We are finally at the point where pollsters are releasing their last surveys before election day. Numerous surveys that have previously been friendly to Democrats going back to the summer have shifted, and on Wednesday morning, another two bit the dust.
CNN/SRSS and Marist both dropped their final iterations, and they show Republicans with a sizable lead heading into the final stretch. Back in September, both polls had Democrats up three points.
The shift is real, and it can no longer be explained away by blaming “partisan pollsters” or whatever other coping mechanism election bro Twitter is going with these days. One look at the RCP generic ballot average will show a sea of red, with only notoriously garbage pollsters Morning Consult and YouGov still pumping out ridiculous leads for Democrats. For comparison’s sake, the former missed the 2020 generic vote by five points while the latter missed it by seven points. So yeah, as I said, they are trash polls.
Here’s a picture of how all the other major non-partisan polls are going for the libs.
The bell is tolling, and I’m not talking about jamming AC/DC. When we wake up on November 9th, it’s going to be an absolute wasteland for Democrats. I can’t say for certain who will win the competitive Senate seats because those are very volatile in any cycle, but the House is no longer in play. You can bookmark this, write it down, and frame it. The Republicans will retake the House of Representatives, and it won’t be particularly close. Nancy Pelosi will likely be retiring soon.
If the Republicans end up with 240-plus seats as I believe they will, that will qualify as a wave election and will establish a durable majority Democrats may not take back for at least a decade. Things aren’t going to be much better at the state level either. Right now, it’s a given that the GOP will win a majority of governorships, and you could even see an upset in Oregon.
Back to the Senate because I know all eyes are there, worst case at this point is it remains 50-50 as it is now. There is no pathway for the Democrats to attain a true majority, much less one capable of breaking the filibuster (i.e. 52 seats). The fat lady has sung there and it’s just a matter of whether the GOP can pull a single in Arizona, Pennsylvania, or Georgia. I’m not mentioning Nevada or Wisconsin because the Republicans are becoming heavy favorites there, and North Carolina isn’t even a question anymore.
Here’s my ending thought, though. There are going to be a lot of election “analysts” who are about to have their credibility burned to the ground, and they are going to deserve it. For months, we were fed “Democrat comeback” narratives from people parsing historically bad summer polling. Then things shifted to parsing the early voting tabulations, another historically terrible measure for predicting winners. Instead of being honest with people that this is simply a red wave year (obvious to anyone looking at the fundamentals), they have chosen to spread false hope, and no one should listen to those people next cycle when they inevitably start spouting hot takes again.