It needs repeating; this election will pivot on turnout. If progressives and liberals stay home tomorrow, the Republicans will take as many as 70 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate. We will see Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, and a parade of subpoenas from a cabal of second-rate House chairpersons. The very same legislators who railed against possible action against the war criminals of the Bush Administration as “political shenanigans”, will jump on the impeachment bandwagon.

If progressives come out to the polls in the morning, the best case scenario in light of the latest numbers, is that Democrats will loose 30 seats in the House and 2 in the Senate. The Congress, in that scenario, will chug on through Republican obstruction and accomplish very little over the next two years, but the nation will not slide backward under the weight of conservative policies. You remember those policies right? They are the very ideals that created this recession, opened up the quagmires in foreign policy, and put us behind every other industrialized nation in industrial capacity, trade, energy infrastructure, and medical cost.

As it stands, my projections for tomorrow are mixed. I will go on the record and predict the Democrats will loose 43 seats and the House majority. As for the Senate, I will go with a 5 seat loss, leaving that chamber with 52 Democrats, 46 Republicans, and 2 Independents (Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut). These predictions reflect my belief that the overwhelming majority of polls are showing Republicans 3-5 ahead of where reality lives. This discrepancy is driven entirely by a reliance on polling that does not capture cell-phone only households. More than 20% of American households fit that description, and the majority of those trend liberal.

These households have not been seen as important by the pollsters because that demographic is far less likely to vote in a midterm election, thus the importance of turnout. If the pollsters are correct in their assumptions about likely voters, the Republican best case scenario will happen, if they are dead wrong, the opposite will be the case. This cycle will swing on the percentage of younger voters and minorities that Democrats can get to the polls. For more information and clarification on this topic, please visit pollster.com. Commentary on the importance of this election can be found at The Rational Middle.

Get out and vote on November 2…it is not a hard thing to do!

Tags: house, midterm, minority voters, polls, predicting the midterms, senate, turnout, young voters

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