Congress is starting to work? Maybe?

This is a good, pre-Trump start:

The state of the GOP house majority

This is still a work in progress.

Surface level vs. underlying meaning

This is a great take by Red Eagle Politics.

Will Jim Jordan be the next House speaker?

The situation is in flux. Jim Jordan is interested in the House Speaker role.

Harball: The only way to play with the FBI

If you don't play hardball, the FBI is a lost cause as an American institution.

GOP congress in limbo (pt. 2)

The drama continues as no speaker has been selected yet.  Democrats and the leftist media have mocked the GOP for not getting this right, but it's really just one more sign that the party is more diverse in ideas than the Democrats.  That's. A. Positive.

GOP in congress in limbo?

Kevin McCarthy is not the guy, despite what this Fox Business video is saying.  There's more to it than "don't have chaos".  Yes chaos is not good but a sub-par speaker is no better, and long term, it's worse.  Kevin McCarthy could do more to unify the party by acknowledging concerns of those who think he's a RINO.  So far he's done nothing.  That says something.

What the polls are saying (pt. 2/3)

In part 1 of this poll review, I talked about Let's Go Brandon's impact on the 2022 midterm election cycle as well as his own chances for re-election. Now I'm going to dive a little further into the 2022 midterms.  In addition to the caveats mentioned in my previous post there are some additional caveats to be made here. While the presidential job approval does not accurately predict the outcome of a presidential election as the election is actually set up as individual elections, it is still directionally accurate.  When you look at congressional races there are 435 individual races.   So looking at a generic ballot is going to help even less with the outcome as to the makeup of the next congress.  Nevertheless, there is a correlation between the generic congressional ballot and what will happen in the midterms.  There is a directional view that can be helpful to outcome prediction.

Let's start with the congressional job approval ratings.  They're terrible.  Consistently. But that is nothing new and it makes sense; not only are the voters who support the party out of power negative, but the party in power will always have a contingent of their own voters who think that their congress is not getting enough done.  In my opinion this is the least predictive congressional polling being done. However there is some directional value to be determined from it.

As you can see below the long term trend, while flattish, does have some slight U-shaped disapproval and the reverse for disapproval.  

But if you zero in on the current congress, you can see that the post-election honeymoon seemed to have peaked in April 2021. Since then congressional approval has generally swung downward from about 36% to about 21%.

These polls tend to be mostly among registered voters.  The effect of such negatives can be twofold.  It can dampen enthusiasm and thus turnout, more so for the party in power, and also, it can energize voters in the party out of power.  Much of that energy is directed at presidential approval and this is part of why we see the presidents' parties typically lose seats in midterm elections.  Of course there are exceptions for various reasons. As the most recent examples, president Obama was shellacked in his first midterm election and in his second, Republicans made even further gains. Not exactly good news for Democrats.  Donald Trump even more recently, started with Republicans in control of both congress and the senate.  Despite his economic performance a hostile media ensured Republicans would lose ground during president Trump's midterm. And they did; Democrats took a thin majority of Congress. Leading up to the midterms what is somewhat more informative is the generic congressional vote.  It is merely directional but when they are this stark, they mean something.  Republicans lead on this metric, and that is not common. 

Consider also that the polls have consistently overstated Democrat support in these polls. Well, at least that's the narrative and we should be somewhat wary here. Taking a look at the RCP average congressional ballot spread versus the actual outcomes tells a slightly different story. 

Midterms

2018: RCP average DEM +7.3% / Actual result DEM +8.4% - Democrat polling was understated by 1.1% [counters hypothesis]

2014: RCP average REP +2.4% / Actual result REP +5.7% - Republican polling was understated by 3.3% [matches hypothesis]

2010: RCP average REP +9.4% / Actual result REP +6.8% - Republican polling was overstated by 3.6% [counters hypothesis]

2006: RCP average DEM +11.5% / Actual result DEM +7.9% - Democrat polling was overstated by 3.6% [matches hypothesis]

2002: RCP average REP +1.7% / Actual result REP +4.6% - Republican polling was understated by 3.9% [matches hypothesis]

On Election Cycle

2020: RCP average DEM +6.8% / Actual result DEM +3.1% - Democrat polling was overstated by 3.7% [matches hypothesis]

2016: RCP average DEM +0.6% / Actual result REP +1.1% - Democrat polling was overstated by 1.7% [matches hypothesis]

2012: RCP average REP +0.2% / Actual result DEM +1.2% - Democrat polling was understated by 1.4% [counters hypothesis]

2008: RCP average DEM +9.0% / Actual result DEM +10.7% - Democrat polling was understated by 1.7% [counters hypothesis]

2004: RCP average Tie / Actual result REP +2.6% - Republican polling was understated by 2.6% [matches hypothesis]

Overall in these 10 congressional cycles, there were 6 times the "Republican support is understated" hypothesis was supported and 4 times it was not correct. That's pretty weak. If we remove the 2 election cycles with the Obama halo effect (2008 and 2012) then we have 6 hypothesis matches and only two that counter it.  That's a stronger correlation but not absolute.  

In fact if we look at strictly midterm cycles, which is what we are most interested in, we have 3 matches and 2 counters, back to our original ration of 60% accurate to the hypothesis.  If we suggest that the polling firms and media have learned their lesson discard the 2018 midterm, our ratio is a little better but then how do we explain the 2020 variance?

Also worth considering is the fact that Republican understated support during midterms happened only 3 out of 5 times and not in the latest midterm cycle.  That is directional at best, not conclusive.

To me this hypothesis, while valid and plausible, still seems statistically weak and unproven.  If you look at all of the variances what is more interesting is that variance between predicted and actual results never exceeds 3.9%.  And in the midterms the variance has been decreasing cycle over cycle.  This differs from the presidential election cycles, likely because more resources can be assigned to congressional polls instead of being split with presidential polling.

Let's assume that the polling on midterm cycles has improved as the trend seems to indicate.  And let's assume that it is going to turn out relatively close to the 2018 cycle.  And further, let's assume that it could either match or counter the hypothesis. If we are currently sitting at Republicans +2.5% that could mean we are actually sitting at a low of Republicans +1.4% or as high as Republicans +3.6% Our closest approximation for best the case is 2014 (Republicans won 247 seats to 188 for the Democrats).  For the worst case the best approximation was 2016 (a non-midterm year) in which Republicans won 241 seats to the Democrats 191 seats.  Either scenario seems pretty good but these are not the final months of the campaign.  There's plenty of temporal room for poll movement yet to play out.

Lastly let's take a quick look at the Right Direction / Wrong Direction polling:

These numbers are not at levels seen since 2020 (a COVID related special case but definitely election-impacting), late 2013 (a non election year) and late 2012 (in an election cycle and one that as mentioned was an Obama halo effect year, despite being at a dip in his popularity).  In 2012 they Democrats gained 8 seats but did not get a congressional majority.  However in the senate they gained 2 seats and did become the majority.

If there is any correlation of Wrong Direction to the congressional outcome then this skews slightly in the Republicans favor.  But the stronger mirror as noted above is probably the 2014 generic congressional vote indicator. 2014 was considered a Republican wave election. But that means that the Republican support understatement hypothesis has to be true to see that sort of result.

Yes I'm optimistic about the midterms, but still very cautiously so.

Part 3 coming tomorrow.

Midterm prediction day (part 2)

Normally watching MSNBC is not recommended.  But here's a comparison of their forecast for the midterms from mid-January, versus late March of this year. 

And more recently:

Midterm prediction day (part 1)

Today I'm going to share a number of midterm predications even though we are about 6 months out from the elections.  First up is Red Eagle Politics.  I don't always agree with him on political issues (though mostly I do), but he does his research and knows his stuff.

Implosion in Congress

 Pelosi fail:

A possible preview preview of 2022

 In Canada's eastern province of Nova Scotia, a province that has not elected a provincial conservative government since 2006 and has voted liberal or socialist ever since (and in fact has had a conservative parliament only 14 out of 40 prior elections), elected a conservative government in a stunning upset with a resounding victory for the conservative party.

It could serve not only as a preview of Canada's upcoming federal election, but also of the U.S. midterm elections.

What happened in NM01?

What happened in New Mexico congressional district 1?  Many Republicans voters were expecting an upset surprise win for the GOP.  Nope.  They underperformed.  

But is that really a surprise?  No Trump endorsement, no big spending from Republicans, a lackluster candidate.

Red Eagle Politics takes up the case:

"You know...the guy..." makes a dull speech

I've been busy.  I haven't posted enough lately.  I've also missed speeches.  Like this one that Tim Pool discusses:

Alright, you got me: I missed this speech on purpose.

Kim Klacik for Congress

 How does this woman not win in November? Well, voter apathy and Democrat misinformation could do the trick.

That's why working together and supporting each other matters.  Good on Rand Paul for doing this:

Every little bit helps.

Supreme Court 1 - Congressional Democrats 0

Democrats want more impeachment.  They want the Mueller Grand Jury documents to try again. By a 9-0 vote the Supreme Court said NO.

Confirmation Bias

Part of the polarization of America, either as a symptom or a cause, confirmation bias is an existential condition in all things politic today.  Simply put, people tend to fit evidence into one of two boxes: real news or data that supports their beliefs OR fake/untrustworthy news, that can be discarded or ignored.  I've been guilty of it at times, it's hard to avoid doing it, but we need to try.  Below are  two recent examples of both Democrat and Republican confirmation bias.

Firstly a Democrat excitedly celebrating the fact that the Republicans are going to lose the senate (note this is not the consensus among the well known analysts like Politico, Sabato, Cook or Inside Elections) based primarily on a flimsy approve/disapprove for incumbents:

This is confirmation bias used as an extrapolation.  Not only is the Morning Consult polling questionable in my view (I know, that could be confirmation bias) but it is a single view.  More importantly approval/disapproval is not a 1-1 mapping with electability. Anyone who puts some of those red states as Democrat pickups is clearly guilty of wishful thinking.  That's not to say some of the races might not be close, but remember Beto O'Rourke beating Ted Cruz? Me neither.

Next NewsMax interviewing Roger Stone contains the suggestion that Nancy Pelosi's House leader position is in trouble:

I'd like to believe Roger Stone is right, but looking at the congressional map, while I think the Republicans are going to pick up seats, regaining control is not a done deal.  In fact it is going to be difficult (though possible).  While Roger Stone might end up being correct, and I hope he is, it's a bit of wishful thinking at this point to suggest that this is an obvious outcome.

The ONLY thing that is certain at this point is that confirmation bias is definitely an existential part of the political polarization in the country.

Darrell Issa back?

Why'd you leave Darrell?  Why'd you leave?

Darrell Issa, whom I think was a good representative in Congress, was part of the mass retirement that helped Democrats win the house. His district, California's 49th district, was won by a Democrat. Interestingly now, he's not trying to win that district back but rather running in the 50th district in 2020. The incumbent was Republican (Duncan Hunter), was under indictment. In December he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, and he resigned from Congress effective last week. So Issa, a likely winner in the district is unfortunately not going to provide a regain to Republicans, but probably a hold of the 49th.

Here's the thing - Issa is a good congressman. I liked him. But he did not run for reelection in 2018 when it was clear it would be a tough fight. And he's coming back not to recapture what he abandon, but to win in an easier district race. That's not emblematic of a fighter. It's concerning that Issa may not be a fighter any longer, and he may lack the same fight he exhibited in congress in the past. I hope I'm wrong. I hope there's a good Republican candidate in the 49th.

Democrat congressman to defect to the Republicans over impeachment

This is not a game changer, but it is a signpost that a lot of Democrats are uneasy about an impeachment vote coming this Wednesday.

The Katie Hill Throuple scandal and downfall

I have tried to stay away from this one but Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill sewed the seeds of her own downfall, and that should not be forgotten as she goes about blaming conservatives.

In case you were unaware of the whole throuple scandal, Stefan Molyneux explains it and follows up with the perfect reaction. I mean, perfect.