It's a funny thing about those analysts predicting a "blue wave" of Democratic successes tomorrow: their own race calls don't match their totals.
Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics fisks them well:
Maybe this gets to what I was hinting at in my recent critique of Cook. The major race rankers see a massive "wave" coming, but cannot really find the districts to upgrade to fit the wave. Cook's response has ostensibly been to develop a "Gimme a reason, punk!" kind of attitude toward Republican seats -- i.e. any seat where the Republicans blink is a seat that gets upgraded -- candidate financing, party involvement, district partisanship aside. The net result is a set of highly conservative seats that -- despite the negative mood toward the GOP and despite whatever drama might be happening on the ground -- are really unlikely to switch, and, minimally, do not justify the 1994 comparisons that Cook has been supplying with his list. 1994 saw Democrat-held 0 seats from districts in which George H.W. Bush did 9% or worse than his 1992 national average switch to the Republicans; Cook's list currently has 11 such Republican-held seats (i.e. seats from districts where Kerry did 9% or worse than his national average) rated as vulnerable.
Rothenberg's response? Well -- from the looks of it, he is implying that his race-by-race estimates will be wrong - and not just a little bit wrong. A lot wrong. Why does he not correct them so that they show something like 34 to 40? Maybe he does not because he just cannot find the races to fit into a 34 to 40 scenario, but thinks it will happen nonetheless.* * * * *
In other words, Rothenberg and Gonzalez are expecting that, though they are convinced that the Democrats are as strong as they have been since Skynyrd's Second Helping, and though they have presumably completed a thorough search for any GOP seat with even the vaguest sign of weakness, they nevertheless believe that they have systematically underestimated Democratic strength by 30% to 60%!
That is a lot of error to commit when you are on the look-out for exactly that type of error.
Why are they doing this?
My read of Rothenberg, and Cook for that matter, is that they do not want to be on the low side of the next "1994." They want to minimize the probability of the false negative, i.e. Type II error. In other words, they do not want to fail to predict a seat will switch when it indeed will switch. Or, in the aggregate, they do not want to underestimate Democratic gains.
(Bold emphasis mine). Read the whole thing at the link above. Cost uses statistics to drive his point home, but you can just look at the race-by-race calls from either Cook or Rothenberg to know they can't be right on both their overall claims for a Democratic "wave" and on the individual races.
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Comments (7)
Jay Cost is THE Genius when... (Below threshold)1. Posted by nehemiah | November 6, 2006 7:57 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Jay Cost is THE Genius when it comes to elections. Would we be able to get this topic on the geral Wizbang section as well?
1. Posted by nehemiah | November 6, 2006 7:57 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on November 6, 2006 19:57
2. Posted by CTindy | November 6, 2006 8:47 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I watched Special report with Brit Hume on FNC tonight and he had both Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol the 2 main editors of the Weekly standard on the fox allstars and Fred Barnes predicted that the democrats would pick up between 20 and 25 house seats and between 4-6 senate seats, while Kristol predicted the Dems would pick up 32 house seats and 5 senate seats.
2. Posted by CTindy | November 6, 2006 8:47 PM |
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Posted on November 6, 2006 20:47
3. Posted by eddie bear | November 6, 2006 10:44 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Well, Kristol and Barnes are stuck in the Beltway mindset that doesn't match the mood amongst flyover country people. They have been listening for too long to people like Cook. In fact, Schumer has admitted today that he doesn't see the Dems winning the Senate (is he rope a doping? Who knows?!?). All of a sudden, they are ignoring the "vaunted generic ballot" they have hyped for so long, now that Carville, Pew, Gallup and ABC/WAPO see it on favorable terms for the Red Side.
Anyway, Jay has been the lone sliver of decency at RCP since they teamed up with Time. The other three guys there definitely seem content and happy with a GOP loss (ala Jonah Goldberg, Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley), but while Jay isn't calling for a GOP gain of seats, he is proving that the beltway crowd will probably be once again wrong.
3. Posted by eddie bear | November 6, 2006 10:44 PM |
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Posted on November 6, 2006 22:44
4. Posted by Jim Addison | November 7, 2006 12:02 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
All the Weekly Standard contributors are pessimistic, but you have to remember they are all Beltway birds. Opinion spreads in that community like salmonella at a factory chicken farm. There is no free range; if they are saying 20-25 GOP losses in the House, that already puts them on the extreme right of DC area opinion.
Of course, they all have their sources - but mainly, their sources are other Beltway birds, infected with the same disease.
Washington pundits could give incest a bad name.
Schumer is playing the expectations game. He's been saying they could take the Senate for weeks, and now he's all sad and unsure? Well, he's covered with the pundit class when they fail to take the Senate, and is preparing his side for falling short.
Sorry, but any conservative who is out there saying it would be a good thing for the GOP to lose should be banned from the party, have their internet access restricted, and be forced to go live with Pat Buchanan in whatever militia compound he's built.
4. Posted by Jim Addison | November 7, 2006 12:02 AM |
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Posted on November 7, 2006 00:02
5. Posted by Stanford Matthews | November 7, 2006 12:11 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Besides the press and broadcast talking heads eagerly awaiting the post-mortem of an election cycle, is there a commonly available review of prediction results published after an election?
The reason I ask is the presentation of pundits as insightful has seemed to me unsubstantiated hype provided only to increase viewership or readership.
After the fact, how accurate are the polls and predictions?
5. Posted by Stanford Matthews | November 7, 2006 12:11 AM |
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Posted on November 7, 2006 00:11
6. Posted by eddie bear | November 7, 2006 1:07 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Jim: I agree that the "losing is good" crowd is foolish. Remember that 1986 gave us a Dem Senate, which led to Bork being defeated and Kennedy in his place. Losing is never good.
6. Posted by eddie bear | November 7, 2006 1:07 AM |
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Posted on November 7, 2006 01:07
7. Posted by Jim Addison | November 7, 2006 1:52 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Stanford Matthews ~ the record of most of them isn't very good. In political punditry, one good year makes you an expert. See Zogby '96, Rasmussen in '00.
Last time around, Scott Elliott was the most accurate predictor of results, so he has a chance to be the first ever to hit two in a row.
I'm not sure that Cook, Rothenberg, or Sabato were ever accurate on overall predictions. It scarcely matters, since they have apparently won the lifetime title of "respected political analyst," without respect to their actual results.
7. Posted by Jim Addison | November 7, 2006 1:52 AM |
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Posted on November 7, 2006 01:52