Mississippi’s incumbent last won by ten. Pretty impressive to probably overcome that. Nebraska’s incumbent last time won by something like 25! And Osborn came close.
No Democratic candidate could have gotten that near. Even in this environment.
As more evidence, Adam Hamilton considered doing exactly that in Kansas but decided to run as a Democrat. And it worked. Just be who you are, and explain where you stand. You won’t get the “I’ll never vote for a Democrat” voters, but you can clearly persuade enough of the middle.
It’s funny (but understandable) how people’s perspectives on polling accuracy are so colored by winners and losers.
In 2016, the average polling error turned out to be around 3% (the Republican presidential candidate’s overperformance), but because that 3% happened to straddle the magical 50% line, this made all the difference. (Plus that whole Electoral College thingy.)
This week, the average polling error (according to the Still Counting podcast) across all Senate/House races was larger – about 4% (overperformance this time by Democrats) – but because this only “straddled the 50% line” for a few specific races (actually, in the Senate, maybe just Mississippi), only polling nerds will care. In other words, their average error was larger, but polls got the main overall story just right.
(Note that the raw polling data was often closer to the final results, but pollsters weighed and adjusted to account for perceived likely sampling deficiencies. In short, they overcorrected.)
So maybe the answer is to improve Nebraska voters’ opinions of Democrats, rather than implicitly accepting that our brand is just always going to be too toxic to be associated with in some parts of the country? Seems to me that sends a really bad, self-defeating message, and for what? So we could get to 57 Senate seats instead of 56? There was never a realistic scenario where we actually needed to win Nebraska this year.
Yes and interestingly a few races, especially in Red regions, had much bigger misses, which I am reading as the pollster models overcorrecting for GOP nonresponse.
Some of the largest Senate misses were in the South: Texas (polls D+4, count D+12), Georgia (D+9 against D+18) and North Carolina (D+12 against D+20). Mississippi, still uncalled, is the sharpest case of thin polling: three polls all year, all sponsored by Democratic-aligned groups and the last on 22 October, averaged Republicans +7. The count is now within a few dozen votes. Among governors, Georgia, Texas and Nevada each moved by eight points or more.
That’s some pretty huge misses specifically in the Reddest areas, and just on the slightly big side elsewhere.
Exactly. In the same Still Counting conversation, they noted that the polls were closer in northern states, but further off in southern ones, likely for the reason you mentioned. In short, many hard-for-pollsters-to-reach MAGA voters stayed home this time – and since there are more of them in the south than the north, the polls missed more there.
Yes. Howard Dean initiated the “fifty state strategy” when he led the DNC twenty years ago. There was enough of this strategy left to help the Dems this week in many races (especially downballot), including in Texas, but the strategy has lost some of its energy, as shown especially in Florida.
Every circumstance will be different. Kansas hasn’t sent a Dem to senate in a long time but Kansans commonly elect a D as governor and for other local offices. The brand is not toxic per se there.
Long term sure. But deal with today today.
And today we have 56 seats, and a relatively good Senate map for 2028. How many do we need before we can start thinking long term?
Think now by delivering results over the next two years that are not perceived as reinforcing the to Nebraskans toxic narrative.
Those results can be passing items that begin to deliver, or having Trump veto those items, having their Republican office holders go on record as supporting Trump in that veto, and holding up the party as the side with solutions, if not for the hyperpartisan blocking being done.
I understand that, but I still think that it would have been better for the Democratic brand in Nebraska to have Osborn lose as a Democrat the last two times he ran, even if instead of losing by 6-7% he lost by 10-15%.
You really need that 40% of voters that are willing to pull the lever for a Democrat so as you work at the margins, nominate candidates that are right for the state, and hit a wave in sentiment you can actually win the seat as a Democrat.
I notice, for example, that Osborn basically lost in 2024 by the same margin he lost this year. So whatever wave helped Democrats in Kansas and Iowa seemed to miss him entirely.
54-56. Let’s not count chickens quite yet - give it a week or two.
Not a rematch against the same person. This time up against an incumbent who was elected in a landslide.
I guess we can decide which last race is the benchmark to this 5 point loss? Rickets’s 25 point margin against a Democrat or Osborn’s 7 point previous loss running as an Independent (which already was the closest a Republican came to losing in decades - typically margins of 15 to 20 points)?
And in Montana? If Bankhead hadn’t acted as the spoiler splitting the vote it is very possible Bodnar the Independent would have won. Totals together were 50 to the R 48.
Or, if Bodnar had just run as a Democrat and won the primary he possibly would have won the general.
I guess my point is that in a two-party system like ours (I mean structurally two-party, not just by tradition) Independents hurt the brand of the party. They habituate some voters to only vote for independents, and reinforce the opposition rhetoric that there is something wrong with being a Democrat.
It’s far better, from the perspective of the Democratic party, to convince independent-minded candidates to actually run as Democrats. And then deal with the fact that they might not always vote the way party leadership would like.
It’s not even like Montana won’t elect a Democrat - they have done so recently with Bullock and Tester.
I would suspect they tried to.
And I can’t help but smile at imagining if they did and they won - “He’s a Fetterman! Fuck that guy!” (And indeed fuck Fetterman, but he does vote with the Ds most of the time …)
Depends on how like minded they actually are. I much prefer Bernie running as an independent to the bourgeoning DSA subset of the Democratic party. I don’t want people who don’t share core values with me vying for control of the party; I’d rather they do their own thing, like Bernie does, and then if they’re aligned with me they can caucus with me.
I appreciate your intellectual consistency. I suspect not everyone who thinks Bankhead running as an independent against a nominated Democrat was a bright idea would feel the same way if DSA started running independent candidates in deep blue areas.
If Fetterman was winning elections in Nebraska, I’d be much more inclined to cut him slack for not always voting the party line.
Meh. He kept Oz out. And he’s still awful.
This is why i don’t trust polling. Too many people don’t answer, and the pollsters need to make up an a priori distribution without much to go on but “what happened last time”.
I think exit polling and after-the-vote projections in general are very good. There, the data is largely available and the issues (like cell phones and call blocking) haven’t changed much in decades.
But pre-election polling? I just don’t trust it.