Oct 31 2010
It’s A GOP Tsunami, And It is Enormous!
Last week I predicted around a 75 house seat pick up for the GOP, along with a 9-11 senate seat win (you can’t win 75 seats in the house and not tip the Senate). I may have underestimated what is coming on November 2nd.
Gallup is out with it’s generic voter results for the final week leading into the elections, and it is historic (click to enlarge):
The results are from Gallup’s Oct. 28-31 survey of 1,539 likely voters. It finds 52% to 55% of likely voters preferring the Republican candidate and 40% to 42% for the Democratic candidate on the national generic ballot — depending on turnout assumptions. Gallup’s analysis of several indicators of voter turnout from the weekend poll suggests turnout will be slightly higher than in recent years, at 45%. This would give the Republicans a 55% to 40% lead on the generic ballot, with 5% undecided.
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Taking Gallup’s final survey’s margin of error into account, the historical model predicts that the Republicans could gain anywhere from 60 seats on up, with gains well beyond that possible.
It should be noted, however, that this year’s 15-point gap in favor of the Republican candidates among likely voters is unprecedented in Gallup polling and could result in the largest Republican margin in House voting in several generations. This means that seat projections have moved into uncharted territory, in which past relationships between the national two-party vote and the number of seats won may not be maintained.
We are in uncharted territory. That is the reality of this election cycle.
The Democrats had no clue what would happen if they arrogantly ignored the wishes of the center of the electorate. Focused on their arch enemies on the far right, the liberal Democrat leadership in DC just assumed they would be determined to be the better of two evils. They were seriously wrong. So wrong they have created a backlash of biblical proportions – and destroyed any future consideration of liberal or far left policy proposals.
Nate Silver has an interesting scenario, where he describes the Wednesday after the election in what may be a truly prescient vision:
Not only did Republicans take over the House, but they also did so going away — winning a net of 78 seats from Democrats. Seven seats in New York State changed hands; so did six in Pennsylvania, five in Ohio and four in North Carolina. Party luminaries like Jim Obertsar and Raul Grijalva were defeated. Barney Frank and Dennis Kucinich survived, but they did so by just 2 points apiece, and their elections weren’t called until 1 a.m. Democrats picked up just one Republican-held seat — the open seat in Delaware — but Joseph Cao somehow survived in his very Democratic-leaning district in New Orleans. Virtually every race deemed to be a tossup broke to the Republican.
The news isn’t much better in the Senate. The Democratic candidates in North Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Illinois all lost, flipping those seats to red from blue. So did Harry Reid in Nevada and Joe Manchin in West Virginia; both of them lost by 7 points, in fact. Washington State isn’t finished counting its ballots, but Dino Rossi has about a 30,000-vote lead over Patty Murray, and looks likely to prevail. California isn’t done counting either, and the race between Barbara Boxer and Carly Firoina remains too close to call. It might not matter anyway: Joseph I. Lieberman has scheduled a press conference for later that afternoon, and is expected to announce that — after seeing the strength of the mandate the voters have given the G.O.P. — he’ll begin conferencing with Republicans when Congress reconvenes in January.
What Nate is describing is a statistically possible outcome assuming we get the 5%, once in a century election cycle. Gallup’s once in a century results seem to indicate that is where we are heading. I have been expecting this for a while. I have seen incredible House trends in RCP’s election data. I have seen a single polls swing 15% points towards the GOP in the last week. One example is ME-2, another is NV-3. There are a lot of these shifts in all corners of the nation. This means a wave – a really big wave.
I have also seen this blow out in early voting trends, such as we see in PA:
If we assume the GOP will lead with independents 60-40% (a well established trend in many national and state-wide polls), and the Dems lose 15% of their base while the GOP only loses 5%, then PA would see a the GOP win the early vote by 23.5% (61.8%-38.2%). That would be one helluva wave out there to sweep across PA if the GOP was winning generally by 20+% in PA.
I could envision waking up on Wednesday to find only 1-2 Democrat Congressman left standing in VA (Bobby Scott for sure, and maybe Jim Moran). It is that bad out there.
Let’s get back to those stunning Gallup numbers and look at the ‘trajectory’ over the last month. The GOP lead was shrinking for a while giving the impression the Dems may stave off some of the damage. But the last week proves that whatever the source of that hesitation to throw the Democrats out is now gone. The last trend sees movement back to a GOP landslide (click to enlarge):
A more interesting way to look at this data is to see how the Democrat and GOP generic lead will fall into two distinct bands come Tuesday:
Here we see how where the GOP edge will fall (inside the two red lines) verses the Democrat range (the two blue lines). Whether one uses the high or low turnout models from Gallup, the news is really bad for the Democrats.
Gallup also notes and ever expanding GOP lead with independents. They show something on the order of a 30% lead for the GOP with independents, which if true will be why so many races fall to the GOP that no one expected (think CA and WA for sure):
Ninety-two percent of Democrats are voting for the Democratic candidate in their district, and 96% of Republican likely voters are voting for the Republican candidate. Independents tilt toward the Republican candidate by a sizable 59% to 31% margin.
This 30% lead with independents is larger than anything I have seen from Gallup. When I recently computed early voting theoretical results I always assumed 20%. This alone would tilt a lot of state-wide races into the GOP column. But I do not see how you lose 30% of the center and also not lose a lot of the Democrat base that exists near the center. There is no way the center left dems are staying with the Democrat party 96-4%. In those previous calculations I ran scenarios assuming a 15% loss of the Dem party voters (a small amount). That pretty much threw the Dems out on their ears everywhere – and then some.
With these new numbers I am very confident in my previous predictions of a GOP gain of 70-80 house seats and 9-11 senate seats. If anything I would increase my senate prediction to 10-11 seats, confirming a GOP take over of both house of Congress.
This is what happens when the hyper-partisans on the fringe 20% piss off the rest of the country – you get these kinds of results. A huge warning for the GOP, Tea Party and conservative movement. A harsh but well earned lesson for the far left.
Update: Trying to get your mind wrapped around these numbers is not easy. Here is the Weekly Standard’s Sunday night attempt.
It looks like, for the first time in a really long time, I am going to be proud of my country—men. Ahem, pun intended.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Suhr Mesa and Free To Prosper, AJ Strata. AJ Strata said: It’s A GOP Tsunami, And It is Enormous! – http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/15107 […]
Thanks for the update, looks like a lot of work.
O’Donnell on track to win DE..
Huh? last I saw she was still 10 points down and that was from an “outlier” poll. Everyone has her down 15 points or more. Exactly how is that “on track to win”?
Rasmussen still has her down 11 points and still has Delaware as “Solid Dem”, not even a “leans” or tossup.
Lets not get involved in “wishcasting” here.
Cross if the Republicans are under represented in the polls by 10 or 12 % which is what the article is implying then races that look to be fairly safe for the democrats may not be. Even a few of the “Safe Seats” may come into play before Tuesday night is over.
That is why Barney Frank and John Dingle are possibkly going down this year.
Living on the far side of the Pacific I always enjoy election nights in the US because I don’t jhave to stay up late.
crosspatch:
I agree that O’Donnell is a longshot, but she seemed to come out of nowhere during the primary, and therefore must have a solid base of tea party support. She’s now running some half-hour infomercials to try to seal the deal with as many as she can. Remember that Delaware is a small state, so who knows? My feeling is that IF the Dems stay home (can’t pull the lever for Coons) AND the Indies come out big for O’Donnell (there may be some polling to support that), she just may pull it off.
And this morning, apparently in an attempt to pull in Dem votes, Milkcowski now declines to say that she’ll caucus with the Republicans in the Senate anymore – just like Crist.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/31/senate-candidate-leads-with-her-gut/?iref=allsearch
btw, spam spillage on aisle 7.
# WWS 01 Nov 2010 at 7:43 am
“Hello Sen. Murkowski? I have Arlen Specter on Line 1…yes, it’s regarding how to switch parties after the election…”
The Democrats had no clue what would happen if they arrogantly ignored the wishes of the center of the electorate.
Some of them did. Before the 2008 election, some of them talked about an 18 month “window” in which they needed to pass as much of their agenda as possible, before they lost their Congressional supermajority in 2010.
I suspect that tomorrow’s election will still be far worse than what they had expected.
Toes, what did I tell ya! See WWS’ post above:
“And this morning, apparently in an attempt to pull in Dem votes, Milkcowski now declines to say that she’ll caucus with the Republicans in the Senate anymore – just like Crist.”
EXACTLY the reason NOT to vote for any of these people who are in it for themselves, imho…or for the *Political Industrial Complex* to coin AJ’s phrase. This is NOT what the American public wants. The public wants to CLEAN HOUSE,imho.
Thanks for all of your hard work over the past few months, AJ – I’m a numbers junkie, so your stuff is like catnip!
I know it’s pie-in-the-sky, but I’m still hoping it will be 95+ in the House and 13 in the Senate. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, and maybe I am, but it never hurts to dream big, right?
We’ll know a whole lot more tomorrow evening. Then the REAL work begins. Gird your loins, folks. The next couple of years are gonna be doozies…..
Just read the following:
“The demographics are a big deal because of the way the pollster have modeled their turnout based on ’06 and ’08. Christine O’Donnell is currently winning in the lower two counties of Delaware, plus she is leading with independents. If African Americans in New Castle County don’t show up in the same proportions they did for Obama, she just might win this. Liberal heads would explode nationwide.”
“Christine O’Donnell is currently winning in the lower two counties of Delaware, plus she is leading with independents. If African Americans in New Castle County don’t show up in the same proportions they did for Obama, she just might win this. Liberal heads would explode nationwide.”
HA! My forecast just may come true. Go indies!!
If O’Donnell wins there will be yet another GOP woman for the media to savage, along with Palin and Bachman, and probably Angle, and perhaps Fiorina and Whitman.
The crypto-good-old-boys in the MSM will not be able to resist attacking these women in service to their Democrat masters. But in doing so, they may end up driving American women away from the Dems, a disasterous prospect for that strongly identity-politics-enabled party, but a great one for our nation.
Y… I SAW that (or maybe some other?) interview where Lisa waffled on the caucus … (Excuse me… I have to puke)
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Or… shall we vote for the cheating liar … or …
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May and I fantasized last night at 0300 about voting for McAdams…
Now THAT felt good… Send the raw rookie good guy to Washington ..
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Here’s his website … Read a few topics under “issues” …
http://www.scottmcadams.org/home/
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I deserve the scorn, btw… With a 38 year career flying commercial and USMC airplanes in the rear view mirror … one would think I (we) would be able to make up our minds… eg…You do NOT want your Captain to be wishy-washy at 100 feet above ground at 130 knots when the centerline lights are “barely visible” … “just glowing through the fog” …
“Shall we bust minimums & press on another second instead of a go around?” …
(ps… at 100 feet above ground… 130 knots… calm winds … it’s maybe 8 to 8.5 seconds until touchdown) (and you’re usually gonna lose a liiiitle bit of altitude making a go-around) … heh… fun for the family …
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May is calling … off to town today… You youngsters are on your own for awhile… Toes
The thing about Tsunamis? It’s not so much the amplitude, it’s the wave-length.
The Hillbuzz guys (Hillary supporters and now former democrats) say the democrat party must be burned to the ground destroyed, never to return as it is today…
check out their site: http://www.hillbuzz.org. They wrote a very interesting letter of apology to George W. Bush last year and another interesting letter to Rush last week. They are FURIOUS over what happened to Hillary two years ago…as well they should be, but I say, welcome to the (conservative) club.
AJ,
This is where a significant portion of the Democratic base starts voting Republican in 2010.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/mary-kate-cary/2010/10/29/Obama-Is-Turning-Women-and-Working-Families-Away-from-Dems
…we also find that the Democrats’ long-standing 20-point advantage among families with incomes of less than $50,000 has been completely erased, replaced by a small lead for Republicans. These are people that the Times called “less affluent” Americans. Yet if you look at the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the average median income of all households in the United States is $49,777–below the $50,000 threshold mentioned in the poll–and among “female householders with no husband present” (which I take to mean single moms), the median income was just $32,597 in 2009.
These families turning away from the Democrats are the ones earning the median household income in the United States right now. And many of those families’ breadwinners are women earning even less than that.
These days, nearly two thirds of mothers–whether single or not–are either breadwinners or co-breadwinners, according to last year’s Shriver Report, “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” These mothers are hard-working women, some of whom have started their own businesses and who want to move up the income ladder. These are also women who make the majority of the family’s healthcare decisions and live by a monthly budget.
The Democrat’s anti-small business and anti-private sector domestic policy initiatives are killing them with single mother job holders & small business job creaters.
Now those working single mothers are going to vote to kill Democrats.
[…] picks up 65 seats in the House, and nine Senate seats” … and another says, “It’s A GOP Tsunami, And It is Enormous!” … but I don’t think that Linda McMahon or Christine O’Donnell have any […]