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Monday, November 06, 2006
Rich Galen :: Townhall.com Columnist
It ain't over till it's...
by Rich Galen
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Poll
Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


Dear Mr. Mullings:

Are you still claiming that the GOP will hold onto the US House, or have you finally gotten back on your meds?

  • You know? I'm glad you asked that. You would have to be living in Kazakhstan watching the evening news hosted by Borat Sagdiyev to believe Tuesday is going to be a glorious night for the Republican Party.

    •  

  • The breathless predictions in the Popular Press this past weekend in trying to convince us that election day will not just leave the GOP as the minority party, but as a minor party may be, as they say, premature.

  • There's a reason they actually hold the elections.

  • While you might not have seen this on the front page of your local paper, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press released a poll on Saturday which showed the generic vote among likely voters has closed to 47% - 43% in favor of Democrats.

  • The specific question was:

    • "If the 2006 elections for U.S. Congress were being held TODAY, would you vote for the Republican Party's candidate or the Democratic Party's candidate for Congress in your district?"

    NOTE: To try and get as clear a result as possible, the order of the parties (Republican or Democrat) were reversed for half the sample)

  • The Pew polls are not known as a Republican-leaning activities. In fact, there have been complaints among Republicans that Pew tends toward samples which lean Democratic.

  • In this poll, which included 2,368 registered voters of whom 1,795 were deemed "likely" voters - which are the only ones we care about with 36 hours to go.

  • The party split in the survey was 34% Republican, 34% Democrat and 27% independent.

  • The generic vote in the Pew poll in September was 40-53 Democrat among likely voters.

  • In the October poll the difference had narrowed from minus 13 to minus 11, statistically insignificant.

  • But last week the deficit in the generic vote narrowed to just FOUR percentage points.

  • It is an axiom that Republican candidates for Congress tend to outperform the pre-election polling as to generic vote by 3-5 percentage points. If that holds with this latest survey, the GOP might play to a draw on Tuesday.

  • But, let's not get crazy. This election season has produced a dreadful environment for Republicans. It is unlikely that the GOP will maintain its 14 seat majority in the US House.

  • It is also unlikely that the Democrats will win anything like 30 seats which would give THEM a similar majority in the next Congress.

  • The most likely outcome is that the Democrats will win control of the House by a margin of six or seven seats - a net win of 20 or 21 seats.

  • The next most likely outcome is that the GOP will hold onto control by three or four seats - a loss of 11 or 12 seats.

  • It is possible that Tuesday will produce the Democratic blowout which has become the insider's view here in Washington, but that would surprise me.

  • Remember that in 1998 the GOP went into election NIGHT thinking it had a lock on a pickup of 8 - 10 seats. They lost five.

  • The difference was Democratic turnout which was not picked up in the pre-election polling.

  • It is quite possible the same thing will happen on Tuesday - in either direction. Ken Mehlman and the Republican National Committee have a highly organized (and highly touted) turnout operation. Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee have been spending millions of dollars to catch up.

  • We'll see who's program actually turns out voters.

  • As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, if you want to be successful in politics you have to stay in the fight until the final citizen goes to the final polling place and casts the final vote.

  • On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the Pew Poll. Also for those of you in the Washington, DC area a link to a great opportunity to participate in a local March of Dimes event. A Mullfoto from New Jersey which reminds us why we are not all that fond of New Jersey and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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    About The Author

    Rich Galen has been a press secretary to Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich. Rich Galen currently works as a journalist and writes at Mullings.com

    Be the first to read Rich Galen's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.

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    Post Your Comment
    (11 comments so Far)
    View in ascending order     View in descending order
    Reply # 1
    Date: Nov 6, 2006 - 7:54 PM EST
    R's historicly poll
    about 4 points above the polls. this is in years the R's are happy. It would not surprise me if the R's averaged 6 or 7 percent this election, after holding out til the last moment hoping to get the attention of the ratfink lying turncoats who talked right to get elected, then leaped left. I would be delighted with losing a couple congressmen, if they were Chaffee and Snowe. And win all the rest.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 2
    Date: Nov 6, 2006 - 8:29 PM EST
    Pistol
    Losing Chafee is pretty much a certainty, so you don't have to worry about that!
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 3
    Date: Nov 6, 2006 - 8:45 PM EST
    jerubaal
    On another thread, MyOpine posted at about 12:30 PM that the pollsters were playing CMA. i predicted on animalgirls prediction post that i thought the R's would win every race that was listed at too close to call and more than half of those in which we were down 4 points or less. Maybe i'll go watch tv for a while and see what movement, if any, there is in the polls. If we win solidly (big if) i'll bet a lot of rabid lefties disappear from TH.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 4
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 1:38 AM EST
    Exit polls
    Remember when you go vote and you get exit polled tell them you voted Democratic regardless of how you voted. If enough people do that then the liberal media will really be in for a shock when the real votes are released.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 5
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 2:15 AM EST
    Pistol
    Even if the polls are way off as usual, which I assume, Chafee is not going to be retained unless the polls have absolutely no correlation to reality whatsoever.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 6
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 2:17 AM EST
    dmatthew
    "Republicans Will Lose Tomorrow"

    Fortunately, this very column will probably be up so we can check predictions. Until then, no need to discuss it. But by all means dmatthew, stay online for the entire next 24 hours while we go vote.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 7
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 9:15 AM EST
    Not so fast....
    ...Linc Chafee may not lose in the end. He is closing fast on his opponent and the Chafee name carries a lot of weight in Rhode Island.

    But if we do lose Linc the Magic RINO, will it matter? The the letter may change from R to D, but the votes will stay the same!
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 8
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 9:25 AM EST
    I want to throw around numbers too.
    GOP losses 4-6 in the House and
    gains 1 in the Senate.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 9
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 2:38 PM EST
    Pistol
    You left out McCain & Specter.
    All they are good for is to waste RNC funds and get Republicans blamed for Leftist crap.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 10
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 3:05 PM EST
    RINOs
    Don't forget Graham and Warner.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 11
    Date: Nov 7, 2006 - 4:11 PM EST
    Pollsters
    Most polls aren't woth the powder to blow them to hell. The generic poll is really a joke. The only useful polls are more specific. Do you approve of congress - 16% yes recently - way too vague to be informative. Do you approve of the job your own representative is doing - 60% recently shows the normal pro-incumbent sentiment. As election day approaches, races always tighten up. It's very easy to blow off stea to a pollster, but once you enter the voting booth the gravity of the act kicks in and sanity takes over.

    The way polling questions are phrased has more to do with the results than the sentiment of the sample(Are you going to vote for a Dem or are you a dipsh*t?)(Do you agree with compassionate people who support Demos?)

    dmathew1: change your name to Phillip Nolan Jr.
    Flag as Offensive
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