My Final Election Analysis

I have not and am not currently tracking any of these races in the same manner that I once did. I have no spreadsheets, no polling, and quite frankly I do not have much confidence that anyone really knows whats going to happen. I made the same sort of declaration in 2016, and I was proven out to be correct because everyone was so dreadfully wrong. But on a high level basis I will offer these points and some high level possibilites:

Generic Ballot: The generic ballot is clearly where the talking heads are finding their conventional wisdom that this is a wave election in favor of the Democrats. They currently hold a solid seven point lead in the RCP average, which is considerably higher than either Party has seen at this point in any recent election cycle.  Seven points is approximately the margin that the Republicans enjoyed in 2010 when they won 63 seats.

It's easy to assume that if the seven point average holds up and becomes the reality that we are looking at a similar wave. But the rub here is that while the overall polling average favors the Democrats, the more targeted battleground district polling is much closer, and in some cases have even favored the Republicans. That being said, if the battleground results turn out to be fairly even, there is still a good chance that the Democrats can win the twenty three seats necessary. But we would not be looking at the large wave election that some are projecting.

Congressional Seat polling: Individual district polling is always a headache because your potential sample size is very small. But what makes it even more difficult this year is trying to gauge voter enthusiasm. If (as I suspect) these pollsters are taking into account the generic ballot polling and other voter enthusiasm polls to help model their final weighing of anticipated turnout, they could end up being skewed. Moreover, pollsters seem to be quickly expanding their polling districts into areas where they have no previous experience in polling. It doesn't mean that all of this polling is wrong, it's just that the level of confidence cannot possibly be as high as it has been in past years.

Senate Seat Polling: In many ways the larger state polls of these individual Senate races has been anything but consistent with the generic ballot polling. If all you saw was these Senate polls this year, you might believe that this is a typical year where you see a bunch of close races in a bunch of battleground states. In fact, you would see the Senate polling largely in line with where these same contests were at back in 2012 (which was a year that  Democrats held a national congressional voting advantage of just over one percent and picked up two Senate and eight House seats). There would be nothing from these Senate races that would reflect any sort of wave in either direction.

Senate polling of Texas, Tennessee, and Mississippi: In a normal year, I doubt that anyone would be taking a lot of time polling any of these states. There really isn't any good reason to see any of these Republicans loose in these deep red states.  But the Democrats started out needing to pick up two seats to win back control of the Senate, and are currently looking at almost a sure loss of a seat in North Dakota. With only two "good" chances to pick up seats (Nevada and Arizona) the Democratic Party needs another seat to get to 51. Texas, Tennessee, and Mississippi are the best chances of the other seven seats. So IMHO the media narrative "requires" that pollsters find the remaining possible pick up and start polling.

In Texas for example, we  have had fifteen polls in October alone (in fact, four different Democratic Pollsters are polling in Texas).  Yet, not a single poll is showing Ted Cruz losing and he is actually polling over fifty percent on average. But the issue here is that when you do that much polling, with that many pollsters, and with that many partisan pollsters, you are bound to find an outlier or two that seems to provide some hope. I suspect it's a false hope. 

Early voting: If you look at the early voting (which is probably the single most reliable tangible statistic we have) you actually see a slight lead by the Republicans overall, and a slightly larger lead in the states where there are close Senate races. Going strictly by the Early voting, this election would appear to be somewhere in between the 2014 and 2016 elections, both obviously going much better for Republicans than they did for Democrats.  Now quite obviously, that doesn't mean that election day voting is going to favor Republicans or that we will see Republicans gains like we did in 2014 and 2016. But our early voting numbers do not reinforce the idea that we are looking at a big blue wave.

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Two possible scenarios: The first is the obvious narrative that we have been hearing for months, which is a the national vote results right around where the generic ballot is showing. This would lead to significant Democrat gains in the house (thirtyfive to fortyfive range), and a reasonable result for Democrats in the Senate (even or even a net pickup of one). This scenario is backed up by the strong generic ballot, the perceived strong voter enthusiasm of the Democratic rank and file, and strong congressional seat polling.

The second scenario is that we see another closely fought election, with the national vote results much closer than the generic ballot polling is suggesting. This would lead to muted gains for the Democrats in the House (ten to twenty range), and a good result in the Senate for the Republicans (net gains of two or three seats). This scenario would be backed up by Senate polling, as well as early voting numbers.

Most likely scenario: I am going to go out on a big limb and say that the end results will likely fall down somewhere in the middle of these two scenarios. My gut feeling is that this will be a good House election for the Democrats, but not quite the wave that some are expecting. I believe that they will probably win garner around a twenty five to thirty seat pick up in the house. Democrats will take control of the House with between 220-225 seats. 

I kind of expect that most of the Senate seats will go one way or the other (albeit frustratingly close across the board), and I believe it is more likely than not that it will be the Democrats what win most of those battleground seats. I believe that the most likely outcome will be a wash or a pickup of one (by either party). Republicans will keep control of the Senate with 50-52 seats.