Posted on 09/29/2014 10:02:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll always makes news and with good reason: The pollster that conducts it, Selzer & Company, is among the best in the country, according to FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. On Saturday evening, the poll had an especially interesting result in Iowa’s Senate race. It put the Republican candidate Joni Ernst six points ahead of the Democrat, Representative Bruce Braley. Most other recent polls of the state had shown a roughly tied race.
Consider the implications. Republicans need to pick up six seats to win the Senate. Right now, they’re favored to win the Democratic-held seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. That’s six seats right there. In Kansas, however, the independent candidate Greg Orman is a slight favorite to defeat the Republican incumbent Pat Roberts — and Orman could caucus with Democrats if he wins. If he does, Republicans would need to pick up one more seat somewhere.
That’s where Iowa comes into play. If Republicans are favored there also, they have a path to a Senate majority without having to worry about the crazy race in Kansas. Nor is Iowa their only option. Polls have also moved toward Republicans in Colorado, where their candidate Cory Gardner is now a slight favorite.
This is an awfully flexible set of outcomes for Republicans. Win the six “path of least resistance” states that I mentioned before, avoid surprises in races like Kentucky, and all Republicans need to do is win either Iowa or Colorado to guarantee a Senate majority. Or they could have Roberts hold on in Kansas. Or Orman could win that race, but the GOP could persuade him to caucus with them.
Sounds like it’s time for Democrats to panic?
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
For those who don’t know Nate Silver...
n the 2012 United States presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, he correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
That same year, Silver’s predictions of U.S. Senate races were correct in 31 of 33 states; he predicted Republican victory in North Dakota and Montana, where Democrats won.
Silver is an American statistician and writer who analyzes baseball and elections. He is currently the editor-in-chief of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight blog and a Special Correspondent for ABC News.
North Carolina and New Hampshire could also go Republican too.
I cannot believe Kansans will vote for Orman once they learn that he has contributed to BHO and Al Franken among other Democrats. He is hardly an “independent”.
54-46 GOP You heard it here first...
Why should they panic, the Republicans will just offer to power share with them anyway, even if they lose.
Don’t count on MS.
I think NC is lost. Stupid campaign, worst staff and a GOPe flunky. They thought bringing Jeb Bush and Chris Christie was a good idea...........
Although this is heartening news, I hold the belief that we must have at least 51 Republicans that are not liberal enablers, turncoats and backstabbers. How many Republicans overall must we have in the Senate to reach that 51?
60? 70? 90?
I think you are close + - one.
ANY time is fine with me...............
They're running a Chamber-Of-Commerce campaign in NC. These guys have absolutely no clue, whatsoever. You could not run a worse campaign in a Southern State than they are running.
They won't even TOUCH issues that would put him ahead of Hagan. They won't touch family issues in the freaking SOUTH.
Dunno about NH.
I'm not optimistic about NC. Tillis has run a dreadful campaign - frankly, I'm not entirely sure that he's interested in winning.
I'm sure that there will be lots of unfettered glee over this amongst the conservative purists as Tillis is a moderate. However, at the end of the day, Tillis stands head and shoulders above the Dem candidate, Hagan, who amounts to little more than a rubberstamp for the current administration.
The only way Nate Silver could “correctly predict” all 50 states in 2012 was for him to have insiders telling him every state the Rats planned to steal.
That election had massive vote fraud and NS and his “prediction” was a joke!
The republicans could have scored a pickup in North Carolina had they nominated the Conservative. Instead, they went with the Rove/GOPe candidate, and that race is in doubt. That idiot Hagan is SO beatable too, but I believe they went an nominated one of the probably two or three people on Earth that can’t win against her!
You could almost say the same with VA, but I’m not sure Warner is beatable. Though he was an 0bama lapdog, he’s a ‘pretty’ candidate, and was a popular governor during better times. It will take a hell of a lot more than Ed Gillespie to get rid of him. Of course, it sure as hell doesn’t help that Gillespie isn’t running a campaign. If I didn’t follow this stuff closely, I wouldn’t know that Gillespie was even running, aside from TWO ugly/poorly designed campaign signs I’ve seen, both in different areas, 50 miles apart. LOL (there are Warner signs everywhere)
The race in VA OBVIOUSLY isn’t being seriously contested.
Though I wish it were different.
Sad days for my old home state....it should have been an easy pick up.
I called Tillis’s office but didnt get an answer to my question..”what are you people thinking?”
What I always find VERY amusing is how most of the time around here, when NS predicts a republican victory, he’s hailed to be a polling genius, and if he says it, you can take it to the bank.
When he predicts a democrat victory, those same people here will label him as a biased democrat shill, and his poll results should be disregarded. LOL
It’s called confirmation bias and it’s human nature 101! I disregarded Nate Silver in 2012 because I thought he had just gotten lucky in 2008 but to my dismay he turned out to be a lot more accurate than the pollsters I followed.
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