Posted on 06/15/2010 7:21:33 AM PDT by randita
6.15.2010
NPR Survey of Swing Seats is Consistent with Generic Ballot Polling
by Nate Silver @ 8:30 AM
A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies and GQR for NPR, which shows Democrats performing badly in vulnerable House seats, is making a lot of waves this morning. It certainly contains bad news for Democrats -- however -- it is the same bad news that was already implied by generic ballot polling.
The poll shows Democrats losing by an average of eight points -- 41 to 49 -- on average between the 70 districts that POS/GQR surveyed. However, ten of these districts are Republican-held seats. In the 60 House seats deemed to be most vulnerable by POS/GQR, the Democrats deficit is slightly milder at 42-47.
I'm not exactly sure which seats were contained among the 60. But I assume the list overlaps very heavily with the 64 Democrat-held seats that are rated by Cook Political as "lean Democrat" or worse.
Most of the House battlegrounds this year are on Republican turf, simply because that was the territory that Democrats "conquered" in 2006 and 2008. Specifically, these seats have, on average, a PVI of R+4. That means that Republican candidates for President there in 2004 and 2008 received about 4 more points than they did nationwide, and the Democratic candidate, 4 fewer points.
So, to "translate" the NPR poll to a nationwide, generic ballot poll, you'd probably want to add 4 points to the Democrats' total, and subtract 4 points from the Republican poll. This would imply that the POS/GQR poll is consistent with a generic ballot result of about Democrat 46, Republican 43. That's within the margin of error of an average of generic ballot polls.
Broadly speaking, this poll is consistent with the impression I have had of the House picture for almost a year now, which is that the over/under on the number of net Democratic losses is about 40 seats (i.e. they have about even odds of losing the House), with a 90 percent confidence interval of about +/- 20 seats. I also suspect that the race characterizations issued by Cook, etc., are about half a grade too optimistic for Democrats on average, e.g., a "toss-up" seat should be thought of as somewhere between toss-up and lean Republican, and a lean Democrat seat should be thought of as somewhere between lean Democrat and toss-up. But I'm looking forward to completing work on our House forecasting model so that we can be more exacting about this.
Let’s jusat hope (and work, to make sure) the Republicans don’t screw this up somehow.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?....If the repubics stop supporting RINOS like McCain then we may have something....
Unemployment is the #1 economic metric and the state of the economy will dominate all other issues in nearly every district. The environmental disaster in the Gulf is going to retard economic growth further and raise unemployment throughout the region.
We need to come *close* to taking both Houses so we can stop Hussein in his tracks.But if there's a RAT Speaker and Majority Leader in '12 Hussein will have no place to hide.He'll own the whole deal.
I'm thinking strategically here...not ideologically.
I don’t buy that at all. You win every battle you can.
Compared to '12 this Fall's battle is just a skirmish.Explain to me why Hussein *wouldn't* take a page out of BillyBob's brilliant playbook if he gets the chance.The only thing we can hope for after this Fall is to stop Hussein in his tracks.He's not gonna be removed from office and he sure as hell won't resign.And every veto of Republican legislation will be seen by "moderates" as a victory for Hussein.The "moderates" are on our side at the moment.A Republican Speaker of Majority Leader will allow Hussein to flip them.
I don't think so. Clinton only believed in his re-election and would have said or done anything to further that goal. Obama is a true Marxist ideologue. He will not move right just to get re-elected.
Holebama
I agree, get as many of these fools out as soon as we can, get as many conservatives on board as we can and do some Rino infill where we have to.
If circumstances force him to he will.Yes,he's a Maoist...and Maoists,first and foremost,strive to live to fight another day.How could he *possibly* advance his Maoist beliefs as "former" President Hussein in '13 and beyond?
He won’t pull a page from HillBilly’s play book because he believes only in himself.
As always, it is not enough to vote against something. Those who gain power must have an agenda.
What are the top five things the “right” would advocate if elected?
Why is there no one that articulates what they stand for, instead of what they stand against?
The republicans may take the house, or not, but little will change, in my opinion.
Two steps forward, one step back.
It is even worse then the 8 points indicated because traditionally the Dems hold a 4 point lead even when things play out more or less even. This is because of the demographic models used which generally favor Democrats by a few points in the sampling and Independents which are believed to be more Democrat leaning then Republican leaning.
This equates to a pick up of some 14 points (minus 4 to plus 10)and that is huge. Hopefully it holds, we shall see.
This is a different dynamic than Clinton ‘94. There is so much concern over the national debt that the GOP is in a much stronger position to cut spending without suffering the same PR backlash. If they are smart they will strategically target and suffocate Obamacare and other unpopular Obama initiatives of all funding. This will be popular with most people, and will cause the Democrat base to grow very frustrated as Barry is relegated to useless talking head status.
I am amazed. I thought once people found out what is in the healthcare bill, they would love it.
I also thought this was an “anti incumbent” year, not an anti Dem one.
sarc/off.
How about hiring soon to be laid off census workers as oil spill clean up folks?
That should juice up the numbers a bit.../S
Goodness, I read that as “swing sets” and was trying to figure out how playground equipment had any thing to do with this.
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