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Sunday, October 10, 2010

More on the Democrats' Surge

In recent days, we have been hearing about the movement of voters back towards the Democrats. Most of this talk is based upon a few generic polls and some particular races where the Democrat has moved ahead. For example, in New York, Andrew Cuomo is back with a big lead after a poll or two showed Carl Paladino closing in right after the primary that selected Paladino.

In order to test whether there truly is a movement towards the Democrats, I looked at the House races rated on Real Clear Politics. RCP has rankings of all House races as safe, likely or leaning to on or the other party as well as for toss ups. The ratings are poll driven and change as new polls come out. Any real movement in the electorate would show up here.

The result I found is that there is no movement towards the Democrats. Over the last six days, there have been 15 House races that have had their rankings changed. All 15 have moved towards the GOP, not towards the Democrats. To be fair, some of these races moved because there had been no previous polling done. CT-1 and CT-2 fall into this category. Most of the changes, however, were simply updates to earlier views based upon prior polling. This result does not mean that there is a surge towards the GOP; the changes are not so numerous or so large as to show yet another wave towards the Republicans. The result does, however, make clear that there is no national movement towards Democrats. Indeed, there is no movement towards the Democrats that is discernable in even one congressional district around the country.

This result is confirmed by the ratings done by Larry Sabato at his crystal ball site. Over the last two weeks, Sabato's team has shifted 24 seats in their House rankings. All 24 were shifted towards the GOP and away from the Democrats.

It seems that the Democrats' surge is wishful thinking by the mainstream media.

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