What Happens if There’s a Surge in Voting That Doesn’t Change Anything?
“the polls are not wrong, just misinterpreted”
The blogger Don Surber has raised a point I’ve been wondering about lately. What if there is a surge in voting which only makes blue areas bluer and red areas redder. Surber also predicts that Republicans will hold the House and Senate.
He writes at his blog:
How do I know Republicans will prevail on Tuesday?
President Trump is a student of Sun Tzu. He wins the war and then goes to battle. He is barnstorming for Republicans across the Trumpiverse like it was his second term.
By the way, the polls are not wrong, just misinterpreted.
In retrospect, the 2016 polls were not wrong either. Hillary won by 2 points. The polls said 3 or 4.
But the polls measured the wrong thing. In 2016, the polls failed to measure the Electoral College.
In 2018, the popular vote still doesn’t matter. Democrats can win the Senate vote by 12 million or more — and wind up losing four seats because most of Democrats are concentrated in big cities and along the coasts.
California’s Senate race will be a shutout that Democrats will win 12 million votes to nothing because there is no Republican on the ballot. Both candidates are Democrats.
Likewise, Massachusetts, New York, and the rest of New England will pile on the votes for Democrats.
Republicans meanwhile will take Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota by a total of 1 million votes.
The net result will be Republicans gaining four seats. Maybe more if West Virginia and a few other states flip.
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Comments
The Senate outlook has been pretty clear the whole time, due to the arithmetic. The House is what’s interesting. The Dems need a wave there, the GOP just needs small or no change, a more likely outcome. Soon we’ll see.
I take a more expansive view to arrive at the same conclusion. I believe that the polls are consistently wrong because we(and pollsters) keep asking the wrong questions and to the wrong voters. The fastest growing “party” in the US is “unaffiliated independent” and is the largest “party” in CA. Yet this voter block is consistently underrepresented in the polling samples and then treated as if they are of one mindset.
We need to start digging into those numbers which means polls need to start asking better questions to produce better data.
I actually believe that the GOP might be effective even if they barely lose the House because the new class next year is, regardless of party, more exposed to Trump’s zeitgeist.
Case in point, look at the Senate without the GOP gain new seats, the 51 old seats will be more amenable to Trump due to changing voter sentiment. That is happening in the House as well where Jim Jordan may gain a surge of support for his Freedom Caucus. There will be fewer RINOs in the House regardless of the election.
Also, it is far from certain that Pelosi will have the votes to be re-elected as Speaker. So even if the Dems do regain majority, the party will be more divided. This may result in either a less radical Speaker or more Dems not voting in line.
This is not like when Paul Ryan’s election opened the gates for passage of Obama’s “hope and change” agenda. The Dems controlled everything for the first two years of Obama’s admin. Yet they counldn’t (dared not?) pass anything. Suddenly, it was possible due to “bipartisanship”. This is far from the case this time.
We really need to look at the “fastest growing party in America” numbers and start asking better questions.
i’m registered “independent” here in #Failifornia for two reasons…
#1: the CA GOP is useless.
#2: i wanted to vote for Bernie vice Shrillery in the 2016 primary, just to be a 5hit. 🙂
Beware the tides of fraud. There will be massive Democratic fraud. I know that they say voter fraud is rare, but they also had everyone parroting for years that the number of illegal aliens was a fixed, immutable 11 million. Now the Yale and MIT has it at 2 or almost 3 times that.
The D’Rats are Bolsheviks and will do anything. Ask Seth Rich. Whoops.