tied to farm subsidies so once we lose the consensus around the farm bill you'll start to see individual components of the farm bill start to unravel. It almost happened in 2014 but they fortunately managed to pass a bill. But the farm bill could fall apart on the next round of negotiations without someone like Peterson to guide the bill through the House.
Is the rnc pulling up stakes in Colorado? With Gardner trailing Hickenlooper, national GOP groups scale back spending in Colorado “It’s over,” Republican pollster says of Colorado’s U.S. Senate race https://www.denverpost.com/2020/10/16/cory-gardner-john-hickenlooper-us-senate/
Braley was a fine nominee. He represented the first district and was part of the 2006 wave election. He represented one of the few rural Democratic leaning districts left in the Midwest. In the recording he was criticizing Chuck Grassley and in the process he said that if Republicans won control of the Senate, the next Judiciary chair would be a farmer with no legal experience (Grassley). That was blown up by Republicans as an attack on farmers which ended up destroying Braley's campaign.
Harrison is pulling a play out of Claire McCaskill's 2012 campaign (if you don't remember, McCaskill ran ads highlighting how conservative Todd Akin was in order to boost him in the Republican primary). Harrison is now running ads to prop up the Constitution Party to split the right wing vote. He needs the Constitution Party to get into the mid to high single digits to have a chance.
Interesting strategy.. Unfortunately the latest polls appear to be breaking for Graham. I get the feeling the Barrett hearings have helped Graham.
It was always a long shot but even if he loses, these types of campaigns are important for the long run. This is how you build party ID and downballot success. Joe Cunningham is going to run away with the 1st district at this rate and even if they break up his district in 2022, both Harrison and Cunningham become viable statewide candidates in the future. So a loss can still be a win in the same way that Beto's loss provided the spark that Democrats in Texas needed to start becoming relevant again.
The boring 2 CO R -> D AL D -> R Neither of these two should have switched, but did for various reasons (whitewash election and monumentally crap candidate), anyone selling you these two won't flip is selling you snake oil. The in play and will probably outpoll their presidential candidates enough to win MI D -> R, James is a good candidate and a close presidential race will likely win it for him. AZ R -> D, McSally is an avatar of Karen and Kelly is a good candidate, Trump will win the state but likely can't carry her. The two oddballs NC R -> D? the recent news may save Thillis, probably doesn't deserve it though, he's a dull knife. ME R -> D? It's Collins, Collins makes no sense. The only race that might make less sense than Collins MN D -> R I'd only touch it if the odds are good D+1 is my bet
This race is closer than people think but nearly all analysis I've seen points to Peters winning and the MI polls are turning against Trump so there is little chance of help from the top of the ticket for James. Recent polling still shows that Cunningham is holding onto a lead with very little change due to the scandal. This is one I find very surprising. What are you basing this on? The view from here in MN is that Lewis is losing badly. He's running a campaign that is more against Ilhan Omar than it is against Tina Smith and while that's a good strategy for Northern and Western MN it doesn't appear to be getting much traction in other parts of the state. In the meantime Smith still appears to be popular. There have been one or two polls that show this race is close but most show that Smith has a comfortable lead. In the meantime most polls also show that MN is getting more out of reach of Trump and given that Lewis has been all in for Trump it doesn't appear to be helping. IN fact it likely cost him his Congressional seat in 2018. If I have to put money on it I think it is a minimum net gain of D+3.
Do most voters really break things down that far? Choosing who to vote for seems like such a surface-level thing 90% of the time.
when i started betting on elections, the first thing i had to teach myself was that polling is a poor indicator, it is an indicator, its just got a low level of correlation with reality and when it runs against other indicators, it almost always loses, which it is (however covid is a giant lemon on historical trends as turnout is impossible to predict, i have total uncertainty as 50% in my numbers - i always rate uncertainty as 50/50), and when they are right, they're right for the wrong reasons. I could go into the details, there are a host of reasons (sampling, incompetence, how they cooked their books on early polling in 2016 despite it not showing up in their internals, that the orange man might be the hardest candidate to poll in history etc), but for this election i think there's a really simple example, they didn't just ask who you would vote for, they asked how they would vote, and given the sheer volume expected and turned in, it's a decent measure, polls showed democrats vbm in particular but ev as well should be around double republicans, gallup, the second best polling company around (after pew, neither does pres elections because they know they cant sample properly) had D/R at 2.1:1 so far with 30m votes in, its 1.4:1, they were pretty much all picking at the very least 1.5:1, average much higher. This doesn't say who will win, because all data from there is to take the legal term, fruit from the poisonous tree, it just means they're already wrong. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/president-results?icid=election_nav I'll get into targetsmart at the end, but they were very good in 2016 (theyre the type of company that buys all the data from google/fb/apple/etc that lets them know who you are, these companies know WAY too much about us, even down to our bowel movement times, i **** you not), their early vote track actually had Trump in good shape in the rust belt off not all that many votes, but like many experts, their data was good, their analysis of what it means bad (they tried saying early data was showing hillary despite it pointing to slightly trump), but if you click on the age tab, see 9% 18-29? dems most turnout sensitive high win bracket they seem to be convinced by polls that D's will win so aren't bothering to vote, going swell (if that holds and costs them the election, it will genuinely be the most epic self own ever), there is very very little party cross over this election too and Indys are breaking no more than 60/40 anywhere at the moment (slight edge R though varies by state). Michigan? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/michigan-results, how do you think they'll go when its not early? Biden might work it, especially if the ballot stuffing ops in detroit get going (kidding...kinda..., someone was arrested for it recently, done it for years, so idiotic he didnt mark names off so more ballots than voters, wouldn't have been caught if he just did that, so there's that), but michigan will be close, that's why i give James a shot, Michigan is such a worry they had to call in Big O, but i do think James will outperform Trump, if its more than maybe 2%, probably some shenanigans going on. 60:40 R It's North Carolina, not California or NY, thems be "good folk", it is, it will, this is about who these people are, Thillis 60:40 (its really more the deceit, not the act, if you own your folly, down the track people will understand), interesting note about Thillis, he has never led in the polls, not just this election, 2014 as well. ME - Collins is hard to figure out, its got something to do with their sort of Maine independence, if i was cynical (which im definitely not.....), id suspect that Trump's tweet criticism of her was written by Collins' office for him to do to help bolster her "rah rah maine independent" thing, i'd give her 55:45 because i swear i can't write her off. So AZ, Trump will win it, 5% or so, but McSally sucks, her loss in '18 is a good example of polls being right for the wrong reasons, basically she got hammered by republican women turning against her, 18% or so, she's just bad, so of course they ran her again, Trump probably has to win by more than 5 to herculean lift her over the top, that's why i have Kelly at 60:40. Smith is an uglier McSally, Now Minnesota, the reason i have that is there is a gigantic hole in data full of "i know it will have an effect, but they won't tell you and there is no way to poll it so no way to know how big it is", and that's the screw blm, screw your defund the police, the orange man sucks but you're out of your damn minds minneapolis suburbs vote (or non vote), early polling is showing it up but i'd expect that to be heaviest up ticket, I'd still give it to dems, This to me is similar to the "yes i'll tell you we should do everything to save lives, but deep down i'm not telling anyone i'm really ok with a few more people dying if i can get back to some semblance of normality" vote (thats doubled for getting kids back to school), the only person i know who doesn't feel any resonance with that is my wife, bless her, i've just got some morbid curiosity about the riot impact and the uncertainty is very high. Overall i just think that the probabilities favour blue so that +1 will fall on them, 40%, 0-2 range 80%, can't say i can pick which one though. On targetsmart, they've actually created two data sets, they were using their normal one until around 5 days ago, but team green circles (the betting circles) caught wind of them about to cook the numbers because they were looking really bad for team blue in bg states based on early projections, i took screenshots, but what seems to be happening is their own website has them fiddling with the front end to lean it blue, whereas nbc is getting the backend legit data, at least for now (the numbers were perfectly tracking until the fiddle) I'm honestly quite partial to the idea that barring some shock that is distinctly personal (none of this look at whats happening over there stuff) most people have likely decided who they're voting for a long way out, its filling in the reason that happens closer. .
Why would targetsmart fiddle with the numbers to lean blue? Doesn't that hurt them in long run when they are incorrect? Why would any legitimate polling agency fiddle with numbers?
