Posted on 07/27/2022 10:25:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Meh, I don’t believe it. And yes, I remember that the GOP left Senate seats on the table even in the magical wave year of 2010, nominating Christine O’Donnell instead of Mike Castle in Delaware and sending Sharron Angle into battle against Harry Reid in Nevada.
Catherine Cortez Masto isn’t Harry Reid, though. At a moment when inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years, Biden’s approval rating is well below 40 percent, and Hispanics are shifting towards the GOP, I’m supposed to believe she’s going to overcome all of that and hold onto her Senate seat? She’s polling at 44 percent!
Yet she’s slightly favored over Adam Laxalt in two respected Senate forecasts out today, a key reason why each is forecasting that Dems will hold the Senate. Decision Desk HQ has them as a nearly 57 percent favorite to retain a majority:
That’s … a lot of movement towards Democrats over the past month, a timeframe that coincides almost perfectly with Roe being overturned. DDHQ sees Cortez Masto winning in Nevada, Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly holding their seats in Georgia and Arizona, respectively, and John Fetterman dispatching Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site makes Herschel Walker a very slight favorite over Warnock but gives Dems a 51 percent chance of holding the Senate notwithstanding that result. They too like Cortez Masto, Kelly, and Fetterman to win. And they’ve also seen movement towards Democrats lately.
In some ways more interesting is the "Classic" version of our model, which doesn't use expert ratings like the default version ("Deluxe") does. That's shown pretty linear improvement for Democrats.
https://t.co/ImBoBkGHdD pic.twitter.com/BhfBRiKliY— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 27, 2022
What gives? It’s not just the Dobbs ruling, Silver notes, as Dems’ chances began ticking up even before the decision was handed down on June 24. His reasons: “Gas prices are down. Trump is back in the news because of the Jan. 6 hearings and for other reasons. COVID deaths remain toward the lower end since the pandemic began. Wacky GOP candidates are winning primaries.” Of those four, the first is probably the most important. Gas prices have dropped more than 50 cents on average in the past month, a metric of improvement that practically every voter is made aware of daily.
But GOP wackiness shouldn’t be underestimated. Herschel Walker, possibly the greatest athletic hero in the history of Georgia, is running five points behind Brian Kemp:
NEW AJC poll in GEORGIA:
Kemp 48
Abrams 43Warnock 46
Walker 43https://t.co/Tf8UBB0FGs— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) July 27, 2022
A figure as beloved as Walker should be a heavy favorite in a year when his party is expecting major gains nationally in the House, but he has a problem. He’s “glaringly unfit” for office, in the words of John McWhorter, who finds Walker’s inability to converse insightfully on policy issues so distressing that he views his nomination as a sort of tokenism by Republican voters. “It’s hard to imagine Republicans backing a white candidate so profoundly and shamelessly unsuited for the role. It presents a double standard that manifests as a brutal lack of respect for all voters, Black voters in particular,” he wrote a few weeks ago.
Warnock’s campaign keeps pressing Walker for a series of debates, believing that an extended Q&A in front of Georgia’s voters will bring the public around to McWhorter’s view of the Republican’s fitness. Walker is game — sort of…
Herschel Walker is asked why he hasn’t agreed to debate Sen Warnock: “First of all, Sen Warnock has nothing else to talk about .. I’ve told him many times, I’m ready to debate him anytime, any day, I just want to make it for the fans, not about a political party or some media.” pic.twitter.com/2on6kQ4NWf
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 27, 2022
…but Republicans in the Senate are less enthused:
As Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) sees it, Democrats are pushing for the former NFL star to debate their incumbent in Georgia’s hotly contested Senate race because “they feel like that’s an advantage for their side. And I don’t think Herschel Walker should do anything that gives his opponent an advantage.”…
“We’ve got some strong candidates. Some that, I think, are less strong,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). “Let’s just say Herschel Walker, I think, is having a hard time getting his running legs back.”…
[O]ne Republican operative involved in Senate races said behind the scenes that, earlier this summer, “there was almost existential concern” about the Walker campaign. This Republican, who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity, said there’s still time for a course correction but that “if the election were today, he would not win.”
The fact that he’s trailing Warnock despite having high name recognition is evidence that some Georgia swing voters are, at a minimum, reserving judgment and yet to be convinced that he’ll contribute meaningfully if they send him to the Senate.
Walker is just one candidate, though. If the GOP fails to gain a Senate majority in November, nominating figures like Mehmet Oz and Blake Masters will also have contributed to the failure. Oz is a man without a natural constituency, too squishy for MAGA and too kooky for establishmentarians, and someone whom Team Fetterman continues to treat as an object of ridicule:
NJ's own @StevieVanZandt 🎸 has a VERY special message for Dr. Oz!!
So Dr. Oz just fuhgeddaboudit! pic.twitter.com/awlAeVcUeg
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 27, 2022
Oz isn’t a political radical or incapable of discussing the issues, he just doesn’t excite his base the way Fetterman does his own. As for Masters, if this is the sort of ad his Republican primary opponents are running against him, I can’t imagine what Dems will do if he wins the primary:
Devastating new campaign ad against Trump-endorsed AZ Senate candidate Blake Masters by his primary opponent that has Junior furious this morning. pic.twitter.com/24fuZIHJSV
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 6, 2022
What do Walker, Oz, and Masters have in common? They’ve all been endorsed by Trump. If any or all of them end up losing this fall and Democrats keep control of the Senate as a result, that’ll make two cycles in a row in which Trump helped ensure that Biden’s party controls the upper chamber. You might hear about that from Ron DeSantis on the primary campaign trail in 2024.
Related exit question: Why are small-dollar donations to Republicans dropping off lately, at a moment in the campaign when we would expect them to be ramping up? If the answer is “inflation,” why have Democrats’ small donors kept up the pace? Is Trump hoovering up all of the available small money via his Super PAC, leaving GOP candidates downballot to fend for themselves?
Famed statistician Nate Silver (Five Thirty Eight) predicts Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election, in a forecast that estimates her to have a 79 percent chance of taking the White House—dwarfing Donald Trump’s predicted 20 percent chance of a win in November.
https://www.newsweek.com/nate-sliver-hillary-clinton-win-presidential-election-476029
1) It is a strange fact but the GOP senate polling in the past few cycles has ALWAYS under polled Republicans. Always. The GOP always outperforms polls.
2) I do think Walker is weaker than he should be but Kemp is POLLING 3-5 POINTS UP . . . and every single pollster, including Baris, missed Kemp badly in the primaries. (I think this is because they all forgot how he was a champion of the anti-lockdowns early and businesses never forgot that). So . . .
If Kemp outperforms, say, by another 3-5 points, there is no way Walker runs 10 points behind him. There just won’t be that much ballot splitting. In other words, strange as it sounds, if Walker gets in and we get the Senate it may be largely because of the hated Kemp.
GA is going blue. There’s no way Kemp is going be elected. The cheating will guarantee Abrams the tank will win.
Yes, Kemp is popular and Walker’s only chance is to ride Kemp’s coattails.
Democrats voted for Obama twice and then Biden at some point logic will tell them how to stop the pain.
Then again some bought an Edsel every year it was produced.
I expect them to gain seats, since the crime from last time hasn’t been fixed.
It does look like the segment of women who thought Trump's tweets were nasty also place "a woman's right to choose" (local Dem ads every half hour on TV here in MI) above the right of a preborn baby to live. Sad. No FReeper women agree but there are so many others it's depressing.
Demographics analysts still contend the Trump loss was due to the young male vote deserting him and not the women at all. Note: For decades now the top bloc in polls in favor of full abortion rights were young males. Not even young women.
There it is.
Trump threw his support around a couple of lemons in GA and PA. Debt it if you want but that’s a fact.
Baris says he thinks it’s pretty close now.
Baris doubted that Kemp would hit 50% in the primary.
Kemp got 74%.
Worth noting that EVERY. SINGLE. POLLSTER. underestimated Kemp in the primary. Why?
None of them, as Baris admitted, took into account that he was the very first lockdown governor to lift the lockdown (Noem never had SD in lockdown, but no one noticed).
This was a massive factor for small business support for Kemp, and since no one thought the lockdowns were any big deal, they never polled for that impact.
Because of Stacy Abrams' Fraud Machine.... and the side effects of that compromised system.
Yes, it makes little sense that Abrams' machine would push Kemp (and Raffenburger) over the top, until you consider that Raffenburger especially, but Kemp also, are in on compromised election procedure.
Kemp pointedly shut down any efforts to make GA elections more secure. I still vote here, I have to to feel good about myself, but I am under no illusion that there are legit elections in GA any more.
Further: It's my personal belief that Kemp and Abrams made a deal. Kemp: "Stacy, you stop bitching that I stole the governors race from you in 2018, and you can have it in 2022." Abrams: "It's a deal!"
No. It’s all about the lockdowns. No pollster factored that in.
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