For the first time, the votemaster's last-5 non-partisan polling average has Democrats capturing the senate: 51D/I, vs 49R! It's been hovering 50-50 and 51R-49D, and 49-49 with 2 "ties" for all of October. The undecideds are breaking for us!
Check it out, it's a thing of absolute beauty.
Remember, his predictions are based on a 5-poll average. So this isn't just a good set for us, we are beating the Republicans in Virginia and Missouri (sorry TN and AZ, I would love for a 52 seat majority so we aren't held hostage by Lieberman)
Even more, A week ago, the EV "VoteMaster" (
he never goes by another name that I know of) - linked to a
brilliant analysis by a Princeton student who doesn't quite like the idea of a 5 poll straight average.
He uses a method which "ages" the older polls to make them less influential into the result. The idea is that a poll taken a week ago is less accurate than one taken today, because some people will have changed their minds in that week. The premise is sound, but of course I will leave better statisticians than I to debate how you mathematically account for that.
When I first checked his site, on October 31st, his method only gave the Democrats a 20% chance of retaking the senate. Now, those odds are over 40%! It predicts we'll take 50.3 seats! We are surging, and nothing, not Kerry's joke nor Bush's frantic disgusting negative campaigning is stemming the tide.
The hard work is paying off. Like many of you, I feared that Foley-gate would be our high-water mark, and Republicans would eat away our lead slowly - that hasn't happened, they never really recovered.
Whether we take the senate or not, we've achieved a lot. The remaining Republicans, whether 51, 50 or 49 of them will be running scared of 2008. At worst, we will see a somewhat humbled and cowed Republican Majority there. If it is 50-50, we can take some small pleasure in forcing Cheney to spend most of his time at the Senate breaking ties. And it won't always work that way, we'll win a few votes there too.