I have argued for years that, just once, as a thought experiment we should hold an election without any polling reported by a lazy media addicted to “horse race” reporting based upon that polling.
Far too much polling is based upon “narrative” polls designed to create a media narrative, and the feckless media plays along with lazy “horse race” reporting which advances this biased narrative polling.
If voters are not being influenced how to vote by pollsters and the media, and the media actually has to focus on issues and candidate qualities rather than lazy “horse race” poll reporting, how would voters actually vote? We may never know because this is a multi-million dollar industry, and they are not giving up their cash cow.
This is the fourth election cycle in a row that pollsters have been wrong, and a complicit media which will never make a mea culpa for its horseshit reporting.
All we have heard for the past year from pollsters and the lazy media addicted to “horse race” poll reporting was that a “red wave” was inevitable based upon past history and presidential approval polls. Ignoring the fact that this is the first election after one of the major political parties waged a violent seditious insurrection against the U.S. government in a bid to maintain power, and the first election after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a constitutional liberty for the first time in U.S. history, affecting half of the population (53% of the electorate). There was nothing “normal” about this election for which historical precedent had any bearing on.
The predicted red wave is barely a ripple. The House may be evenly divided – it could go either way, but favors a small Republican majority – and Democrats are poised to hold the Senate, and possibly net one seat.
This is an historic result for Democrats and President Joe Biden, defying expectations. “In the 22 midterm elections from 1934 -2018, the President’s party has averaged a loss of 28 House seats and four Senate seats. The president’s party gained seats in the House only three times, but gained seats in the Senate on six occasions. The president’s party has gained seats in both houses only twice.” The 2022 Midterm Elections: What the Historical Data Suggest.
If Republicans take the House, Democrats in the House need only find a small number of sane Republicans who are not interested in shutting down the government or taking it hostage over the federal debt ceiling, threatening to kill the hostage (blow up the U.S. economy and global financial markets with a daft on the debt). A coalition of Democrats and sane Republicans willing to step up in the House, along with a Democratic Senate will allow for the government to continue to function. Sane Republicans need to reject the MAGA/QAnon Sedition Caucus which wants to burn it all down. The coalition of the sane would be the de facto majority in the House.
The wild card is Sens. Manchinema. Would they dare switch to the Republican Party for their own selfish reelection interests in 2024? Would they betray the voters who elected them as Democrats and betray their party and president because they think they could win as Republicans?
If they think this, they are damn fools. Sen. Manchin is done. Popular Republican governor Jim Justice will be the next senator from West Virginia. Bet on it. Manchin is 75, it is time for him to retire and to spend more quality time with his grandchildren.
It is doubtful that the Arizona GQP’s MAGA/QAnon crazy base would ever vote for Sinema in a Republican primary. She should be locking down that highly paid lobbyist job she has been auditioning for and announce that she will not seek reelection in 2024, because she is also done in a Democratic Party primary.
Let’s see how this shakes out in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: George W. Bush’s Minister of War Propaganda and unindicted war criminal , Marc Thiessen, who somehow landed a position at the Washington Post as its right-wing polemicist, was beside himself last night as the “red wave” failed to materialize. Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn’t it?
Fox News on the election results: “This is an absolute disaster for the Republican Party.” pic.twitter.com/lKq6QZPEaW
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 9, 2022
Dude, the “Republican alternative” are seditious insurrectionists who want to install Donald Trump as an autocratic leader of a GQP authoritarian White Christian Nationalist theocracy modeled after the Handmaid’s Tale. Of course red-blooded patriotic Americans who want to preserve, protect and defend our constitutional democracy rejected your dystopian vision for our future.
The shocking part is that slightly less than half the country said, “you know what? I’m OK with that.”
The Washington Post reports, “More than 160 [of 291 in all] election deniers on the ballot for the U.S. House, Senate and key statewide offices were projected to win their elections as of Wednesday morning. More than 85 were projected to lose so far. About three dozen races remained uncalled as vote counting continued.” Tracking which 2020 election deniers are winning, losing in the midterms.
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Good call Meanie.
Perhaps the results will make the Mainstream Media (MSM for ahort – Thank you Sharpie) reasses teir style of reporting duting the protracted campaign periods before the actual voting starts. Reporting on the so-called “race” is the only thing they have to do to keep their pencils sharp.. Then, of course the pundits and so-called analysts from the right , left, and center have to weigh in or loose their commission payments from the MSM. That’s just the reality of what we used to call journalism in the current news and information ecosystem.
The issue with pollsters is even worse. Their bad data pollutes the misguided but breathless reports by the MSM’s reporters and analysts. Their bad data is a result of using polling techniques (selection of respondents and contact practices) thart outdated and may indeed skew their results to certain classes of voters who would naturally lean to one political party or another. I suggest the polling classes have had several rekoning experiences over the past several election cycles, starting with 2016; and havent appeared to grasp reality yet. Until they do we can olny hope, and take poll results with a ton of sand.
“A coalition of Democrats and sane Republicans…”
You wide-eyed idealist, you. 🙂
Thinking that there are any Rs who give a damn about the country.
Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos, “Voters made history, while the Beltway media got swept up in a ‘wave'”, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/9/2134816/-Beltway-media-settled-upon-a-narrative-Voters-had-other-plans
n the final few weeks of the midterm, the gusher of stories about the impending red wave and certain Democratic doom were relentless.
Democrats were “scrambling” into a “defensive posture” in fear of a “drubbing” and a “shellacking” and a “reckoning.”
Meanwhile, Republicans were “emboldened” and “bullish” as they targeted a “big midterm triumph” and their House investigative schemes “picked up steam.”
Nearly all the Beltway journalists were rowing in the same direction, seemingly beyond sure of the election’s outcome. But the GOP sweep that Washington journalists and analysts relentlessly hyped over the final stretch of the cycle was never actually supported by the data.
Time and again, polls conducted by respectable outlets suggested a very close contest with no clear favorite. Democratic candidates ran circles around their GOP rivals in terms of fundraising and grassroots support. And in a handful of special elections after the Supreme Court ruling overturning abortion rights, Democratic candidates and causes outperformed the party’s 2020 numbers as voters swamped the polls to cast a vote for freedom.
Yet the level of disconnect between what the data was indicating and what the media was selling was astounding. The New York Times epitomized that mind-bending divide when it released its final four House polls with a lede reading like a dirge for Democrats.
The new polling from the Times and Siena College “offers fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall,” declared Shane Goldmacher and Nate Cohn.
That’s how they framed survey results that found Democrats leading in three of the swing districts while the fourth race was tied.
On Twitter, Cohn admitted, “On balance, the polls are better for Democrats than I would have guessed given our national polling.”
Indeed, as of 12 PM ET, Democrats had won KS-3, appeared poised to win both NV-1 and PA-8, and were still ahead in a squeaker in NM-2.
Even as a strictly amateur poll watcher, I was unnerved by the degree to which the Beltway narrative was all vibe with specious foundations at best. I don’t necessarily delight in journo-bashing, but I found myself dedicating the bulk of my energy to debunking the GOP bloodbath narrative that had weirdly taken hold.
[At]t some point in the 2022 cycle, many in the Beltway media succumbed to a misguided groupthink and began selectively screening out information that didn’t support their settled-upon narrative. The truth is no one knew exactly what Election Day would bring, but pundits, analysts, and reporters rarely exhibited the humility to acknowledge that very simple fact. If they had more boldly and honestly declared their own uncertainty, the body of work they produced would have looked far less one-sided—dare I say, biased—in the wrong the direction.
As I tweeted Tuesday night, the level at which nearly all mainstreamers fell for GOP hooey should be both deeply embarrassing and cause for soul searching.
[T]he worst part of it all is that the Beltway media writ large misled the constituency they write for: the American people. Voters, once again, proved the heroes of the story that only they possess the power to write. Though it’s still unclear exactly which party will control Congress, the red wave proved more of a puddle, Democrats romped in key gubernatorial and legislative races, and ballot measures supporting reproductive freedom swept the country.
Freedom proved the biggest winner of the 2022 midterms, along with all the activists, organizers, and voters who put blood, sweat, and tears into safeguarding it.
Our country is crying out for political journalists to be equally as devoted to following the facts rather than a narrative, equally as humbled by the power of the unknowable, and equally as invested in the story The People ultimately write.
Mark Sumner write at Daily Kos, “The media tried to raise a red tsunami, but the only thing washed away was their credibility”, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/9/2134768/-The-media-tried-to-raise-a-red-tsunami-but-the-only-thing-it-washed-away-was-their-credibility
(excerpt)
At this point on Wednesday morning, the final outcome of the midterm elections is unknown. Republicans may end up in control of the House, but it’s going to be very close. Democrats seem almost certain to retain the Senate after picking up a seat in Pennsylvania, but there is still some degree of risk.
Here’s what’s absolutely certain: Republicans hugely underperformed. They underperformed versus expectations for the out-of-White House party for any midterm, and they underperformed the expectations that both they and the media had set for them so badly that it’s almost impossible to find the right measure of their failure.
And all this happened with tremendous support for Republicans up and down the media. It wasn’t just Fox News carrying their water every day, it was every three-letter broadcast network, every 24/7 news channel, and every supposedly neutral political site. Here’s an absolutely 24K gold example from Politico. Their own polls showed Democrats ahead in critical races in and in generic preference. But this is what they wrote, completely ignoring what the polls—again, their own polls—were telling them.
They declared the results of their own poll an outlier. And what was Nate Silverman doing over at 538? He was busy defending a decision to add dozens of last minute “polls” put together by Republican outfits no one had ever heard of before, which were clearly designed for no reason other than to give the false appearance of a Republican surge. His response: Democrats should just put out their own fake polls to “balance” the results.
The media was more invested in selling a red wave before it happened than the average Elon Musk supporter is invested dogecoin. But in the end, the very real red wave of negative press didn’t crush the Democratic Party. It only swept away their credibility.
[T]he media also declared that this midterm, like every midterm, would be a referendum on the sitting president. And with their polls showing that Joe Biden was “hugely unpopular,” that referendum was sure to turn the normal boost that out-parties received into an extra special red flood. However, Biden’s supposed unpopularity may be broad, but not all that deep. Outside of the percentage of Americans who believe all Democrats are eating babies in the basement of pizza parlors, how many people actually hate Joe Biden? The overlap between the Q demographic and those who are concerned about Hunter Biden’s laptop is essentially perfect. Americans have absolutely zero interest in seeing the next two years focus on impeaching Biden for daring to win an election.
And there’s something else. That something is Trump. Americans do have very strong feelings about Trump, and about the Big Lie around the 2020 election. That feeling is not a good one. Make no mistake, one factor—and perhaps the largest factor—dampening the “red wave” on Tuesday night was the making supporting a Republican candidate tantamount to supporting Trump.
Both Senators Manchin and Sinema will become non issues if the Democrats can end up with 52 Senate seats. Their votes will no longer matter even if they vote with the Republicans. With a 50-50 tie the Vice President will break it.
A net of 2 is off the board. Wisconsin cheeseheads reelected Putin Puppet, openly racist, QAnon conspiracy theorist, Coup Plotter Ron Johnson. Maybe the DOJ has enough to charge him in the Coup Plot.
The polls and MSM (left and right) are bad reality TV shows and somehow even more useless.
“Democrats in the House need only find a small number of sane Republicans…”
From your mouth to the FSM’s noodly ears. Without a few sane R’s the next few years are going to be a waste.
I hope the Blue Wall holds up against the Red Drip.
Both Senators Minchin and Sinema will become non-issues if the Democrats can end up with 52 Senate seats. Their votes will no longer matter even if they vote with the Republicans. With a 50-50 tie the Vice President will break it.