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2018 Midterm Congressional Elections: 300 days of excitement


william.scherk

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There are times when I miss the Objectivist Living stalwart "Adam Selene." I am definitely going to miss his wonkish, passionate opinions on the coming mid-terms. I put this blog entry up to have a place for OLers who are interested in tracking the campaigns, the shoddy and unconvincing polls, and the final night of returns.  With the disbanding of President Trump's "voter fraud" commission** we will have no executive guidance on where or how various states are vulnerable to rigging or other hinkiness.

In among the news-hoopla today, a few reports that stand out. This from The Week: A record-breaking 31 House Republicans won't seek re-election in 2018

A whopping 31 House Republicans will not be seeking re-election in November, NPR reports, including Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), who announced his impending retirement from Congress on Wednesday. The 2018 GOP exodus is a new record: The last time there was such a massive departure from Congress was when 28 Democrats left in 1994, and Republicans subsequently seized control.

Most significantly, Republicans in states won by Hillary Clinton are leaving in droves. "Vulnerable House Republicans would clearly rather call it quits than stand for re-election with a deeply unpopular agenda hanging over their heads," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told NPR.

[...]

Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to take back the House, with the Senate being more of a long shot; in the upper chamber, Democrats have to defend 25 seats and pick up an additional three in order to take back the majority. A Washington Post/ABC News poll from November found that hypothetical Democratic candidates are favored by voters against their Republican counterparts 51 percent to 40 percent.

One of my favourite election handicapping sites is Decision Desk HQ, a relatively-nonpartisan group of wonks and dweebs. Their DDHQ 2018 House Midterm Forecast is a good place to come up to speed on the challenges and excitement ahead.

The 2018 House Midterm Election is bound to be one of the more interesting in recent memory. With Donald Trump in the White House, infighting on both sides of Congress, and an American public that is bursting at the seams we have a recipe for a perfect political storm. Keep your eye on this page, which houses our forecasts for all 435 congressional districts, and stick with us as we attempt to answer the ultimate questions: who will win majority control of the US House of Representatives?

Here is an image from that page:

http://www.thecrosstab.com/data/forecast-2018/leafletmap/index.html [Guy keeps 'fixing' his blog layout. He now works for the Economist]
https://www.thecrosstab.com/project/2018-midterms-forecast/

Click on the image above to go to the fully interactive version of this image, where you can zoom in and examine each race's details and present-day forecasts. Eg, 

DecisionDeskDetail.png

-- another very good site is Ballotpedia. Here is a link to their comprehensive 2018 elections page.

___________________

** a welter of reports on the controversial commission and its end can be accessed here. Click the following for a snapshot ...

Spoiler
About 12,600 results (0.38 seconds) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Prediction:  surprise surprise!  

Countdown clock.

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As you can see from my online comment, I miss him too-- no one gave me such great feeds or punchlines, or could amp up a ridiculous situation better,and his bustling about with the Welcome Wagon was so comforting.

I hope he is resting somewhere, but not in THAT much peace.  However he would be 70 or so, I guess.

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Re-upping and correcting broken link in main topic.  Is anybody excited about the November mid-terms, now that the field is relatively set in place following the mini Super Tuesday primaries this week?

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One of my favourite election handicapping sites is Decision Desk HQ, a relatively-nonpartisan group of wonks and dweebs. Their DDHQ 2018 House Midterm Forecast is a good place to come up to speed on the challenges and excitement ahead.

Here's cool bit that lists Senate "battleground" races:

 

Quote

 

Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds are races that Ballotpedia expects to be particularly competitive, interesting, or meaningful to the future balance of power in Congress. Factors that we consider in naming a battleground election include the margins of victory from recent statewide elections, how the state voted in the most recent presidential elections, whether a seat is open, if a particularly strong challenger has entered the race, and more.

United States Senate Battleground Races
State Incumbent
Arizona Republican Party Jeff Flake
Florida Democratic Party Bill Nelson
Indiana Democratic Party Joe Donnelly
Minnesota (special) Democratic Party Tina Smith
Mississippi (special) Republican Party Cindy Hyde-Smith
Missouri Democratic Party Claire McCaskill
Montana Democratic Party Jon Tester
Nevada Republican Party Dean Heller
North Dakota Democratic Party Heidi Heitkamp
Ohio Democratic Party Sherrod Brown
Tennessee Republican Party Bob Corker
Texas Republican Party Ted Cruz
West Virginia Democratic Party Joe Manchin

 

Explore the full extent of Congressional races here: https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Congress_elections,_2018

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Some punditry from Ballotpedia's comprehensive and detailed report on the 2018 midterms, United States Congress elections, 2018

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Republican primaries

  • Alex Seitz-Wald examined the difference in campaign tactics and prospects of Republican candidates running for the House and the Senate, including reactions from national political observers, in an article on NBC News.com (May 6, 2018):
"The House and Senate might as well be Mars and Venus this year. The House will be decided by transitional suburbs where Republicans are on defense; the Senate will be decided by red, rural states where Democrats on defense. It's the least overlap I've seen in my career covering this stuff" - Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report analyst and NBC News contributor.
"The House and Senate typically move in tandem, with each party's strength rising and falling with the national mood. But thanks to a quirk in timing and geography, 2018 could be the first year in American history when a party gains control of one chamber while simultaneously losing seats in the other, according to Gary Jacobson, a professor at the University of California-San Diego who studies Congress."
"On the House side, vulnerable Republicans are declining to appear with Trump in public, criticizing his rhetoric, defending the Trump-Russia probe and even floating impeachment."
"On the other side of the Capitol, every Senate candidate is running as a Trump loyalist, with many adopting his attacks on "Crooked Hillary" and the "fake news" media."[19]

 

-- my informed guess, which may change, and which may be wrong entirely, is that the majority in the House will be captured by the Democrats, while the Senate majority will be maintained by the Republican party.  New Gingrich notwithstanding, I see neither a Blue nor a Red wave (taking Ballotpedia's definition). 

Edited by william.scherk
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There sure is a lot of electronic-ink spilled over a purported Blue Wave.  The slim truth I can extract is that midterms are an opportunity for both parties. In some election cycles (particularly 2010) political winds can blow against a White House incumbent. 

Now 'knowingness' in the Executive that Muh Russia will work to elect more Democrats suggests there will be a morning after, regrets, blame, misinformation and what have you.

This is giving comfort to all the wrong people:

Quote

[...] "Democrats are now a little better than 50-50 to win the House," concludes Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of UVA professor Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball. "This is the first time this cycle we've gone beyond 50-50 odds on a House turnover." He adds later: "At this point, we see the Democrats with slightly better odds to get their required share of the 'toss-ups' based largely on the environment, but also because they appear to have well-funded and credible challengers in these districts that can capitalize on that environment."

These moves are broadly consistent with how other non-partisan handicappers see the current state of play. The Cook Political Report carries 34 seats that are either "toss-ups" or lean toward party that doesn't currently control the seat; 31 of those are GOP districts. Inside Elections sees 26 Republican-held seats in serious jeopardy as compared to just 5 for Democrats. In CNN's own ratings, there are 43 Republican-held seats in serious jeopardy as compared to six Democratic-held seats.

It's reflective of polling from swing districts. Take Pennsylvania's 17th District in the southwestern part of the state where Reps. Conor Lamb (D) and Keith Rothfus (R) are facing off. Even though President Donald Trump narrowly carried the seat in 2016, Lamb leads Rothfus 51% to 39% in a new Monmouth University poll. And national generic ballot polling where -- after a brief Republican resurgence in late spring/early summer -- Democrats' edge on the question is now consistently in the high single digits.

 

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How to cut through the thickets of partisan whoopee and wishful thinking about the midterms?  One can consult folks with a long-view.

19 hours ago, william.scherk said:

In some election cycles (particularly 2010) political winds can blow against a White House incumbent. 

Here's a better soul than me, cramming a hundred-fifty years of electioneering into a series of relatively dry paragraphs. The prognosticator:  Larry Sabato ...

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Why the Democrats are now soft favorites in the House

As soon as President Donald Trump was elected, the national political dynamics immediately changed. Democrats, somnolent in off-year elections in the Obama years (and also in 2016, at least in some key places), would re-energize. The historical burden of holding the White House transferred to the Republicans, and the president’s party has lost ground in 36 of 39 House midterms since the Civil War with an average loss of 33 seats. In the more recent past, since the end of World War II, the average seat loss is 26 seats, or right on the borderline of the 23 net seats the Democrats need to elect a House majority.

That average includes years where the presidential party broke the historical trend and netted a few seats (1998 and 2002) or lost only a relative handful (1962 and 1990). But the presidents who presided over those midterms were popular and had other factors working in their favor. This president is not popular, and no one believes there is any chance the Republicans come out of this election with more seats than they hold now. Even just a single-digit GOP seat loss would be shocking, an outcome driven by late developments unforeseeable at this juncture.

Yet, to this point, we’ve hesitated to come out and make the Democrats a favorite in the House. The Republicans have strong incumbents in some of their most vulnerable seats, and the national House map has a GOP tilt: By margin, the median House district is about four percentage points to the right of the nation based on district-level results from the 2016 presidential election. The economy is good — or, rather, baseline economic indicators are good even though there is a compelling argument that the nation’s economic gains have been unevenly distributed in recent times — and the nation is not engaged in a major foreign conflict. Recessions and war can hurt the president’s party in midterms, although their absence also does not guarantee a lack of turbulence, as any glance at national headlines these days would confirm.

So what’s changed? Why do we now tilt the House to the Democrats?

Well, part of the reason is simply this: In actuality, not much has changed throughout the cycle. That, in and of itself, is a problem for Republicans.

Election Day is getting closer, and the president’s approval rating is still largely stuck in the low 40s, a big red warning sign that has bedeviled the party of similarly-situated presidents in past midterms. The Housegeneric ballot, which has generally been at around a Democratic lead of between six to eight points, is at the higher end of that range right now. But more importantly for the House battle, for most of this election cycle the generic ballot has shown a consistent Democratic lead that suggests a very competitive battle for the majority. A high number of open seats — the highest number of any postwar election save 1992 — give Democrats many more targets than the GOP (Republicans are defending 41 seats without an incumbent, while Democrats are defending only 22).

Special elections at the state and federal level, sometimes a helpful gauge of what is to come in the midterm, have generally shown Democrats improving on Hillary Clinton’s district-level performance, often drastically. Democrats seem very likely to improve on Clinton’s margin once again in a special election in OH-12 on Aug. 7, the last House special before the midterm, although by how much is a question (an update on OH-12, a race we now call a Toss-up, is included at the bottom of this article).

There are also the specifics of this particular election. The second-quarter (April through June) House fundraising reports came out last week, and the results are alarming for Republicans. It’s not that GOP fundraising, in total, was bad: Many vulnerable incumbents had very solid quarters. Rather, it’s that Democratic fundraising was extraordinary, with dozens of Democratic candidates turning in blockbuster quarters and outraising their GOP opponents. Money isn’t everything, but one expects incumbents to have a clear financial edge on their opponents, and it’s not clear that some current GOP members will have even that with several months of buckraking to go before the Nov. 6 election.

Put it all together, and the Democrats now look like soft favorites to win a House majority with a little more than 100 days to go. The usual caveats apply: There is time for things to change, and the Democrats capturing the majority is not a slam dunk. We recently were discussing the House map with a source who recited reams of positive indicators and data for Democrats. After hearing those, we suggested that, based on what this person was saying, the Democrats should win the House with seats to spare. The source then said it will come down to just a few seats either way. By the way, such a close outcome — a House where the majority party has 220-225 seats or even less (218 is the number required for a bare majority) — remains a distinct possibility, and the presence of so many competitive House seats in California, where the vote count takes weeks to finalize, could delay the final House outcome.

I miss Adam. We could chew on things like Sabato's Crystal Ball for weeks.

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Cruz Nuz!

I don't think that Ted Cruz will be defeated in his Senate re-election run come November. That said, some of the  prognosticators are pointing to a narrowing of the Cruz advantage in recent polls.  Before I cite them,  have a look at RealClearPolitics combined polling page.  It doesn't seem to add up to a Cruz defeat.  Neither does the 538 range of polls ... although Cruz was up by 12% at one point, the latest show him maintaining  a lead of 4 to 6%.

But ... prognosticators at the Cook Report have moved the race from "Likely Republican" to "Leans Republican."

O’Rourke Puts Race into Lean Republican Column

Sabato sez ...

 

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Only 72 days of excitement left. Here is some advice from the heroic Steve Bannon:  Steve Bannon's message to Trump voters: It doesn't matter if your congressman is a 'RINO' — vote for them, or else Trump gets impeached

The point:  

Bannon said he hadn't spoken with the president about the midterm plans but had discussed his strategy with people close to Trump.

"The hard thing we have to do is convince the Trump voters that: 'Hey, there may be a RINO in your congressional district, you may not like the guy, he may not like Trump. It doesn't matter. That fight is past us,'" Bannon said.

He added: "I'm the most antiestablishment guy out there. And I have said there is a time you have to have those fights, and then there is a time you have to support the guy whether you totally agree with him or not. That guy is going to vote against Nancy Pelosi. That's all that matters right now."

-- where is all the bullshit about impeachment coming from, if bullshit it is?

This is probably not what animates Mr Bannon, but it shows what kind of fiendish 'oversight' of the Trump administration the GOP may fear after the midterms. Scoop: Republicans secretly study their coming hell -- from Jonathan Swann of Axios.

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Congressional Republicans are getting ready for hell. Axios has obtained a spreadsheet that's circulated through Republican circles on and off Capitol Hill — including at least one leadership office — that meticulously previews the investigations Democrats will likely launch if they flip the House.

Why this matters: Publicly, House Republicans are putting on a brave face about the midterms. But privately, they are scrambling to prepare for the worst. This document, which catalogs requests Democrats have already made, is part of that effort.

It has churned Republican stomachs. Here are some of the probes it predicts:

  • President Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution's emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization
  • Trump's dealings with Russia, including the president's preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin
  • The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels
  • James Comey's firing
  • Trump's firing of U.S. attorneys
  • Trump's proposed transgender ban for the military
  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's business dealings
  • White House staff's personal email use
  • Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks
  • Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago
  • Jared Kushner's ethics law compliance
  • Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors
  • The travel ban
  • Family separation policy
  • Hurricane response in Puerto Rico
  • Election security and hacking attempts
  • White House security clearances


The spreadsheet — which I'm told originated in a senior House Republican office — catalogs more than 100 formal requests from House Democrats this Congress, spanning nearly every committee.

[...]

Does this add to the excitement?  Hard to say ... but Bannon seems to warn that insisting on purity will not necessarily return a GOP majority in the House of Representatives.

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I am revising my prognostications for the mid-terms. I think it is just as likely that the Republicans hold the House as that the Democrats may take it.

Having said that, it looks like the Republicans are preparing for all eventualities. From Alex Isenstadt at Politico: ‘Tough decisions have to be made’: House Republicans prepare for pain

Quote

Party officials begin deciding which GOP lawmakers to save and which ones to cut loose.

By ALEX ISENSTADT

08/31/2018 05:08 AM EDT

With a massive field of vulnerable House incumbents to defend and limited resources to go around, Republicans are readying for a painful round of political triage — deciding which lawmakers are worth trying to rescue, and which ones need to be cut loose to fend for themselves in November.

[...]

“At this point in the cycle with a field this large, difficult choices will have to be made,” said Brian Walsh, a former senior House GOP campaign official who now oversees the pro-Trump America First Action super PAC, which is slated to spend millions on congressional races.

“Such is the world we live in now,” Walsh added.

[...]

“The NRCC isn’t going to be able to help those who haven’t helped themselves,” said former Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Phil English, who was involved with the committee during his House tenure. “These are very Darwinian decisions. It means selection of the fittest.”

[...]

“In a year when there is a big advantage to one side over the other, the side with the limited resources has to be particularly strategic — and that means being dispassionate and not emotional as to how they are making decisions,” said English. “This is a challenge, and a judgement call that I think people at the NRCC always dread.”

Some Republican strategists, however, contend that the party has been flat-footed and failed at an early stage to take seriously enough the possibility that seats typically regarded as safer could be in jeopardy as the election approached. As a result, they say, the party is now scrambling to divert resources from swing districts in order to protect traditionally redder ones.

Why has my prediction changed?  Honestly, from reading the guess-analysis of Nate Silver of 538. He repeated a wonkish 'warning' (based on their stats) to over-enthused watchers: Democrats have a 25% chance of losing the House and losing a couple more Senate seats.

A one in four chance is a chance.

The thrill of it all! --

One feature of the 538 House races page is this kind of non-orthoganal map tool.  Each seat in the House is the same size, so you have an easier time finding your own and other interesting district races.  See here.

This is a brief screenshot of the tool's functionality.

Edited by william.scherk
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President Trump was in electioneering slash stumping mood yesterday in Billings, Montana. I listened to it on a live delayed-feed on Youtube somewhere, but find that CSPAN has covered at least this rally.  Here's a page grab from CSPAN that shows the kinds of research-y tools you can you, among them a search-text feature. 

Click and go (if you make yourself a CSPAN account, you can also make and share your own clips and excerpts from the platform itself).

rallyTrumpBilllingsCSPANsept6.png

-- this embed may or may not work on your browser; the key part that got me when I was listening to the feed last night is just after 34:00:  "Vladimir Putin ..."  

The President explains himself with regard to the Helsinki meeting, the previous best week ever for the Trump White House.

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How to increase the GOP Hispanic vote?

  • A) get bogged down in relitigating last week's news;
  • B) observe august Presidential distance;
  • C) Get the President agitated about supposedly "bad news," and trigger a brutally-wrong tweet;
  • D) blame some amorphous blob for the trigger;
  • E) have GOP leaders mumble inconsequentially about the tweet's distance from the truth;
  • F) fumble all media followups so that last week's news gets played to the GOP's disadvantage.

Do none of you people recall that elections are "dirty" contests?  Invoke a screech-horn masquerade and speak persuasively to the issue. Why would the President utter this tweet about this statistic at this time -- since the initial hoopla was behind us?

"I ask myself, 'Regina, what do you think of the President's tweet about deaths attributed to Hurricane Maria?' and I answer myself, 'Walk away, Ms Lopez, walk away from the GOP.'"

Spoiler

 

 

Bonus points: what will be the worst race-baiting histrionic campaign bullshit from the Democrats trying to exploit these tweets?

A direct hit for Option ?

 

Edited by william.scherk
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That took all of twenty-eight minutes and  three seconds ... Andrew Gillum adds his small briquette to a pyre of GOP people of colour votes.

 

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Hurricane death by computer model.

Computer projections of projected projections based on what if.

The only thing missing are the actual 3,000 bodies.

Who needs bodies when you have a computer model for evidence?

:) 

From Rush Limbaugh:

Trump Calls Out Media on Puerto Rico Death Toll Lie

And the fake news parrots squawk and plod and squawk and plod...

3000 dead... awwwkkk! 3000 dead... awwwkkk! awwwkkk!... 3000 dead...

:) 

Michael

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Of note to Excitement followers ... The Black Community loves Trump, according to media subverse superstars Diamond and Silk. I cross-link to their recent video discussion with Gavin McInnes of CRTV, in the Alex Jones Bullying thread.

 

Edited by william.scherk
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Here is another popular Youtube commentator, author and broadcaster HA Goodman.This edited video contains excerpts from his appearance on RT's Crosstalk, and from a video posted to his own Youtube Channel today.  Please visit the Youtube page for the video to see the Show Notes, links and more. 

HA is pretty firm in his predictions for the mid-terms.  The Democrats will not take the House.

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As Ayn Rand might say, "What can you trust, if not your stomach feelings?"

On 8/27/2018 at 12:55 PM, william.scherk said:
Axios 'scoop' on GOP spreadsheet said:

It has churned Republican stomachs. Here are some of the probes it predicts:

  • President Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution's emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization
  • Trump's dealings with Russia, including the president's preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin
  • The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels
  • James Comey's firing
  • Trump's firing of U.S. attorneys
  • Trump's proposed transgender ban for the military
  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's business dealings
  • White House staff's personal email use
  • Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks
  • Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago
  • Jared Kushner's ethics law compliance
  • Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors
  • The travel ban
  • Family separation policy
  • Hurricane response in Puerto Rico
  • Election security and hacking attempts
  • White House security clearances


The spreadsheet — which I'm told originated in a senior House Republican office — catalogs more than 100 formal requests from House Democrats this Congress, spanning nearly every committee.

[...]

Does this add to the excitement?

Who watches what where? Or, Who will you record to watch later (including internet sources)? I will record/delay feed from OANN and Infowars for sure plus live-delay Fox News, and I also want to see if HA Goodman comes through with his promise for a live election show (he spends at least three hours a day entertaining his supporters on Youtube, and has rubbished the idea of Democratic gains as late as today).  

And then once the 'rigging' is over, we can all can do a Britney Spears-inflected "It Is What It Is."  

 

I get mail from the Trump campaign almost every day. Their come-ons are getting pretty 'Lit,' ie, to the point of quoting from the Washington Post. Eg,

trump25.png

Edited by william.scherk
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22 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I will record/delay feed from OANN and Infowars for sure plus live-delay Fox News, and I also want to see if HA Goodman comes through with his promise for a live election show (he spends at least three hours a day entertaining his supporters on Youtube, and has rubbished the idea of Democratic gains as late as today).  

#Midterm  #Predictions in my Youtube description brought 6 views instantly.  Now I understand the gravitational power of hashtags. Please click the title to see my try at useful descriptors.  My first grab at engagement was done here a month ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbX3CKAKfUQ

Here I just grab the best bits of HA Goodman and Styx from yesterday. They sort of lay down their counters.

Who wants Scott Adams' educated guesswork and hypnotic suggestions? I will add something at least from Infowars and something election-oriented from OANN.  I really hope they have Bill Mitchell on set for the night of November 6.

Edited by william.scherk
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A couple links to articles that HA rubbished (He gave a link to this teaser story: [https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/12/politics/the-forecast-launch-2018-house-senate/index.html] but I don't know if he explored the first of the two media pages scraped below). Styx gave two Real Clear Politics polling pages as his references.

Harry Enten, late of 538.  He is the cutest of the bunch. HA may have landed on this giant page of data and maps :

entenForecast.png

Rubbish!  (I get 'least biased' on my MBFC rating, but hey)

econMidtermForecast.png

Styx's RCP links: 

Edited by william.scherk
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20 Days of Excitement!

For the wonks of OL, there is a newish guy in town ... the folks who came up with the Decision Desk HQ coverage of the Alabama special election and who are all charged up for the special night in November.  If you want non-commercial coverage on the night, this is a useful choice, but beyond that, they have their own deep dive into each race ... at their election modeling site: https://0ptimus.decisiondeskhq.com/

The 'live' results that they use are this year going to be fed into Reuters results, which is cool.  I will update this thread to give the URL for the live show. You can also keep an eye on the run-up with DDHQ on Twitter.

I used the bland DDHQ live results to make my Election in 180 seconds video: 

 

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President Trump had a few things to say about Midterm Excitement.  Basically, if the GOP fails to keep its majority in the House of Representatives, it is not his fault. 

Quote

AP: So moving to the midterms, you’re hitting the road for Republicans, obviously.

Trump: A little bit.

AP: And the White House political office has said, and you have said, that Republicans face headwinds this fall, it’s a tough year for Republicans historically. If Republicans were to lose control of the House ...

Trump: It’s a tough year ... The midterms are very tough for anybody the opposite of president, for whatever reason, nobody has been able to say.

AP: So my question is, if Republicans were to lose control of the House on November 6th — or a couple of days later depending on how long it takes to count the votes — do you believe you bear some responsibility for that?

Trump: No, I think I’m helping people. Look, I’m 48 and 1 in the primaries, and actually it’s much higher than that because I endorsed a lot of people that were successful that people don’t even talk about. But many of those 48, as you know, were people that had no chance, in some cases. We look at Florida, you look at Donovan in Staten Island. He was losing by 10 2/15 points, I endorsed him and he won. I could give you a long list of names. Look at Georgia governor of Georgia. And many, many races. And I will say that we have a very big impact. I don’t believe anybody’s ever had this kind of an impact. They would say that in the old days that if you got the support of a president or if you’ve got the support of somebody it would be nice to have, but it meant nothing, zero. Like literally zero. Some of the people I’ve endorsed have gone up 40 and 50 points just on the endorsement.

AP: Eight years ago, Barack Obama said he got shellacked, so you know, taking the outcome of the election as a referendum on himself.

Trump: So I think we’re going to do well. Look, it feels to me very much like ’16. I was going out and making speeches and I was getting tens of thousands of people. And I was getting literally tens of thousands of people, also, more than Hillary in the same location. And I said, ‘Why am I going to lose?’ I mean, I go out, I make a speech like I have, you know, 25 times more people than she gets. And I didn’t need Beyonce to get them. I didn’t have to have, you know, entertainment and entertainers to get them. And then they’d all leave before she made the speech after the entertainer was finished. Honestly, it feels very much like it did in ’16. Now, I’m not sure that that’s right. And I’m not running. I mean, there are many people that have said to me, ‘Sir, I will never ever,’ you on the trail when I’m talking to people backstage etcetera, ‘I will never ever go and vote in the midterms because you’re not running and I don’t think you like Congress.’ Well, I do like Congress because I think, and when I say Congress I like the Republicans that support me in Congress. We’ve had tremendous support. I mean, we’ve got the taxes with 100 percent Republican votes and we don’t really have much of a majority. You know when you say majority, I always say, ‘If somebody has a cold, we have to delay the vote.’ So I get along, you know, very ... people have no idea how low how well I get along with Republicans in Congress. I get along well with a lot of the Democrats in Congress, but I’ll never get their vote.

 

Edited by william.scherk
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"I'm not the only one who thinks this ... "

On 10/14/2018 at 12:29 PM, william.scherk said:

#Midterm  #Predictions in my Youtube description brought 6 views instantly.  Now I understand the gravitational power of hashtags. [...]

Here I just grab the best bits of HA Goodman and Styx from yesterday. They sort of lay down their counters. [ link added in ]

Discovered another 'extreme vetting' Youtube channel, this one who takes a skeptical view of HA Goodman's various prognostications ...

 

"PayPal Hal." Hurr hurr.

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