There have been 4 recent polls in NY looking at races there, and especially for Governor, they are all over the place - all of them with Andrew Cuomo leads over (yet another) insurgent Republican (and whack job) Carl Paladino. Two show a 6 to 9 point lead, the other two with much larger leads (pollster.com's aggregate is 16.1 points for Cuomo.
The difference? The likely voter.
It is important to remember that few likely voter screens are created equal, as different pollsters often use very different methods to model or screen for what they all describe as "likely voters." And worse, only a handful of pollsters disclose the details of their process. This is an aspect of this year's polling that we will continue to watch closely.
This is an important concept. While registered voters tend to skew D, likely voters (i.e those that show at the polls) are skewed R, so in a typical year a tie in the registered voter measurements means a small R win. This year, the likely voter models are heavily skewed R because of the "enthusiasm gap". Are they too skewed? They are setting the media narrative, but what if some of the pollsters are simply setting the bar too high (or low)? What if the Democrats have more money and a better GOTV (thank Michael Steele for that)? What if an unenthusiastic vote counts as much as an enthusiastic one (they do)? What if the prospect of R control mobilizes the Ds toward election day? What if the generic ballot is tending D (it is)?
Could the Dems lose both chambers? Absolutely! The economy sucks and people are unhappy with DC. Still, the election isn't over yet. The Dems will lose seats, no doubt, but since the Republicans are disliked more than Democrats (that's a fact, not an opinion), the Speaker's position is not yet decided, regardless of what the media would have you believe. An inevitable R win is just as much a media creation as Obama's plunging approval numbers (which aren't plunging).
The media needs a new narrative. The current one might just be wrong.