old_brick_wall by Marko Knuutila, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Tension is building as we head into Tuesday’s midterm election where, to a large degree, the fate of the Trump agenda will be determined. The GOP seems a lock to keep the Senate and will probably gain seats (but, keep in mind, we are the Stupid Party), but losing the House to the Democrats would bog the administration down in a never-ending series of running gunfights with subpoena flinging Democrat committees and we would have two years of Continuing Resolutions as there is no budget that could pass the House and the Senate, plus, President Trump would have no incentive to even try to find an agreement.

The predictions are all over the map. Over at 538.com, Nate Silver confidently predicts the Democrats will win between 19 and 58 seats. RealClearPolitics is more guesstimating the Democrats pick up between 14 and 24 the interesting are some other data points. Two consecutive polls of battleground House districts place the Democrat lead within the margin of error. Now there is a new entrant from the Wall Street Journal.

Democrats hold a 7-percentage-point edge on the question of which party should control the next Congress, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Sunday as the tumultuous and divisive 2018 midterm campaign moved toward its conclusion.

Key points here are that the WSJ poll is considered to be a very good poll. The last two times the House flipped, in 2006 and 2010, the generic ballot was D+11.5 (actual was D+7.9) and R+9.4 (actual result was R+6.8)

RCP generic ballot avg has GOP losing just 22 seats. @NateSilver538 rates WSJ poll as A- poll. So we plugged today's WSJ number into the WSJ's historical generic ballot record and it shows just a 16 seat GOP loss. If the Red Wall holds, the data was staring every one in the face pic.twitter.com/Y3aQqyogiY — Daniel Clifton (@DanCliftonStrat) November 4, 2018

This analysis is correct. If the WSJ poll is right, the Democrat generic ballot advantage is not enough to generate anything like a wave and probably will not result in a change of control in the House because, given the poll vs actual relationship, a D+7 generic ballot will produce in D+5 actual outcome. In fact, a D+3.5 actual vote in 2000 only yielded two losses for the GOP.

I don’t have any more actual knowledge of what will happen Tuesday than any other living person. What I do know is that we have been gaslighted by polls for months. We’ve been fed story after story by the media, the left, and anti-Trump people who at one time could have been considered Republican or conservative, about how bad 2018 is going to be. We could very well lose the House, but it certainly isn’t pre-ordained or set in stone. And now a lot of people who have been crowing about a Blue Wave are walking back their predictions. I don’t see much of a chance of a Red Wave but maybe, just maybe, that Blue Wave is going to hit a Red Wall.

=========

=========

Like what you see? Then visit my story archive.

Follow @streiffredstate

I’m on Facebook. Drop by and join the fun there.

=========

=========