What about Amy Walter?
No idea.
Well, I give up then. I still don’t think it’s too much to expect people on this board to be a little more in tune with these kinds of things than to need an Intro 101 course on everything.
Amy Walter’s bio, FWIW, courtesy of Wikipedia:
SlackerInc, can you explain what was “holy fucking shit!” about this poll?
Yeah, you’ve spent your efforts here telling why we’re not sharp enough to know who Charlie Cook is, but not why you posted the OP in the first place.
It’s not like we haven’t all wondered, and asked you directly over and over.
At least tell us what you wanted us to notice in that original pdf… I really did read the whole thing, getting more and more annoyed as I failed to find some amazing revelation of Pence’s proclivity for aboriginal boys or how Hillary’s black parents started the Watts riots.
He said in the OP that Cook was a legendary prognosticator and analyst so if you had the remotest interest in this thread you could easily google him. SlackerInc has already pointed out that question 7, about the generic House vote, is what had him excited (it moved 44% Dem to 48 while Republican had a slight decrease of 43 to 42). So while his excitement seems over done, I see no reason for this continued pile on about him not explaining everything to us.
I’ve been reading the Cook Political Report for ages and I have no idea why you started this thread. I say that because, while I’m always interested in political discussions, you’ve put no effort into explaining what your point is.
As far as I can tell, you are thrilled that voters are now leaning toward voting for Democratic congressional candidates on a generic ballot, when you compare those polls to polls taken in 2014 which showed a sizable Republican advantage on the generic ballot.
Seriously, is this what you’re talking about? That in mid-term elections in 2014, Republicans did well on generic ballot polling? And in a Presidential election year, Democrats are doing well on generic ballot polling? I’m genuinely interested if this is your main point, because my reaction is more like, “Well, no shit, Sherlock,” as opposed to giggling like I’m about to go downstairs on Christmas morning.
Thank you. I also just trust Cook that if a poll is something dramatic then it must be, because he doesn’t go off half-cocked. I suspect there is more in those crosstabs to explain his reaction but I’m not going to claim I know what they are. This was always about Cook rather than my own analysis of the polling data. I thought that was clear in the title, but then so many people didn’t even seem to know who he is.
The question varies among major orgs.
“If the election for Congress were being held today, and you had to make a choice, would you be voting for…” (Economist/YouGov)
“And, what is your preference for the outcome of this year’s congressional elections –
Congress controlled by Republicans or a Congress controlled by Democrats?” (NBC/WSJ)
“If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for (the Democratic candidate) or (the Republican candidate) in your congressional district?” ABC/WP
I think the Fox one is of the ‘election for Congress in your district’ type which implies but isn’t completely explicit it’s the House (your Senator is running in your district…though also in every other district in the state 
).
But they are all averaged together eg by RCP.
It’s fair to say the question is more indicative of the House though I agree, and anyway it’s cumbersome to discuss ~40 (though that’s shockingly few) competitive House races one by one. Whereas the Senate comes down to a few and finally maybe just one or two really likely to go either way, which will have their own individual dynamics nothing to do with how people on the other side of the country answer the generic question.
They should just poll those competitive House districts–ideally individually, but even collectively would be an improvement over the national generic ballot.
The Democrat running against the incumbent Republican in a local House race is running ads linking him to Trump. The Republican is running ads linking his opponent to Hillary.
Me: Hi, messenger! You look like you have a message for me.
Messenger: Yup!
Me: …what is it?
Messenger: Charlie Cook says something! Here’s a stack of paper! The message is somewhere in there!
Me: Can you just tell me the message?
Messenger: IT’S CHARLIE COOK!
Me: Right. Charlie Cook. So what’s the message?
Messenger: What’s wrong with you? Do I have to tell you everything?
I wouldn’t shoot that messenger, but I might fire him.
Then you’d also fire Charlie Cook, Margie O’Meara, and Kristin Soltis-Anderson, all of whom are considered prime guests for the Sunday shows. They breathlessly passed on the same PDF with less information than I provided.
Nationalizing the election, smart. Tip O’Neill’s maxim “all politics is local” seems less and less true with every passing cycle.
If they did it on this messageboard in the same fashion you did, then yeah. You can’t really defend your shoddy OP by saying “But others do it too!”
This was how I was informed of the poll. Funny how no one there was cranky like you are being (which of course surely has nothing to do with you having an axe to grind with me in particular, heaven forfend):
No, man. It is indeed annoying to have someone declare “read this 62 page poll! There’s something awesome in there!”. I only defended you because you did come back and tell us what you thought was interesting. I’ll note the three Facebook responders did not seem to agree with you as to what made it a barnburner.
And I subscribed, thirty years ago. But a random, generic name doesn’t always rattle my brain cells. Next time SlackerInc should give context and explain what the fuck he’s are going on about. Dumping a PDF file on our laps doesn’t do it. We don’t accept that from newbies, much less a longtime poster.
I disagree. Good candidates tend to win elections. Look at Ohio: Portman has run a good campaign in a year where the political winds in swing states ought to be strongly against him. Even John McCain, the legendary pork critic, is running a campaign in a tough year based on all the defense jobs he brings to Arizona.
Terrible candidates like Trump can bring down other, down-ballot candidates, of course. But a strategy to intentionally nationalize local elections is really still a strategy for losers.
Huh. So you think in 2010 and 2014, Republicans just happened to have a bunch of good local candidates pushing local issues? Really? :dubious:
You’re right, they didn’t. But neither did they say “waahh, I want to be spoonfed the highlights!” They read through it and offered their own reactions, which is what I was hoping to get here (in a way, I was crowdsourcing this poll as I only read the first few pages). And note that I responded to your earlier comment by specifically saying (emphasis mine):
That’s a fair point that should be clarified: every midterm election is a referendum on the President, and that’s almost always a loser for the President. Charlie Cook has written about nationalized elections, and his reference points are mid-term wave elections like 1994 and 2010. Surely you’ve read his books, right?
If you want to nationalize a local race during a presidential election, it’s pretty much a dumb strategy.