I decided a week ago that I wasn’t going to spend time on polling and “YOUR SHOULD FREAK OUT NOW” articles because I’d like my heart to stay strong enough to carry me past middle age.
The fact is polling is a hot mess. Pollsters have never really figured out how to get good data since cell phones and caller ID became a thing.
Kurt Bardella hit the nail on the head today when he wrote in the Los Angeles Times that no one really has any idea what is going to happen on Election Day, “especially the pollsters who routinely get things wrong.” Those telling us the outcome is clear are doing us a disservice. Bardella reminded readers of the 2020 headline from Vanderbilt University: “Preelection polls in 2020 had the largest errors in 40 years.”
What is more interesting to me is actual data — we have some early voting in, how does it compare to past years?
Honestly, it looks pretty F-ing great. The numbers of early voting are great. But more important than that, the ratio of Ds to Rs looks like an improvement.
Take a look. This is all taken from a twitter thread by Simon Rosenberg You can find the twitter thread here
A thread w/things I'm seeing this am:
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At this point in 2018 Rs had 300k early vote lead. Today Ds have a 2m vote lead.
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Turnout is 10% over '18.
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Ds outperforming 2020 share in GA, MI, NV, OH, PA, VA, WI.
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This is encouraging.
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Polls have been good for Dems this week. Almost all the tracks this week were +Dem, several showed 3-4 movements to Ds.
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Lots of good Senate polls.
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"Election moving to Rs" not showing up in this week's public polling or early vote data.
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New @nytimes polls in 4 key House races are encouraging for Dems. What they show is a very close election, with many races being decided by 1-2 points.
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Why we have to keep working hard. Need to close strong.
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Have talked for months about GOP's low ceiling, something I've called the MAGA hangover.
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They are struggling to hit 50 across US, not putting races away.
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Good example of this is that R held Senate seats in IA, NC, OH, UT, WI remain competitive
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We had encouraging polls of Hispanics/Latinos in NV, TX.
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Both the Telemundo and Univision polls of Texas Hispanics/Latinos have Beto outperforming both 2018 and 2020.
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Still think the recent erosion of GOP brand in heavily Mexican-American parts of US - AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, TX - has not gotten enough attention.
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A new @HarvardIOP poll of 18-29 year olds has very encouraging news. "Definitely voting" matches/exceeds record breaking 2018 midterm numbers, Ds lead 57-31 (+26).
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Abortion, gun safety, climate, loan forgiveness, strong recovery = reasons to vote
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Liz Cheney will now be openly campaigning for Democrats. The rejection of MAGA by more traditional Republicans is happening across US, could end being a few points in key races and really make a difference. cc @BillKristol
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Another important sign of Dem intensity - Dem House and Senate candidates enter the home stretch with a huge cash on hand advantage over Rs. Anemic candidate fundraising, rejection of early vote two big GOP fails this cycle.
Gas prices are coming down. Russia is struggling. The economy is strong. We've made historic investments in future growth, success. America is better off today.
@POTUS has been a good President.
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Let's close strong peeps.
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Let's get this done.
and this:
And we have great people fighting hard on our side!
Democrats deploy Biden and Obama to lock down Pennsylvania
President Biden and former President Obama will barnstorm the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas on Nov. 5 with the party's nominees for Pennsylvania governor and Senate, according to a Democrat with direct knowledge of the plans.
Not only is polling a mess, but the models that they do have are based on projecting “likely” voters based, at least partly, on historical trends. All of the modeling falls apart if you assume high enthusiasm on the part of democrats.
I don’t know about you, but I sure see high enthusiasm to vote on the part of Democrats!
For example, right here in the Good News Roundup, we set up three different fundraisers for House candidates this year. Honestly, I thought we might raise a few thousand dollars TOTAL for the House. But, before I knew it we had raised $2000 for each candidate in the first round! We reached our goal so quickly we had to make a NEW fundraiser! Then that happened AGAIN!
Our most recent fundraising effort — Put Your Money Where Your House Is! ALSO reached its goal of $2000 for 22 amazing candidates! Yay!!
Before that we fundraised for Keep The House Blue and Let's Save The House!!
In three months we have raised almost $200,000!!!!
We had about 3000 different contributions to get to that 200,000!
And that is just from THIS community!!
And people are writing to voters in other states at an amazing rate too
Join in the fun! It feels GREAT and is super easy!
And even flawed, the polling looks better than a week ago when people were losing their minds
And No, Latinos aren’t abandoning the Democratic Party
Is the Latino voter abandoning Democrats, as this year’s incessant media narrative would have it?
The source of the narrative is exit polling showing that Donald Trump gained among Latinos from 2016 to 2020, going from about 1 in 3 to roughly 2 in 5. Polling suggests this hasn’t rebounded, and has indeed worsened in places such as South Texas and South Florida. This has shaken the premise that demographics, in particular the fast-growing Hispanic population, inevitably favor Democrats in the long run.
But the long-term fear is overstated. First, as Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz documented, Democratic presidential candidates’ winning margins among Latino voters have swung widely from election to election since 1984, from a high of 51 points in 1996 to a low of nine in 2004. By that measure, Joe Biden’s 33-point margin in 2020 was typical.
Second, Latinos are not shifting over time to vote the same way White Americans do. For example, polling in Texas by Equis Research finds that even Hispanic voters whose families have been in the United States for generations remain far more Democratic than their non-Hispanic neighbors. The GOP could gain a 50 percent share of Hispanic voters over time, a leading Latino Democratic strategist told me, but that would require abandoning white-nationalist appeals — a welcome possibility not just for the Republican Party but for the nation.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) faces the challenge of a lifetime — and I mean a lifetime, as he was first elected to public office in 1959 when I was two, and has served in the Senate for four decades — from Democrat Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who hung up his commission when Donald Trump was elected and returned home to the Tall Corn State in 2016.
Franken, 64, pulled within three percentage points of Grassley, 89, in the Des Moines Register-Mediacom Iowa Poll, which is among the best in the business. Franken held a notable 11-point lead among independent likely voters in the survey taken Oct. 9-12. The poll indicates that voters might be tired of Grassley and are looking for someone different.
Look, I don’t have a crystal ball. If I told you that I knew we were going to win on 11/8, I would be as dishonest as every other person claiming to know how things will play out.
But what I do know is that, ultimately, whether we win or not on November 8th will be determined by us. This is all about GOTV GOTV GOTMFV.
What can you do?
1. Contact your local Democratic party to see what you can do. You can find a link here to all the state websites here. Or you can Google your town and democratic party to see where to go locally.
2. Swing left is organizing a Last Weekend event to get everyone working to make an impact in the most competitive races by connecting with voters during The Last Weekend before Election Day: November 5-8, 2022. You can sign up here
3. Know anyone who isn’t planning to vote because they don’t think Democrats and Republicans are that different or that this election isn’t that important? Share this with them
4. Pledge to reach out to Democrats you know who may or may not make it to the polls and encourage them to go. Maybe offer to go with them!
Let’s do this!
Not onto the good news:
Good Economic News
Treasury yields fall after GDP report shows some signs of inflation easing
Treasury yields slid Thursday after the latest U.S. GDP report showed some signs that inflationary pressures could be easing.
Dow closes 800 points higher on Friday, registers fourth straight week of gains
Stocks rose on Friday despite a tumble in Amazon shares after economic data pointed to slowing inflation and a steady consumer.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 828.52 points, or about 2.6%, higher at 32,861.80. The S&P 500 added nearly 2.5%, to close at 3,901.06. The Nasdaq Composite ended up about 2.9%, to close at 11,102.45.
On a weekly basis, the major indexes made notable gains. It was the fourth positive week in a row for the Dow, a first since a five-week streak ending in November 2021. The 30-stock index is up 5.7% this week in its best performance since May. It’s also on track for its best month since January 1976.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are up 3.9% and 2.2%, respectively, for the week.
Other Good News