Republicans Are Just A Normal Polling Error Away From A Landslide -- Or Wiping Out

[brooklynite]

FiveThirtyEight

With just five days until Election Day, Republicans are in good shape in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. If each party were to win every race they are currently favored to win, Republicans would have 51 Senate seats and Democrats would have 49, according to our Deluxe forecast as of Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern.1 And if the same thing happened in the House, Republicans would win 225 seats and Democrats would win 210.

But those gains would be modest by the standards of midterm elections. In other words, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, this likely won’t be a “red-wave” election like 2010 (when Republicans picked up 63 House seats) or 2014 (when Republicans picked up nine Senate seats). Instead, it’s looking like more of a “red ripple.” But that doesn’t mean a red wave is impossible.

Our forecast emphasizes probabilities, not binary outcomes: Democrats and Republicans are only slightly favored to win many of those seats, and a seat with a 60-in-100 chance of going blue votes Republican 40 out of 100 times. As readers of FiveThirtyEight are undoubtedly aware, it’s not unusual for polls to be a few percentage points off the final mark (this is normal and just a reality of our uncertain world). Since 1998, polls of U.S. Senate elections conducted within three weeks of Election Day have had a weighted-average error of 5.4 percentage points, and polls of U.S. House elections have had a weighted-average error of 6.3 points.2

In the 2016 and 2020 elections, polls famously underestimated Republicans. If pollsters didn’t address the factors that caused this (which are still up for debate), that could happen again. On the other hand, our research has found that you can’t predict the direction of polling error in advance. Historically, polls have been equally likely to underestimate Republicans or Democrats. So it’s also possible that pollsters have fixed the problems that plagued them in 2016 and 2020 — maybe even overcorrected for them — and that the current polls are too good for the GOP. In other words, a wide range of scenarios is possible in this election: everything from a Republican landslide to a world where Democrats hold the House and gain seats in the Senate.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

1. Yeah, I'll wait for next week n/t

[Buns_of_Fire]

2. The Reader's Digest version: "We don't really have the foggiest idea." nt

[getagrip_already]

3. That is by design......

It happens in most polling cycles. This way, the pollsters can point to the election results and their polls and say "See! We were within the margin of Error!".

They manipulate the polls as the election draws close so they can't be wrong. They won't be right either, but they will get their payday and news outlets will buy again next cycle.

And 538 will blather on about how their methodology works.

Blyat.

[SomedayKindaLove]

4. What I'd like to see is what percentage of races

Being polled are within the margins of error? It will come down to turnout, as it always does.