Another day, another set of data-free doom predictions from Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg -- complete with their statements from "Democrats" (who they never seem to quote, much less name)about how "nervous" they are about November.
Meanwhile, a reality-based researcher has a somewhat different view:
Probability of GOP control of Senate: 15%. Probability of Dem control: 85%
Curious? Follow me below the cartouche.
Sam Wang runs the Princeton Election Consortium, and unlike so many professional prognosticators, he goes by scientifically-measured polling data.
No "fundamentals" or "secret sauce". No "gut feelings".
Nothing but polls.
And he got the results right for every single 2012 Senate race.
Every. Single. One.
(Oh, yeah, and he got the 2012 presidential race right, too.)
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about him:
In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate US Presidential polls using probabilistic methods.[10] The method's applications included correct Election-Eve predictions, high-resolution tracking of the race during the campaign, and identification of targets for resource allocation. Wang's calculation, based on polls only, ended up precisely at the actual electoral outcome, Bush 286, Kerry 252 EV. In 2008, Sam Wang and Andrew Ferguson founded the Princeton Election Consortium blog, in which he analyzes U.S. national election polling.[11][12] His statistical analysis in 2012 correctly predicted the presidential vote outcome in 49 of 50 states and even the two candidate popular vote of 51.1% to 48.9%.[13] That year, the Princeton Election Consortium also correctly called 10 out of 10 close Senate races and came within a few seats of the final House outcome.
So why isn't he better known? Why isn't Big Media talking him up?
For the same reason that Big Media isn't talking up those of us who knew that invading and occupying Iraq would not end well: He's not telling a story they want to hear, much less propagate.
Go check him out. He's worth the read.