538 Senate control chances down 12% in 3 days? WTF?

[pat_k]

Fivethirtyeight's prediction for control of the Senate has dropped like a stone the past three days.

67.6% chance of Democratic control Oct 25

From October 25th to November 2nd, chance of Democratic control bounced around between mid 60's and low 70's

And then we have:

64.4% Nov 3
57.4% Nov 4
52.5% Nov 5

So chances have dropped about 12 points in 3 days.

WTF?

Any idea what is going on? Have some Democratic Senators gotten "into trouble" in the past couple days??

If so, who?

I'd want to do some phone banking or something.

[bullimiami]

1. 538 is at he mercy of the polls.

We will see how that turns out.

[a kennedy]

2. I know, I'm just sick........

[JHan]

4. Someone will end up with egg on their face after this election is through.

Nothing dramatic has happened to affect senate races that much..

[Cosmocat]

7. Comey

Polling for senate races lagging national polls.

Pa, mcgintys lead has tended to run about half of hillarys.

Hill was uo 5 or 6, mcginty was up 2 or 3.

Hills lead is only 3 or so now, mcginty is pretty much tied.

[JHan]

12. Interesting...

thanks for that..

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Ryan Grim of Huffington has a theory as to what is happening with 538

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_us_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f

I would look at all the aggregators including PEC. We all remember what happened to the vaunted Gallup poll in 2012 and their historic fuck-up.

[JHan]

11. Yeah Nate is defensive on twitter right now..

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I saw his meltdown

[still_one]

29. He is defensive is because he is changing his criteria, and people are saying he is doing that

so however the election turns out he can say he was correct

[JHan]

31. Yep, basically covering his A..

[pat_k]

14. Thanks for the link.

[Cha]

24. I read a tweet the other day that said Nate wanted trump to

do better so he won't look so bad.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. He is robbing Peter to pay Paul

but as Gallup soon found out, getting carried away trying to get precision by factoring in certain "assumptions" can mean a complete fail at the end.

[Cha]

27. I hope so.. wasn't it Nate who was so off about Michigan?

Just saw this Tweet on Sam Wang's feed..

Sam Wang ‏@SamWangPhD · 6h6 hours ago
Sam Wang Retweeted Clara Jeffery
Good thing there isn't anything serious to do, like figure out what's happening in Senate, or interpret early voting, or go get out the vote

https://twitter.com/SamWangPhD?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

[BumRushDaShow]

30. I've been following Sam. He was on Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night too!

He posted this screenshot with the caption "Well, this was unexpected." -

[Cha]

32. A sense of humor.. I like that!

Mahalo, BRDS

[Cosmocat]

5. Comey happened

This was my fear...

[JHan]

13. But Comey's letter was a bunch of nothing..

Sad thing about this election is how easily swayed people are by media sensationalism, I guess we'll know for sure Tuesday.

[Cosmocat]

22. Merica 2016

This entire election is based on rampant stupidity.

[triron]

9. PEC just went up to 78% from 76% yesterday.

http://election.princeton.edu/

[BzaDem]

10. Yes, several races have tightened over the last several days.

Indiana was a sparsely polled state that previously had Bayh up. More recent polls came in that showed Young up, for the first time.

New Hampshire is neck and neck, but most of the recent polls showed Ayotte up a hair.

Finally, there was a poll from a good pollster today that had Toomey up one in Pennsylvania. However, all other polls in recent weeks have McGinty up by a few points, so I'm not as worried about that race.

In a hypothetical world without polling error, we would probably win IL/WI/PA, and hold NV (though all but IL are close). We then need to win one of NH/NC/IN/MO. Of those four, NH is probably most favorable to us, and that is a true jump ball according to polling. Hence, control of the Senate is likely a true jump ball as well (as his model indicates).

However, there is usually some aggregate polling error (whose direction is not predictable before the election). As a result, most toss-ups tend to go in the same direction. So we could imagine a world with a net gain of 0 (win IL, lose NV), all the way to a net gain of 7 (win all close races).

[pat_k]

16. Thank you.

i've been thinking our chances for Senate were pretty good. A dose of reality. It really is a toss up.

Over at Cook Political Report, the news is about the same. Everything tightening up. Not just Senate. More toss up governors. (4 of the 8 Dem that are at stake, with none of the 4 Repub at any real risk).

I'm not sure I'll be able to take the stress of election day.

We don't talk about it much, but with Redistricting coming up, we need to focus on control of state legislatures too. At least the number of Republican controlled legislatures isn't a grim as the number of Repub Governors.

[duffyduff]

18. Heck is not going to win Nevada n/t

[BzaDem]

19. I agree, that looks more and more unlikely. I wouldn't say impossible though.

Reports from NV indicate that the Democratic advantage in EV in absolute terms is roughly what it was in 2012 (slightly lower in percentage terms). Given how much of the NV electorate votes early, that makes it exceedingly unlikely for Clinton to lose.

However, when Obama won the state by 7 points in 2012, the Republican Senate nominee still won by about 1.3 points. His opponent was more unpopular than Cortez Masto, partly due to an ethics scandal, so that is one reason one would expect Cortez Masto to do better. (Other reasons include the higher portion of this year's electorate that is Hispanic, along with Cortez Masto polling better than Shelley Berkeley was in 2012.)

So we will probably win that state. But if there is systemic polling error, it is not beyond the realm of possibility we would lose it. (In contrast, it is mostly beyond the realm of possibility that we will lose IL.)

[budkin]

17. Comey all but destroyed Senate chances

[dalton99]

36. The ratfucker planned it all along

[pnwmom]

20. That's with Silver's secret special sauce. The Princeton Election Consortium's forecast

based on State polls only is at 78% for Senate control.

http://election.princeton.edu

[Thrill]

21. Bayh and Feingold use to look safe

New polls tell another story

[GWC58]

28. Ron Johnson is a worthless

Fuck!! Never, ever under estimate the stupidity of the American electorate!

[MyNameIsKhan]

23. We will win NV, IL, PA, WI, NH... rest is bonus.

[pat_k]

33. That gets us to 50/50. Ok if Dem VP...

Last edited Sun Nov 6, 2016, 12:28 AM - Edit history (1)

But it would be nice to get a 49/51 split.

Wish ratings of chances for Kander (MO), Bayh (IN), and Ross (NC) looked better.

[MyNameIsKhan]

34. Yes I commented about HRC win, we will will NC, the margin we are looking at NC cannot have Burr

back in senate, he is toast...

MO is another great chance

[pat_k]

37. Great to hear. Go Deborah Ross!

[vadermike]

26. Feingold

I think will win

[pat_k]

38. 538 Rating Favors.