It’s a wave.
As I have consistently pointed out for months, a true wave
does not appear until the very end of a political campaign
cycle. The very end. That means the last 2-3 days. Even then,
the size of the wave is not fully clear until the votes are
counted.
There is a myriad of polls these days. National organization
polls. Political party polls. College/university-run polls.
Consultant polls. Candidate polls. Amateur polls. Most of
them, even the best of them, are of little prognosticative
value until the end of the campaign cycle. Their quality
often improves at the end of the campaign because most
voters have made up their minds, and because pollsters
don’t want to look foolish if there numbers are way off the
actual results (so they take more care in their sampling).
In the national mid-term elections of 2014, the final polls are
in, and if we are to believe them, there is a considerably
strong voter mood this year that is translating into votes for
Republicans, the party out of power. The most persistently
undecided voters, according to most polls, are voting not
only against the Democrat brand, but also against President
Obama and his administration. They are also voting against
incumbents of both parties.
Conventional wisdom is that the Republicans will now pick up
6-7 sets in the U.S.senate, 6-10 sets in the U.S. house, and lose
only a net of 3-4 governors. Based on the premise that a wave
actually comes, I think the GOP will do better than that,
perhaps 8-12 senate seats, 11-17 U.S. house seat, and come
closer to a zero net loss of governorships.
The Democratic Party advantage in cash has now been spent.
The only advantage they now have is their historically
(2006 to 2012) superior get-out-the-vote organization. If this
superiority is maintained in 2014, it might save some
Democratic incumbents and moderate the wave.
I want to point out that the term”wave” is used because a
political wave behaves in some ways like a wave of water, i.e.,
it takes down most every standing thing in its way. There will
probably also likely be some GOP incumbents who lose,
particularly some GOP governors.
The catalyst for this wave is Barack Obama, his White House
team, and the congressional leadership of Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi. Their policies have provoked a voter reaction
not unlike the one in 2010 against Obamacare, but this cycle
the reaction has been against a whole array of government
intrusion, class warfare, excessive regulation, higher taxes,
and an inept foreign policy.
_____________________________________________________________
Copyright (c) 2014 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment