The Princeton Economic Consoritum model has been trending down since the beginning of September...

[brooklynite]

...and this was the resource for everyone who thought 538 and the mainstream media was "in the bag for the Republicans".

Bottom line, we're NOT going to do well in November but we MAY be able to mitigate our losses with turnout. Let's focus on reality, and not try to convince each other that this is all a "Big Media" plot to depress turnout.

[librechik]

1. it is all a conspiracy to depress turnout. Did you notice the .5M in the streets against GCChange?

The media didn't. They've invented an alternative narrative, and we all live in it now. Turnout is everything, and it takes a rare citizen to see through the media narrative and vote anyway. Especially to vote in a helpful way. They're all coming out to kill Obamacare, because that nonsense works.

Shameful.

[belzabubba333]

2. i ignore all of it and vote

[librechik]

5. sigh me too n/t

[davekriss]

6. Unfortunately too many don't ignore it

24/7 propaganda spewed forth daily by the major media has mind numbing impact, churning out a sufficient number of unconsciously obedient proles to turn elections.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. My reasons for not taking 538 too seriously had to do with Nate's actual track record with midterm

elections, which is not all that perfect and which is very brief in duration. That is, he has not predicted very many such elections and in the ones he has he as been incorrect to a large enough degree to make his opinion less than authoritative. The problem for me came with the notion that Nate is always right and always has been when he's only made a couple of cycles worth of predictions, never been perfect and has been off enough to matter when he's talking about a seat or two in the Senate.
His opinion is worth hearing, but is certainly does not rate as prophecy.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. The Princeton Economic Consoritum's Sam Wang sure does not agree with 538....

At the end of August, he wrote this:
"I’ve been asked why the PEC Senate poll snapshot is more favorable to Democrats than forecasts you’ll find elsewhere: NYT’s The Upshot, Washington Post’s The Monkey Cage, ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight, and Daily Kos. All of these organizations show a higher probability of a Republican takeover than today’s PEC snapshot, which favors the Democrats with a 70% probability.

Longtime readers of PEC will not be surprised to know that I think the media organizations are making a mistake. It is nearly Labor Day. By now, we have tons of polling data. Even the stalest poll is a more direct measurement of opinion than an indirect fundamentals-based measure. I demonstrated this point in 2012, when I used polls only to forecast the Presidency and all close Senate races. That year I made no errors in Senate seats, including Montana (Jon Tester) and North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), which FiveThirtyEight got wrong.

In 2014, these forecasting differences matter quite a lot. This year’s Senate race is harder than any electoral forecast that the other forecasters have ever had to make. To be frank, 2008 and 2012 were easy. My own experience is guided by 2004 Presidential race, which was as close as this year’s Senate campaign. In 2004, I formed the view that the correct approach is to use polls only, if at all possible.
election.princeton.edu/2014/08/28/senate-democrats-are-outperforming-expectations/

http://election.princeton.edu/2014/08/28/senate-democrats-are-outperforming-expectations/

[Chathamization]

7. I still favor Wang's approach, and have concerns over Silver's fundamental-secret sauce formula

We'd need to look at several elections to really see the difference, however. Changes in a few races because of improved polling or unexpected shakeups can make one look like it has better results when it's merely coincidental. I suppose Silver could say that his fundamentals are able to overcome problems with polling (this seems to be his argument), but that doesn't do much beyond kicking prognostication away from a stats based approach and more towards the political talking heads gut based approach.