With the generic ballot getting tighter and Republican candidates increasingly pulling ahead in some races, the liberal media’s prediction (really more of a promise) of a “blue wave” seemed to be in jeopardy. But during Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC, moderator Chuck Todd was holding out hope for the wave as he kicked off the panel discussion with reams of favorable numbers from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll recently released.

“Presidential job approval connected to seats lost in the first midterm, we go back, here's President Trump sitting at 47 percent. That seems to be an improvement for him. What would 47 percent job rating mean in the past when it comes to a midterm result,” Todd prefaced. His goal was to point out that President Trump could still lose control of the House.

According to their polling data, Obama had a similar approval rating in 2010 and lost the House to the Tea Party. “Bill Clinton in 1994 in this same period of time in October had a 48 percent approval rating and lost 54 seats,” he added. “So, Peggy Noonan, should Republicans feel better or worse this morning when they look at the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll?”

Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist, suggested that “the good news for Republicans” was that the liberal media were not hyping the “blue wave” like they were. “[W]e were talking about a blue wave that we knew was coming and who is going to be very significant. We're not quite talking that way anymore,” she said.

But that admission aside, Noonan wasn’t sure the Republicans were in the clear. She noted that despite “peace and prosperity or economic growth”, Trump was “struggling to get to 50 percent which in the approval polls, which if you can't, is a drag on all of your people.”

A short time later, Todd turned to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson with another set of poll results on the issues that he suggested spelled doom for the GOP in November. Todd wrote off the issues where Republicans led Democrats and wanted his guest to “look at this advantage for Democrats among those who care about health care which is, with the economy, one of the top two issues and it's a 47 percent advantage for Democrats.”

Robinson wasn’t sure about the future of the “blue wave” but his analysis was that the Democrats really needed to get their base out to vote and the same for Republicans.

To suggest NBC News was doing their due diligence with their latest poll, Todd touted how they looked for people who didn’t like either party to see how they broke, like those who didn’t like Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“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,” Todd touted to Noonan noting the gap had grown very large in just a month. “That is what we saw with Donald Trump [in 2016]…”

The problem with that number? The margin of error. According to the on-screen graphic, the margin of error for that poll was a massive 9.5 percent. For comparison, pollsters were usually fine with an MOE between two and three points (of course, the lower the better). Anything above that is taken with a grain of salt up to about five. 9.5 doesn’t just mean the number is somewhere in there, it’s indicative of a huge problem with the sample. Typically it means a low amount of responses.

In a shocking turn, NBC journalist and anchor Katy Tur threw water on the hopes of a blue wave. “I do think there is an argument to be made for people telling pollsters one thing but believing another thing,” Tur explained.

“And I hate to be Debbie downer for Democrats”, she said before catching her blunder. “Or for Republican or for anyone or for the standard messaging, I should say.” According to Tur, Democrats should worry because “this feels a lot like 2016.” She warned that all of their confident talk could be overstated and there could be a groundswell for Trump and Republicans.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: