Time For A Deep Breath, Courtesy Of Sam Wang (And Prof. Hubbard)

Polling guru Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium has some words of wisdom for us in the wake of Comeygate:

1. The national race will not change meaningfully. Maybe by 1 percentage point when aggregated…2 points max. It doesn’t change the high likelihood of a Clinton win. 

2. Journalists and pundits will continue to feed hysterics by fussing over the Comey story. They may even attempt to use polling evidence to justify their coverage. However, note that national polls had already tightened by 1-2 percentage points, even before Comeygate. This is a phenomenon known as regression to the mean, and is a central assumption of PEC’s model. 

3. Keep your eye on the ball, which is downticket. In the Senate, key races in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada, and North Carolina will determine control of that chamber. Small changes mean a lot: early voting, get-out-the-vote, bad weather…maybe even the Comey story.

Wang generally chalks up the static nature of the trend lines to political polarization. Well, we can certainly attest to the fact that Comeygate (had we not already early voted) would have propelled us to the polls in righteous, polarized anger at the events of the last 48 hours.  In fact, just the thought of neo- fascist moron Donald "Rump" Trump gaining any ground from this bungle would be motivation enough to re- double our efforts to see that he's defeated, and we think that goes for tens of millions of Democrats and other sane people.

BONUS:  Professor Hubbard (who has a better record than 538's Nate Silver) has more to soothe the troubled soul.  Caveat:  we need to get out the vote to make this reality; it doesn't happen because someone's calculations said so.

Wave Bye-Bye?

Eugene Robinson speculates why the 2014 midterm elections might not be shaping up to be the "wave election" many had predicted months ago:

The [Republican] candidates may be plausible, but they’re running on the wrong issues. Rather, the wrong issue: the Affordable Care Act. 

“Repeal Obamacare” remains a rallying cry for the GOP’s activist base — perhaps less for the law itself than the president for whom it is named. But for independent voters, undoing health-care reform is not the sure-fire issue Republicans hoped it would be. 

The program is in effect. Some people who previously could not obtain health insurance now have it. Most people are unaffected. Despite all the dire GOP predictions, the sky has not fallen. 

Yet Republican candidates say otherwise, describing a dystopian breakdown of the nation’s health-care system that simply has not occurred. And they go all tongue-tied when asked how they could manage to repeal Obamacare in the face of a certain veto by Obama — or, more tellingly, just what they would put in place if they somehow succeeded.

But forget wave, or even ripple, election.  Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium sees a much different outcome at this time:

Long-term forecasting is based on methods that worked nearly perfectly in 2010-2012. We will soon install code to display the long-term forecast, which is also based purely on polls. Currently, the long-term forecast for Democratic control on Election Day is 65%, about 2-1 odds in favor.

Now, the usual caveats apply (i.e., "It's two months until the election!!"), and Wang is swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom and most, if not all, of the polling community.  Not to mention Wang is putting his probabilities in the realm of a "work in progress."  But, given that he was dead on in earlier projections (we recall him picking all of the 2012 Senate winners and nailing the Presidential results), one would be stupid to dismiss his analysis even at this relatively early stage in the midterm election cycle.