Bold: Like I said, take the yawn-inducing nonsense elsewhere. Yes, obviously measured public opinion matters a great deal for... the analysis of public opinion. You don't have to like the data but it is what it is. You can't just magically ignore it because it doesn't say what you want it to say or what you think or want it to say in the future and expect to be taken seriously. That's not how substantive analysis works, that's bubble-babble shit. Also, stating the fact that this thread is used by informed readers isn't actually an opinion of myself, it's merely a judgment on those who read it and who hold additional discussion based on what's posted in it. Fortunately those people are very informed. Taking that into account, there's only an appetite for factual analysis and not the shit commentary that runs completely contrary to those facts like what you've post here.

Moving on, the compilation of fundraising data by Daily Kos Elections in this post has helped evaluate that second tier of House races mentioned earlier. These are mostly Democratic seats which people believed at the beginning of the cycle were at high risk for flipping. I think a couple of them are still at genuine risk but most have fallen off the table for the most part; they're only on the fringe of competitive due to the Republican outside money mentioned in #2 here. A big chunk of this second tier of races is made up of the following 11 Democratic-held seats: AZ-09, FL-18, GA-12, CA-07, CA-26, CA-36, IL-10, IL-12, NH-02, NY-18, TX-23.

I've talked about CA-07, CA-26, and CA-36 in this thread, as well as GA-12, MA-06, and NH-02 and NY-18. Watch these races on Election Day. If the Democrats hold them all, or hold most, it bodes well for how they're performing this year and how high their floor will be in 2016 re: their chances for taking back the House. If the Republicans are able to win many of them then it indicates the Republicans are performing stronger than expected this year.

Admitting you're wrong is the first step to being right I'm proud of you.

He lacks the self-awareness to recognize when he's wrong. Look, you can't honestly expect someone who offers such a flawed and incorrect assertion to admit wrong when evidence is presented that demonstrates how and why. If the person possessed that level of awareness and adherence to basic facts then they wouldn't have said something so stupid in the first place because they'd have known better. Though enough about that, there's no need to waste any more time on it. Developments in the House races mentioned yesterday are further shifting the ranges in the same direction:

House: D+0 - R+8 - [Shift: ->] (Republican outside money flowing into additional races)
Senate: R+2 - R+8
Governors: D/I +6 - R+1

House: As noted above, the surge in Republican-allied outside money has continued and even ramped up. The Congressional Leadership Fund and the American Action Network said today they planned to drop about $3 million into some Democratic districts that they think are more competitive than widely believed. Specifically targeting HI-01, MA-06, and IA-01, this mainly reeks of desperation in trying to convince everyone that the GOP is headed for a much better year than commonly believed in an effort to get even more millionaires into the fray to cause a big-donor snowball effect, but every election has surprise wins and it's not impossible for some of these to flip for 2 years. MA-06 is an interesting case: the DCCC recently shifted resources out of the race in the belief that new nominee Seth Moulton will hold the seat while Republicans just committed $500k to it. The GOP is trying to divert attention from their faltering incumbent in NE-02, who both parties now declare is behind. The GOP has decided to go Willie Horton [See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emkbj7Q5psg] so they're obviously not too comfortable with what they're seeing.

Senate: No shift here, just some movement back and forth in individual races. A new PPP poll has Bruce Braley leading 48%-47% in Iowa. The previous two surveys from PPP each had Ernst with a 2-point lead, so this is just further confirmation that this race is incredibly close. The early voting is off the charts so we could be gearing up for a huge-turnout election if the trends continue.

Governors: As has been said many times, the Democrats are trying to lock down some of their more-vulnerable incumbents in CO, MA, CT, and IL so they can post a net gain on Election Day. A lot of the recent focus has been on shoring up Dan Malloy in CT, to the tune of attacking his challenger Tom Foley. Today the Hartford Courant reported that Foley paid 0% in federal taxes from 2011-2013 and making matters worse for Foley he offered a pretty tone-deaf response to the revelation. This could be the silver bullet for Malloy, and if he hangs on then it's quite likely the outcome in governor elections will be a net gain for the Democrats. The Democrats are also benefiting from an unforced GOP error in Florida, which most people are probably aware of by now. If you haven't heard the details regarding "Fangate" then you can read up here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2909766.html

This post was edited by Pollster on Oct 17 2014 07:33pm

Been meaning to go into some detail on what exactly is moving these races since I've been getting a lot of questions about it, so the option is there to wade through the long post below if people want info on a certain race. A regular range update will probably come tomorrow when the House committees shake things up again.

Lots of things going on in the Senate to shift the races. There's a good chance the range stays R+2 - R+8 until a prediction comes on 11/3 because for the Republicans their worst case scenario seems to be a net gain of +2 by holding their at-risk seats and picking up MT/WV. The ceiling under present conditions is about 8 seats; the easiest path is holding their at-risk seats and picking up MT/WV/SD/AR/AK on Election Day, winning LA in a runoff, and winning 2 races between NC/IA/CO. That would be difficult to do but it's entirely possible, and a lot can happen in the next 16 days that could make it easier (or harder, by the same token). A little rundown in some of the key races:

GA-SEN: Both parties agree this race is moving towards the Democrats. David Perdue made a mistake talking about his "career in outsourcing" and then made things worse when he doubled down on his comments in saying that he's proud of it. Nunn grabbed a 48%-45% lead in a SUSA poll, and has been tied in several others. She's dominating the airwaves with her large money advantage and state Republicans are being taken to court over their obstruction in the voter registration process and are understandably getting some bad press for it. National Republicans must be seeing a dead heat because their pushback re: Nunn's good polling stretch has been very weak; they are now arguing that an outright Nunn win (50% on Election Day) is a bridge too far. That really implies that they think they're behind at this stage, or that the race is tied and Nunn could lead on Election Day heading into a runoff. If they had better numbers with Perdue on top then they'd release them.

IA-SEN: Braley grabbed the endorsement from the conservative-leaning Gazette. This could lead to an endorsement from the Des Moines Register, one of the few papers whose endorsement might still move votes. The new PPP poll could be news because the pushback from the Ernst campaign has been nonexistent. The campaign has been trying to put out a few fires, including the revelation that Ernst supported a "personhood" amendment in the State Senate and her remark to the Sioux City Journal editorial board that she'd also support a federal measure.

CO-SEN: The craziness in polling continues. Colorado polling has underestimated Democrats in recent cycles, and it's created a situation where both sides could think they're ahead. The race moved towards Gardner but there's long been the chance that polling didn't accurately depict Udall's full standing, and now premiere Democratic pollsters are finding Udall with narrow leads while public firms with poor records in Colorado show Gardner with narrow leads. Joel Benenson, Obama's 2012 lead pollster, found Udall up 47%-44% while Mark Mellman's poll for the Senate Majority Pac found Udall leading 44%-41%. The Udall camp has said its internals show a dead heat, which is down from a 5-6 point lead they said they showed about a month ago. We're not going to know who's ahead in this one until the check mark drops because vote-by-mail could be a gamechanger, on top of the polling volatility.

LA-SEN: The NOLA Times-Picayune endorsed Landrieu. It gave Bush the nod in 2000, Obama the nod in 2008, didn't endorse in 2012 and has endorsed both parties for various statewide races in the past. Bill Clinton is coming for a two-day swing through Baton Rouge to help in the Landrieu campaign's attempt to juice their margins in the region. Democracy Corps recently polled the "white" vote and found Landrieu taking only 27% of it, which is about 3-4 points shy of what she'd need in a hypothetical runoff electorate to win.

SD-SEN: The GOP is claiming that Rounds is still leading by 6-7 points, whereas last week they were claiming that he still held a double-digit lead. They are having to push back on the notion that the race is tightening, which is everyone is seeing due to new interest from IEs and Super PACs. Pressler is being attacked by both sides and still hasn't faded though, and if that continues expect a narrow Rounds win. Pressler could fade though; he got caught saying two different things re: what he'd do about Roe v. Wade and the ads are predictably flowing, and the word is out that he sat on a board that defrauded investors for millions.

KS-SEN: The cavalry has arrived and is helping Pat Roberts bury Greg Orman on the airwaves with a barrage of negative ads. Orman earned the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, who says they will use their ground game to help him try to get elected as they work to defeat Governor Sam Brownback. Roberts is getting some bad press over an ancient clip of him saying he'd serve two terms (comments made in 1996). The GOP has a massive spending in this race as it stands now: 84% of the total spending comes from their side and it's good for 90% of the ads slated to be run. Orman had the airwaves to himself for much of September, but can he withstand this late barrage now?

NC-SEN: Not much is new here. About a week ago the NRSC upped their ad reservation by about $6.5 million so they still feel like they've got a shot here despite Hagan holding a small but stable polling lead. This is one of the races where the GOP is moving a lot of their 2016 money forward for in an effort to juice their 2014 pickup numbers. It will be very costly if Hagan pulls out the win.

KY-SEN: Nothing really new here, either. Democrats took advantage of a quick burst of momentum for Grimes to force GOP outside groups to dump another $8 million or so into the race to try to keep McConnell ahead. It'll probably just be campaign spending here beyond that. Both parties have much more important targets to attend to.

Sticking with Senate discussion, it's "poll tease" day.

The fraudulent firm Gravis Marketing released a poll of NC-SEN showing Tillis leading Hagan 48%-43%, and of course the fraud firm forgot to include Libertarian Sean Haugh. PPP just released their newest poll and it has Hagan leading 46%-43%-5%, her third month in a row with a lead of 3/4 points. She's had a polling lead for about 3 and a half months now, only trailing in surveys from firms who don't conduct real polls. Though SurveyUSA recently released a head-to-head poll finding Hagan trailing by 1 point, 45%-46%, which could reflect the big $6.5 million ad buy that the NRSC made to try to keep Tillis in the race mentioned at the end of this post. Or it could just be noise. It's hard to tell in 2014.

In Kentucky there will be a new Bluegrass poll released tonight. Grimes led the last one 46%-44% and it kicked off a mini-surge for her. Since then the DSCC and SMP have opted not to run any more ads and have only spent on ground operations, while GOP outside groups have put about $8-10 million into the race to try to keep McConnell out in front. The new poll really should show McConnell back in the lead. If it once again shows an edge for Grimes it could (and should) upset the conventional wisdom that this race is crawling towards an inevitable 4-point win for McConnell as both parties head to other states.

In New Hampshire a new Suffolk poll has Shaheen leading Brown 49%-46%. The race is tightening in recent weeks after moving towards Shaheen, but the entire movement could potentially be attributed to the fact that state polling is terrible. A libertarian on the ballot might cause the Election Day results to look just like this, as Scott Brown should probably be able to carry all Romney 2012 voters.

A new Monmouth poll (yes, the New Jersey group) of Kansas finds Orman and Roberts tied. Roberts' massive advantage on the airways mentioned above seems to be moving the needle. Or it could be noise. Or this group could be as bad in KS as it is in NJ. Once again, this is 2014.

Following up on the update above, the Bluegrass poll in Kentucky predictably showed McConnell back in front but his lead is only 44%-43%. This should be just enough to preserve the status quo in the race: the Democrats know the race is winnable but they remain slightly behind, and neither side will consider this survey as evidence that they need to change their strategy.

A second New Hampshire poll released today also has Shaheen leading by 3 points (48%-45%) but you might as well throw this poll in the garbage based on the downballot results for the Democratic incumbents -- they find Carol Shea-Porter leading by 17% in NH-01 while Ann Kuster trails by 5% in NH-02. These results look to be "backwards," based on the widely-held belief that NH-01 is the more-competitive district and that Shea-Porter is facing a tougher challenge (from a former House member no less). Most expect Kuster to pull it out in NH-02 while NH-01 could go either way; I personally expect Shea-Porter to lose on Election Day in one of the races that the GOP will win in order to get a net gain of 5-6 seats.

Also worth noting: this is one of those rare times when the "aggregators" that have been referenced throughout this thread are in general agreement re: the GOP's chances of winning a Senate majority:

New York Times' Upshot: 66% chance
HuffPo Pollster: 66% chance
Nate Silver's 538: 63.2% chance
Sam Wang's PEC: 60+/-15% chance
Washington Post's DataLab: 93% chance.

I noted the problems with the WaPo's model and what caused it to diverge from the other models back in June, and the same factors are still at play today: they overstate the Republican advantage in some races while overstating the Democratic advantage in others. The easiest way to demonstrate this is that they only have one race (Georgia) where they show a likelihood of less than 90% in the outcome, and that's plainly ridiculous. There are at least 11 Senate races that could legitimately go one way or the other. It is likely that 9 of them won't be decided until Election Day, and the other 2 (Georgia and Louisiana) will be decided after it.

House: D+0 - R+9 - [Shift: ->] (More Republican outside money flowing into additional races)
Senate: R+2 - R+8
Governors: D/I +6 - R+1

House: More money is flowing to Republican outside groups than what was already discussed last week, and it could make some new races more competitive. Ever the GOP flack, Politico has a pretty detailed look [See: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/conservatives-catch-up-as-super-pac-fundraising-explodes-112063.html?hp=l5]. Since 2012, Democratic Super PACs have traditionally outraised Republican Super PACs because a powerful element of the Republican donor base, big-money donors, prefer to donate to 501c4 organizations that aren't required to disclose their donors identities. This has created a fundraising environment where Democrats raise more money from the first group while the GOP raises more money from the second. Now that the GOP is raising nearly as much as Democrats among Super PACs, their long-held advantage among 501c4 fundraising is giving the party an edge in the final weeks before the election.

Much of the GOP's new money is going towards House races. Karl Rove's Crossroads group today dumped around $500k each in NJ-03 and AR-04, and $1 million into NV-04 on its own. The NRCC is canceling $700k worth of purchased ad time in ME-02, and is moving most of it to MN-07 with the rest being split among WV-03, IL-12, and NY-01. The choices here are interesting. The Democrats decided a week ago to divert funds from NJ-03. Despite great candidate recruitment in AR-04 the Democrats have paid little attention to it. MN-07, NY-01 and IL-12 are second-tier races that might not be flippable without a much stronger pro-GOP lean to the year than 2014 currently shows. NV-04 has been totally avoided, and the only attention it has gotten at all has been in the last two days where Clark County early vote totals may be an indication of low Democratic turnout.

You can see the impact that a few extra million dollars can have. Outside groups have helped the NRCC close the fundraising gap with the DCCC and now many races are getting a second or even third look. The one safe assumption to make is that this should increase the number of surprises on Election Day.

I feel like we could save a lot more money if candidates just gave everyone a detailed "one-pager" and gave it to every home. California manages to print out a detailed voter's guide very election so it shouldn't take that much more effort.

Television ads are ridiculous expensive and don't really inform anyone. I can proudly say that I've only been exposed to maybe a dozen ads this cycle.

A quick race-by-race update on the Senate races.
For starters here's the next 13 days in advertising in terms of what percentage of ads each party is responsible for, courtesy of Echelon Insights:



KS-SEN: As you can see above, Orman is still withstanding the advertising onslaught discussed here. PPP found Orman +3 and even Suckmussen is out with a new poll finding Orman +5.

KY-SEN: Both the DSCC and the Senate Majority PAC are going back on the air, daring Republican outside groups to waste more money here to protect McConnell. The groups say they are encouraged by both private and public polling. We know about the public polls: the new Bluegrass poll had McConnell +1 and a college poll from WKU has McConnell +3.

NC-SEN: SUSA's new poll finds Hagan leading 46%-43%-6%, a reversal from a prior (and rare) survey that found Tillis with a 1-point lead. PPP's newest also has Hagan +3. Politico et al. is trying to push out some "Tillis has the momentum" stories but the numbers don't bare it out. Karl Rove's Crossroads added another $900k to its ad buy though; the GOP does not want to give up on this race.

CO-SEN: This is the race getting all the attention. Public polling continues to show Gardner with small-to-medium leads, but with surveys that predict a GOP-heavy electorate that hasn't been seen in the state in several cycles. Gardner's campaign seems confident because they've scaled back his public appearances to one per day. This race has been set up to almost be a surprise no matter who wins: if Gardner wins then it would contradict Colorado's long history of underpolling Democrats, but if Udall wins it will contradict the entirety of public polling this month.

GA-SEN: This is one of the only races which has broken late in the direction of the Democrats. Nunn is dominating the airwaves and after Perdue's gaffe mentioned here she has opened up a small polling lead. SUSA had Nunn +3 and now Nunn +2, GOP-friendly WRBL has Nunn +1, and GOP-friendly InsiderAdvantage has Nunn +2, down from big Perdue leads of +4, +7 and +10. Nunn is hovering around 47% of the vote. This race has looked like Nunn could push it to a runoff but would have a hard time winning it, so you might see the Democrats go all-out to try to pull off an improbable win on Election Day.

IA-SEN: Lots going on here. Both parties are doing good with early voting (polls that show Ernst with narrow leads show Braley winning among those who have already voted) but we don't know who those voters are. Democrats have released info showing how many of their votes are people who sat out in 2010, trying to claim they're reaching sporadic voters. Republicans are concerned they could just be moving up reliable voters. Ernst is catching some heat for bailing on the Des Moines Register editorial board at the last second, having already bailed on the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. Quinnipiac has Ernst +2, the same margin as last time and down from their ridiculous Ernst +6 outlier. They have Braley +21 among early voters (near impossible). Monmouth's first attempt shows Ernst +1 with Braley +13 among early voters. The Ernst campaign filed paperwork in case of a recount so you know this one is close.

NH-SEN: This race, too, is seeing a lot of "it's tightening!" stories in an effort to gin up Republican enthusiasm. To his credit Scott Brown has improved his standing, coming close to Romney's performance in 2012, but he's being butchered by bad press. His debate performance has been criticized and he was caught telling an outright lie re: ISIS and the Mexican border [More: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-10-22/scott-brown-warns-that-isis-could-cross-the-border-then-tells-chuck-todd-he-never-said-that] to moderator Chuck Todd. You know it's bad when even the king of false equivalence holds you accountable for your words. PPP has Shaheen 49%-45% while CNN has Shaheen 49%-47%, up from a tie last time.

SD-SEN: The bad press continues for Rounds amid reports he was outraised by Weiland over the last 2 weeks. Rounds was forced to admit he knew a top official was going to work for a company, Northern Beef, around the same time as he approved the official's request for $600k in state loans to the plant. The official is accused of redirecting the money to pay his own salary. Mayday PAC has jumped on the bandwagon here to attack Rounds further over EB-5. Rounds pushed back on the long-held belief that his lead was slipping, releasing an internal showing him go from an 8-point lead to a 24-point lead. However it's being laughed off because his firm forgot to remove the language on the memo that makes it clear it was an "informed ballot test" (read: they said terrible things about his opponents and then asked people who they supported). Ouch.

LA is still careening towards a runoff. Nothing really new in AK and AR, the only question remaining is can strong Democratic field operations help either candidate win when they're behind 3-4 points in polling. MT and WV are off the board as expected GOP gains. VA, MN, OR, and MI are off the board as expected Democratic holds.



We're to the point now where the insane level of expense doesn't matter; that's why we can't get back to sensible campaign finance law. There's always going to be some millionaires who will cut another big check if it means they can help juice the numbers. In some states the disparity has reached 3x, 5x, or even 10x (how much more the GOP is having to pay to air late-game ads vs. how much they paid to reserve time earlier) and yet they're still willing to pay it. Why not when you're playing with house money?