State of the Race: The Macro and the Micro

[longship]

Center for American Progress fellow Ruy Teixeira has a post on the apparent disconnect between the big picture and candidate trends in this election cycle. This is a drum I have been beating for at least a couple of months. It is nice to that there is confirming data on this because that is very good news for the Demcrats.

The vote counters are seeing the trees but are ignoring the forest.

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to looking at the outlook for this year’s Congressional elections. One is the “macro” approach, where one looks at a variety of national indicators to gauge the mood of the electorate and how that’s likely to affect the incumbent and challenging parties. The other approach is the “micro” approach, which assesses how each individual House and Senate race is likely to turn out, and aggregates up from that level to assess the likely gains and losses of the two parties.

The two methods can tell different stories and, indeed, this spring that’s just what they did. The macro story suggested that the GOP was in terrible shape and likely to get swamped by the Democrats in November. Indeed, by these macro-indicators, as Charlie Cook pointed out at the time, the GOP was at least as badly off as the Democrats were at that point in the 1994 election cycle.

The micro story was different, however. Looking at individual races, it was hard to see where the Democrats could pick up enough seats to take back the House, while the Senate looked almost impossible.

But that was then. This is now and now the macro and micro data are aligning and pointing in the same direction: big trouble for the Republicans and a good chance that they could lose not only the House—which looks better than 50-50 at this point—but also the Senate.

<much more at link>

State: of the Race: The Macro and the Micro

[gasperc]

1. points to, let's work harder and not blow it

I don't want to wake up nov 8th with 14 wins, one short or 15 or 16. We need a governing majority and the harder we work the more seats we flip the closer to something stable like 230 or better. Bush will veto everything and the members who won tight races will be too easily influenced by the GOP's whining points. Let's keep pushing the envelope.

[longship]

2. What's the problem with this post?

Do DUers have to stop posting optimistic posts? Does *everything* have to be doom and gloom so our troops will "work harder"? I utterly reject that concept.

We need to post both the good news and the bad news because we need to stay well-informed. I see no need to put up a DU good news filter or a bad news one. I am optimistic in this race because everything I've seen in my forty years of activism pales in comparison to this year.

There *has* been an extreme disconnect between the big issue indicators and the candidate polls. Now, one can claim that this is because people like both Democrats *and* their Repuke Congressperson, but that does *not* explain the fact that every single one of the big issue indicators points monolithically to an entirely different dynamic this year.

One can talk about Gerrymandering and other issues which should favor Repukes, but then it doesn't explain the large number of districts which seem to be competitive nationwide which should *not* be competitive. If one ignores the individual candidate polls and looks at their collective trends, I think one can come to a conclusion that November is building up to a Democratic tsunami.

I've tried to analyze this thing a hundred ways but I cannot see any explanation other than the inescapable conclusion that something has happened which the candidate pollsters are not measuring. Their assumptions may be incorrect here which would make their models incorrect. I've seen too many criticisms about pollsters overstating Republican strength, even in highly blue districts. If this is true, the whole candidate polling is going to be skewed. Then, the candidate polls would be more in line with the big issue indicators.

I think that this is what is happening. That's why I think that the Repukes are in extraordinarily bad trouble for November. And now, some astute people are beginning to report this.

And yes!!! Everybody needs to get out and vote, and work hard to assure this victory is maximized. I see six to eight Senate seats, and upwards of fifty House seats in November. The House is hard to call, but I think Democrats are going to get the benefit of every doubt next month. Hell! We might not lose a single Dem seat!

We have to work hard to see to it that this really happens.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Here's a much better "micro" link, to Congressional Quarterly:

http://www.cqpolitics.com/06map.html .

Your link provides the "macro" picture from polls, and this CQ link fills in the "micro" picture.

Congressional Quarterly summarizes with Flash maps and puts each of the seats up for election in the House, Senate, and Governors' Mansions into one of the following categories:

Safe for incumbent party
Incumbent favored
Leans incumbent
No Clear Favorite
Leans challenging party
Challenging party favored
Safe for challenging party

Especially in the House, the micro picture DOES seem less optimistic for Democrats than the macro picture.