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I wouldn't mind if they stayed deceptively low until just before the election. It is better for everyone if Republicans become complacent and don't see the blue wave coming.
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Decision Desk: Democrats Have 30% Chance of Taking Back the House in 2018
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Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
On a scale from one to ten, how equipped do you think you are to interpret what polls and pollsters actually said and diagnose where errors in aggregate prediction occurred? If the number is lower than about 8, don't you think that listening might be the better approach than speaking when the subject comes up. If the number is, say, 8 or higher, then it seems very odd to me that you don't understand why your claim that the polls being wrong, if true, would imply we should adopt some sort of existential nihilism about understanding public opinion.
hodayathink
Member
This isn't bad at all, since many of these races would right now be polling the Republican rep against a generic Dem challenger, since the official challengers wouldn't have been decided yet. This number will get better as the year goes on and we get actual people in these polls, and as long as Republicans continue to fuck up and not even implement the things they ran on implementing (like overhauling the tax code and removing Obamacare).
Edit: And for everyone saying it'll be a victory if Dems don't lose seats, Democrats gained seats in the House and the Senate last year. Not enough for the majority in either, but they did.
Edit: And for everyone saying it'll be a victory if Dems don't lose seats, Democrats gained seats in the House and the Senate last year. Not enough for the majority in either, but they did.
IrishNinja
Member
this is why the DNC gets walked all over, right here
personally i think we should do this for lots of things, yes
The establishment keeps on putting up clowns that the people don't want. Clowns who want to protect businesses as their first priority. Just this morning I saw the latest the party's trying to push. Tim Ryan was his name? Spouting crap about how he doesn't want to be hostile to business.
Franken is right. Stop riding those damn limousines, Dems. Move the hell away from that and cut off the corporate wing of the party. They're not helping. Until then, I hope you keep on losing. Maybe that way you'll be forced to move.
In other words, this is good news. I hope their chances plummet even further.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
No way is the chance that high.
shira
Member
If he starts war(s) who knows what happens
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Yes, that's right, math doesn't exist.
Eh, the American public at-large and even a heck of a lot of his supporters don't want a war. Shit, we're still in the longest war in our history. Doing so is likely worse for his chances.
On the other hand, the House is notoriously difficult to model. Aggregating generic ballot polling is one thing. Being able to model that accurately across 435 districts is another.
Even conservative estimates peg the minimum generic ballot margin for a flipped Congress at D+7 or D+8. This is even more uncharted territory than usual - you're pushing the elasticity of the electorate and the map further even further than the already difficult-to-model status quo.
Aaron Strife
Banned
It'd be ok if they didn't lose any Senate seats next year, given how bad the map is. Merely holding the line on the House would be catastrophic.
Guessing that distinction goes over most voters' heads though.
Nope. Part of the problem, especially in the last ten to twenty years, has been that if you're not a racist or a pro-life evangelist, you're basically defaulting to the Democratic party. It's gotten even more pronounced with Trump, of course, where at this point the "left" in the US is basically "everyone who doesn't like Nazis." That means the Democratic party's potential voting base comprises a vast spectrum of ideas and political viewpoints. There's inevitably going to be disagreement when such a disparate group of people are forced together into one box due to the two-party system the first-past-the-post voting creates. It's not about "purity tests" it's about "just because you're not a complete asshole doesn't mean you don't have different ideas about things."
thesoapster
Member
I'm waiting on that fivethirtyeight analysis (lol)
Both sides use it to their advantage. It is a huge part of the problem in our political system today.
hodayathink
Member
Yeah, Heller is as good as gone, and they might be able to flip Flake's seat, but there's too many seats that are in places that are going to be hard to defend (Missouri and Indiana for example) to be particularly confident about flipping the Senate.
Like I said, though, that House number is based on a generic polling and not polling of any actual candidates, because right now very few of those House seats have official challengers. We won't have much of an idea of the "true" odds of flipping the House until early next year, probably. Which is why I'm not worried, because it basically means that if every Dem challenger was just a milquetoast politician, Dems would still have a 30% chance of winning. If they can actually find good candidates in the competitive districts, we could be looking at something much better.
In a wave, the Dem/Trump senators should all be pretty defensible. The only one I'm really worried about is Donnelly; his election was something of an accident in the first place. McCaskill knows what she's doing. Maybe Brown (always a chance of getting Daschle'd) but I think he's a really strong incumbent.
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
The senate thing was a pyrrhic victory though. So many swing state republicans were up and they won almost every close election When most of those were occupied by republicans. Now a bunch of democrats will be up in 2018
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Because of the number of seats available for the taking and where they are.
Sigh. Yes it's a problem, but don't both sides this. One side currently is brazen and unabashed in their abuse of it, they aren't equals here.
hodayathink
Member
This is the House, not the Senate. Every seat is up for re-election.
The lol is at...?
Anyway they have a generic ballot tracker up on their site already.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Every House seat is up for election next year, as they are every two years. The problem with the House is gerrymandering.
The Senate on the other hand only elects one third of its members every two years (and cycles through six year terms), and this class is heavily Dem tilted so there's not much room for gains. Still, if Democrats swept the Tossups (according to Larry Sabato, this is Missouri and Indiana which they hold, and Arizona and Nevada which the GOP holds) they would bring the chamber to a tie.
hodayathink
Member
A tie is nice, but still means Pence is the tie-breaker. It'll basically make it so they have to listen to people like Collins or force her to vote against for things that go against her stance as a "truly moderate Republican". There's a slight chance that McCain has to resign in enough time for both Arizona seats to be up for an election, I think, and that might be the most reasonable way to a Senate Majority.
Nationally the Dems need to hit above 55% of the vote to take the House. The GOP on the other hand needs only 46% to retain control.
Gerrymandering is a huge bitch.
ErasureAcer
Banned
They have MN-02 flipping already. Okay. Now we need MN-03. Talenti co-founder is running in that race as a Democrat.
The "establishment" doesn't put up people to run. That's what primaries are for. You can fucking run if you want, and if you win the primary, you'll get dnc support.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Right, but a lot of these seats are effectively not in play, and many of the ones that should be possible face uphill battles (for reasons like gerrymandering, as you said).
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-congressional-map-is-historically-biased-toward-the-gop/
While gerrymandering is a problem there are other things at play that make Democrats winning the House and Senate very difficult. Democrats tend to live near each other in urban cities while Republicans are spread out and this biases both chambers and the presidency in favor of Republicans.
While gerrymandering is a problem there are other things at play that make Democrats winning the House and Senate very difficult. Democrats tend to live near each other in urban cities while Republicans are spread out and this biases both chambers and the presidency in favor of Republicans.
GoldenEye 007
Member
Dems gained Senate seats in 2016.
2016 was an outlier. like, the outlier to end all outliers... we'll likely not see anything like it in our lifetime
perfectchaos007
Member
How is it that only republicans reap the benefits of gerrymandering?
poppedcollar69
Member
democrats have done it too, but for some reason they do seem to be the main beneficiaries
probably cause they're evil
Escape Goat
Member
They were in office after the last census which is when new district maps are done. Both parties use it to their advantage when they can.
hodayathink
Member
My state (Illinois) is one of the few that is pretty gerrymandered by the state Democrats. But to answer your question, it's because districts are drawn every 10 years (after the census), and in 2010 we had a Republican wave election after Dems ran away from Obama because ACA was seen as unpopular. So they got to draw the districts, and they drew them heavily in their favor on national and state levels. This is why, while this next election is important, the 2020 election will be even more important on the Congressional and State legislative levels, since it'll be the chance to actually redo all these gerrymandered districts.
Etrian Oddity
Member
This.
Screaming "Gerrymandering!" doesn't change the problem that the only face of the Democrat party is a fucking octogenarian who is out of touch with reality. There is no unity or organization and they will continue to get wrecked by Republicans until they grow some nuts, form ranks, and fight back dirty.
ah, tell me more about why you hate Nancy Pelosi
Nobody votes for House Speakers, and if a voter is spooked by the Pelosi boogeyman than they're not going to vote Democratic regardless
Aaron Strife
Banned
This might venture into political fanfic territory but I think in the event of a tie Murkowski will caucus with the Democrats. She's clearly had it with Trump, but flipping now wouldn't have any meaningful impact.
They have MN-3 flipping. They also have MN-1 flipping to the Republicans. I'm skeptical of both of those results.
There's a district in Maryland that reduced the amount of registered Republicans from 47% to 32% in 2010.
Its rare to see Democratic gerrymandering primarily because they control so few governorships.
Autodidact
Banned
The right sees ~~~PELOSI~~~ as a cunning witch who wants to impose her ~~~SAN FRANCISCO VALUES~~~ on real, hardworking
racist
The left sees her as an "out of touch" octogenarian
why can't they just say "stupid old bitch" like they really want to?
I call it Schrodinger's Pelosi.
Strange how the right and far-left lay all the blame at a shrewd, competent woman's feet. You might think the two groups have some things in common, but I couldn't possibly comment.
And Tim Ryan, Seth Moulton, and Kathleen Rice can play in traffic.
The Greek Freak
Member
Won't happen, they would rather have a more polite less insane Trump than an actual liberal
A couple other factors are Democrats paying too little attention to local and state races, and trends of Democrats packing into big cities leaving massive amounts of territory in between even more solidly Republican.