Jon Ralston usually gets his predictions right. As he says in his intro to his 2022 predictions, “I think pundits should make predictions based on data, which is important; on experience, which can provide insight; and by gut, which is born of the first two.” He deeply studies and understands the data on early voting in a daily updated early voting blog. He is predicting wins for Democrats in the Senate race, along with 2 of the 3 close house races. Again this is based on actual early voting patterns, not polls conducted by right wing interests. For inexplicable reasons, the media, including MSNBC, frequently publish the RCP polling averages. RCP and other polling aggregators include polls from fringe conspiracy driven right wing groups like “American Greatness.” Their website makes Fox News look like a place for the reasonable exchange of ideas. They live in their own alternate reality and want their own alternate polls. They use Republican polling firms to get this type of headline and the corresponding effect on the polling average and media narrative:
Republicans Laxalt and Lombardo Maintain Their Leads Over Democrat Opponents
Republican Adam Laxalt, who served as Nevada’s Attorney General from 2015 to 2019, has widened his lead against Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, with 49.8 percent of likely voters saying they would vote for him, and 43.8 percent saying they would vote for the incumbent, Cortez-Masto, in the Nevada Senate race.
So real voting data leads Jon Ralston to say Senator Cortez Masto wins. If Senator Cortez Masto wins, I think we hold the senate. Voter enthusiasm on our side has caught up to the Republicans. The pundits, for the most part, are saying inflation and effective Republican crime fear mongering are going to lead to a Republican victory. Maybe. But maybe there is a certain 51% of the population that is going to vote like no midterm before. Yes grocery prices are currently painful (dramatic things needed to be done to prevent a pandemic related depression) and Republicans always run dark crime ads, but maybe there is something so visceral and so permanent that just changed in our country that most pundits can’t seem to grasp. I think a whole lot of “unlikely voters” are going to the polls to vote against criminalizing themselves in their most desperate moments. I think a lot of women from conservative communities and conservative families will be voting for the Democrats “on the down-low” in honor of that profoundly difficult CHOICE to have an abortion they had to make years ago. And in recognition that their daughter or sister may be in a similar situation sometime in the future, and no empty suit politician that sold out to win the evangelicals is going to decide for her.
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