Republicans Will Win Midterms, Polls Are Wrong at least in my opinion. Many people asked why the Democrats lost the 2016 election when polls shows them heavily favored to win. One reason is that people polled did not reflect the new republican base voting for Donald Trump.I don't think the polls were able to solve the problem of not reaching Trump's base and because of that I think the Republicans will maintain a majority over Democrats in tomorrow's election.
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In 2016, the polls were wrong and the predictions were wrong.
Hillary Clinton was heavily favored to win, but she lost.
Since then, people have been asking, why were the polls so off?
And some have said, maybe it's because the people being polled do not represent those who voted for Donald Trump.
That you had independents, you had former Democrats, and you had new voters supporting the president.
Right now they're saying the Democrats have an 85% chance of taking the House.
Why should I believe them now?
Look, I'm not an expert.
I'm not a pollster.
I don't regularly track congressional races.
But I believe that the Republicans will probably keep everything.
And I have no fear of being wrong because my career isn't predicated on whether or not I can make accurate predictions like the pollsters and the people making these predictions.
Right now, we're hearing from Politico that polls are showing the Democrats are losing their lead.
We're also hearing that Republicans are still maintaining a lead when it comes to early voting.
When I look at this, and I look at the reasons as to why the polling was wrong in 2016, it leads me to believe the Republicans will likely win in both the House and Senate.
There's some other reasons, too.
Online engagement, in my opinion, favors the right.
Way more videos going viral supporting right-wing ideas, memes supporting right-wing ideas, things I just don't see on the left.
So today, one day before the midterms, let's take a look at the latest data and see just why the polls were wrong in 2016, and if maybe they're wrong again.
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I'm gonna lay my case as to why I think polls are wrong, but first...
Let's actually look at the polling data.
This is from Politico.
Generic ballot narrows on eve of midterms.
The final Politico morning consult poll prior to the midterm elections shows Republicans cutting into Democrats' lead on the generic congressional ballot.
According to the poll, 43% of registered voters would vote for the Democratic congressional candidate in their district, only slightly more than the 40% who would vote for the Republican candidate.
8% of registered voters are undecided.
Among those who say they are very likely to vote or have already voted, Democrats lead by 4 percentage points, 47% to 43%.
That's a slightly smaller edge for Democrats than other public polls conducted in the immediate run-up to the election.
But it fits an overall trend of modest tightening on the general ballot.
Now this is interesting.
Asked to predict the results of the midterms, voters are split.
35% say they think Democrats will win the House, and the same percentage picks Republicans to keep the majority.
But more voters, 46%, expect Republicans to keep control of the Senate.
To reiterate, most people don't know who is going to win the House, but most people think Republicans will keep control of the Senate.
This is not good for Democrats.
But now let's talk about why I think the polls are wrong.
Even Nate Silver, the famous predictor, says that the Dems could retake the House or not.
Both.
Extremely possible.
He's been walking back his predictions a little bit for the past couple weeks.
FiveThirtyEight's election forecaster Nate Silver said Sunday that the House could end up in Democratic or Republican hands in Tuesday's election, though polling predicts that Democrats will flip the chamber.
So in the House, we have Democrats with about a 4-in-5 chance of winning, Silver told ABC's This Week.
However, he noted that polls aren't always right.
The range of outcomes in the House is really wide, he explained.
Our range, which covers 80% of outcomes, goes from, on the low end, about 15 Democratic pickups, all the way to the low to mid 50s, 52-53.
Most of those are under 23, which is how many seats they would need to win to take the House.
But no one should be surprised if they only win 19 seats, and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats, Silver added.
Those are both extremely possible based on how accurate polls are in the real world.
How accurate the polls are in the real world.
It's an interesting statement when you consider that there's a margin of error in many polls, some as high as 5%.
And if the races are extremely close, within 5%, then it's a coin toss as far as I'm concerned.
And you also have to think about the polling methodology.
Since 2016, people have been scratching their heads as to how they got it so wrong.
It's not just about the polls.
Some polls showed Donald Trump was ahead.
But the predictions were just so off, giving Hillary Clinton like a 90% chance of winning.
While they're giving the Democrats an 85% chance of taking the House, I just don't believe it.
And let's look to Pew Internet Research from the time of the election to ask why.
After Donald Trump won the election, Pew ran this article asking why the predictions were off.
And I think this paragraph is the right answer.
they say. One likely culprit is what pollsters refer to as non-response bias. This occurs when
certain kinds of people systematically do not respond to surveys despite equal opportunity
outreach to all parts of the electorate.
We know that some groups, including the less educated voters who are a key demographic for Trump on election day, are consistently hard for pollsters to reach.
It is possible that the frustration and anti-institutional feelings that drove the Trump campaign may also have aligned with an unwillingness to respond to polls.
The result would be a strongly pro-Trump segment of the population that simply did not show up in the polls in proportion to their actual share of the population.
Keep in mind, people who systematically do not respond to surveys, I want you to remember this word, and they also say, consistently hard for pollsters to reach.
If that is true, why should we assume that these people became easier to reach in the past two years?
FiveThirtyEight ran this article two days ago.
Republicans need a systematic polling error to win the House.
And I found it interesting that this language is reflected by Nate Silver, who has been continually trying to hedge his bet because it is his job to make the correct prediction.
But he was wrong in 2016, and that's bad for his credibility.
In his article he says, If there's a typical polling error of 2-3 percentage points,
and it works in Republicans' favor, the House would be a toss-up.
We might not even know the winner for several days as everyone waits for additional mail ballots to be
returned from California.
My career is not made or broken by being wrong in my predictions.
It's just my opinion.
And my opinion now is that even if they're not wrong, there is still a decent chance Republicans keep control of the House and the Senate.
And I think they are wrong.
Because again, looking at Pew, they say these people are hard to reach.
We know less educated, high school educated, non-college educated people voted for Donald Trump in a large amount.
And that means if you can't poll these people and you only need a two to three percent shift for the Republicans to actually win, I think it's fair to say that we are looking at toss-up territory.
And if that's true, why should I believe you are going to win when 2016 showed Donald Trump actually won?
But Nate Silver does bring up some good points as to why the Democrats do have a good chance to win.
He says, Why is it so hard for Republicans to win the House without a systematic polling miss?
The short answer is because they're defending too much territory.
The House playing field is exceptionally broad this year.
Because of Republican retirements, an influx of Democratic cash and other factors, the decisive race won't necessarily be in a toss-up district.
It could very easily be in a likely Republican district where a GOP incumbent is caught sleeping at the wheel.
Perhaps a district where there hasn't been much polling.
But I'd like to counter that with the obvious.
What if it goes in the other direction?
What if the Democrats are caught sleeping at the wheel?
In that case, I think his argument is kind of moot.
And we can look to the failures of polling in 2016 to say why they're probably not correct again.
Now look, I could be wrong, for sure.
And as I said earlier, To me, it doesn't matter if I'm wrong.
You know, people don't come to my YouTube channel because they think I'm going to predict the future and help them with their lottery tickets, or help them when it comes to where they should hedge their bets.
They come, for the most part, to hear my opinion and hear about news issues.
But I do think the Republicans are probably going to control everything.
Because the polling was wrong in 2016, and I think the reason it was wrong is because the people I met at these Trump rallies were not your typical voter.
I asked many, many people at dozens of Trump rallies, why did you vote for the president?
Who did you vote for before?
Most people told me they never voted before.
And to me, that was interesting.
And many people said they were independents.
Many people told me they used to be Democrats.
And it's no surprise that Trump carried Ohio and Michigan, because he got the white working class.
And he got people riled up who didn't vote before.
And this was a huge talking point in 2016.
That certain areas of the country that were not considered left or right, red or blue, started lighting up in support of Trump.
Why would that change now?
With the economy doing better than ever, with a huge jobs report, with unemployment at an all-time low, why would Trump's support go down?
Now, it's true.
Republicans are defending more territory, and this could be why the Democrats sweep.
And don't forget, with Trump winning, there was egg on the face of many people on the left, and they're certainly more riled up now than ever.
Early voting is record high.
And it's not just that.
People have been struggling to get the youth vote out forever.
And they used to put up these ridiculous, stupid ads and have celebrities say things like, you know, rock the vote.
None of that matters to young people.
Young people want a mission.
They want to do something.
They want to be part of something.
And so what ends up happening now is you have the resistance movement, you have the Trump movement, and people are coming out, young people are coming out in huge record numbers, and people are shocked to see.
Now young people tend to vote Democrat, and this could be a defining factor in why the Republicans actually lose the House.
But all we have to go on so far is the polls and early voting data.
We can look at primary data, too.
Right now, the Republicans have a lead when it comes to early voting.
They do.
And the Democrats in the polls have a small lead.
But who knows what's going to happen come tomorrow?
Nobody does!
And this is what makes it so damn exciting.
Now look, my prediction's worth squat.
I'm just looking at online engagement.
I'm looking at how, on Facebook, conservatives are something like five to ten times more likely to engage with content and share content.
Why don't we see that same engagement from the left?
I'm looking at the GOP attack ads, these videos of left-wing violence, and the slogans, jobs not mobs.
These are things I do not see among the left.
Where is left-wing democratic leadership riling up people across the country?
We've seen Obama in past days, but Trump has been doing this non-stop.
The memes have been pouring out non-stop.
And if this really is a referendum on Donald Trump, then I think we should look at Trump's favorability as a reflection of what might happen.
When Trump was elected around November 9, 2016, his favorability was 37.5.
He won the presidency and his favorability was at 37.5% today.
It's at 41.8%.
His favorability is higher today than when he got elected.
Why then should I assume your polling data has fixed itself?
You were suddenly able to reach those who were unreachable in the past and who systematically avoid pollsters.
Why did that change?
I don't see a good reason to believe it.
And then when you see that Trump is actually doing, he's more favorable now, I can only assume he's gained support.
So again, a presidential election, very, very different from these ground level smaller districts.
But we're talking about a culture war.
We're talking about the Democrats versus the Republicans.
And this could be a huge factor in what rallies people to vote.
Many people are posting, straight red ticket, vote straight red, vote straight blue.
It's not necessarily about the individual candidates.
It's about left versus right.
It's about red versus blue.
And I'm sure many people are going to vote simply based on their tribe.
I think tribalism is playing a bigger role than any policy position.
And that's why I think we've seen such powerful attack ads, especially from the GOP.
Pointing out Antifa and left-wing violence, jobs not mobs.
These slogans, in my opinion, will work.
But again, I could be wrong.
So let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
The midterm is tomorrow.
Yes, I'm going to vote.
No, I'm not going to tell you who I'm voting for!
I think most people can make an assumption based on some of the tweets I've made and the fact that I live in New Jersey.
I think it's fairly obvious who I'm going to be voting for.
But look, you have to go out and vote.
If you're a Democrat, don't trust the polls.
You need to go and vote.
If you're a Republican, do not trust the polls.
You need to go vote.
Polls have failed us.
We have no idea what's going to happen.
My bet, I wouldn't make a big bet, I wouldn't put more than a hundred bucks down.
And that's kind of a lot of money.
Maybe I'll put 20 bucks down.
I'm speaking metaphorically, obviously, but I'm saying, like, I wouldn't make a huge bet on the Republicans take the House.
But I'd make a small one.
We'll call it a gentleman's bet.
No real money exchange here.
I don't want people to yell at me and give me a strike on my channel.
I think the Republicans are gonna take it.
But I'm completely open to being wrong as well.
So again, you comment below.
Let me know what you think.
Tomorrow's the big day.
And we'll see what happens.
So, you can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
Stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4pm on this channel.
And I've got more videos coming up on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews at 6pm.
But wait!
Also, on this channel, I'm going to be doing a livestream with a left-wing journalist to talk about who I should be voting for, because I'm still pretty undecided.
Don't get me wrong.
And we're gonna have a conversation, and I think this is a much-needed conversation, because many people on the left, in my opinion, don't engage in the discussion and don't present their arguments in a calm, reasonable manner.
