Blue wave sign!

After the VA 2017 elections, I recall 538's Nate Silver and his crew held a podcast discussion about "angry voter fueled wave elections," comparing VA Democrats' over-performance from polls to GOP in 2010's blowout. Silver attributed this to pollsters' failures to predict late-deciders as a major factor when underestimating the size of a wave.



This brings me to this past Sunday's Meet the Press discussion regarding their newly released NBC/WSJ poll. Chuck Todd took off his annoying and biased pundit hat for a moment, and actually returned to his roots of hard numbers analysis.

“You know, Peggy, I want to point out one other thing. One of the missing pieces of analysis in 2016 that we didn't surface in time, that I think would've helped us understand the election better, which was where people were leaning that didn't like both Clinton and Trump. And he won those voters two to one. Well, I wanted to put this graphic up. These are people that don't like either political party right now. In September, the split between, who did they want to be in control of Congress, among people that were negative of both parties, was advantage Democrats, but narrowly, 43/38. Look at this number here in October. Among those that are negative on both, it is suddenly an open break here, towards the Democrats, 59/17. That's what we saw with Donald Trump, Peggy. It was narrow in September. October came, and the ones that were negative on both broke heavily towards Donald Trump. What does that tell you?" - Chuck Todd, MTP 10/21/18 www.nbcnews.com/...

This block of unaffiliated voters shifted late to Trump by 2 to 1 margin and NBC/Todd missed it.

This failure led Todd to carefully monitor this year any major shifts from the block of voters who express dislike with both Democratic and Republican parties. Back in September, NBC/WSJ found these voters leaned towards Democratic control of Congress by a modest advantage, 43% to 38%. But in their latest Oct 14-17 poll, NBC/WSJ captured a similar dramatic shift as 2016, the modest +5% grew to 42% as these voters now prefer Dem-controlled Congress by a whopping 59% to 17% margin.

That 59% stuck in my head all day! Almost 6 in 10 of the "pox on both their houses" fence-sitters breaking for Dems over GOP? Where have I read such eye-popping margins before? I found the answer in reports of In VA's 2017 exit polls.

"Despite pre-election polling that indicated Gillespie might be making inroads on Northam's lead in the polls, exit poll results show a strong shift towards Northam in the last days of the race. Of voters who made up their minds within the last week, six in ten voted for Northam."

- CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/exit-polls-how-ralph-northam-won-in-virginia/

6 in 10, kossacks!



And, NBC/WSJ just captured a similar nation-wide surge towards Dems!



From the 2017 exit polls, we can see why Democratics remained laser-focused on health-care throughout 2018.

"And while voters who chose immigration as their most important issue voted for Gillespie, they made up just 12 percent of voters. Instead, the most important issue to voters was health care, and these voters chose Northam over Gillespie by a margin of 55 percentage points. "

- CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/exit-polls-how-ralph-northam-won-in-virginia/

In a surprising and welcome break from MSM's usual framing that Dems lacking any unified message, Todd showed clip after clip of Democratic Senate candidates repeating the same "protect pre-existing conditions" disciplined mantra over and over.

And, for those still too burnt by 2016 to trust polls, take a look at these hard numbers.



In Nevada, where Dems must flip the GOP-held Senate seat, the Dem-stronghold of Clark County (Vegas) crushed their dismal 2014 early turnout. It’s early days yet but Dems even dominated in the notoriously swing county of Washoe where GOP hold a 2pt registration advantage.

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog

Check out Georgia where so far 521,867 people have voted early. At this same point in 2014, that number was 166,153. 30.3% of 2018 early voters did NOT vote at all in 2014! 76.5% of 18-29 did NOT vote in 2014! 29% of AAs did NOT vote in 2014! 60.6% of Hispanics did NOT vote in 2014! Those are our unreliable midterms voters coming out in droves to cast their ballots! http://georgiavotes.com/





What do you get when the Democratic based turns out in large numbers PLUS 6 in 10 unaffiliated voters favor Dems?