Midterm Outlook for Dems Grows Hazy

68-in-100

Nate Silver: “Overall, Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate are 68-in-100, according to the Deluxe version of our forecast. That’s down from a high of 71-in-100, which persisted from Sept. 13 to Sept. 20, though that change isn’t large in the big scheme of things. In the House, Democrats’ chances are 31-in-100, which reflects an even smaller change; their chances were 32-in-100 on Sept. 23 and 24.”

Iowa Has Probably Screwed Up the Primaries, at Least for a While

“Maybe there will eventually be a decent-sized Iowa bounce despite all of this. But there’s a good chance that the candidates who did well in Iowa get screwed, and the candidates who did poorly there get a mulligan. To repeat: There’s very little importance in a mathematical sense to who wins 41 delegates. Iowa is all about the media narrative it produces and all about momentum, and that momentum, whoever wins, is likely to have been blunted.”

Nate Silver

Silver: Beto O’Rourke Best Bet for VP Pick

55%

Nate Silver thinks Beto O’Rourke has the best shot at being someone’s running mate on the 2020 Democratic ticket. “Here’s why: 1) There’s about a 55 percent chance (per Betfair) that the nominee will not be a white dude. 2) If the nominee is not a white dude, the VP probably will be a white dude. 3) The other white dudes are too old (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders) or would cost Democrats a Senate seat (Sherrod Brown). Hence, Beto.”

Victory Was Just 2 Percent Away

2%

Nate Silver: “What would have happened if just 1 out of every 100 voters shifted from Trump to Clinton? That would have produced a net shift of 2 percentage points in Clinton’s direction. … Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida flip back to Clinton, giving her a total of 307 electoral votes. And she’d have won the popular vote by 3 to 4 percentage points, right where the final national polls had the race and in line with Obama’s margin of victory in 2012.”

It’s No Time for Complacency, Democrats

At some point, complacency could become an issue, although it’s probably too early to worry about that. In the nearer term, I’d be worried that the race has been so volatile. Sure, things look good now. But conditions in May, and then again in July, produced a close race. Is there anything inherently preventing those conditions from arising again? I suppose I’d wonder about what Wikileaks has up its sleeve and what sort of geopolitical events could work in Trump’s favor.

Nate Silver

Trump’s Actual Support Overall Is About 8%

8%

Actual percentage of voters in the U.S. electorate who support Donald Trump, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. “Right now, [Trump] has 25 to 30% of the vote in polls among the roughly 25% of Americans who identify as Republican,” Silver writes. “That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.”

Trump Leads in Polls, but Not Popularity

Despite what you may have read elsewhere — or heard from the man himself — Donald Trump is not all that popular with Republican voters. Sure, he’s in first place in many polls. But Trump is near the back of the pack by another important measure… Trump’s favorability ratings among Republicans are barely better than break-even: 47 percent favorable and 43 percent unfavorable. Among the 17 Republican candidates, Trump’s net favorable rating, +4, ranks 13th, ahead of only Chris Christie, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki. … And yet, in these same polls, Trump is the first choice of an average of 20 percent of Republican voters — the highest in the field, ahead of Scott Walker (14 percent) and Jeb Bush (12 percent).

— Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.

How the GOP’s ‘Five-Ring Circus’ Is Shaping Up

silver-datalab-candidate-venn1-e1421190365162

This from Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight: “The chart is an oversimplification, but it recognizes the GOP’s dynamics are more complex than a simple left-right spectrum would imply. Some wings overlap more with others. For instance, a candidate could easily have a lot of appeal to both tea party and libertarian voters. But it’s unlikely that one candidate would simultaneously be the choice of both Christian conservatives and moderate voters.”