5 Reasons Why the GOP Wave Could Be a Tsunami

Nate Silver of the New York Times is liberals favorite poll number cruncher.  Even though his personal politics may lean left (OK, they definitely lean left), he genuinely writes about what the poll numbers tell him rather than how he can spin the numbers to the Democrats’ advantage.  His blog post last night was a classic “red meat” write-up for why estimates for GOP gains may be low and could lead to some surprise upsets in Democrat strongholds.  Although his whole post is a “must read”, I wanted to focus on two cited reasons because they directly explain why Sean Bielat could pull the upset of the election season and oust Barney Frank.

First, the Scott Brown effect:

Here is a little pet theory of mine. Say that you’re a fairly conservative Republican in Massachusetts. Your senators have been John Kerry and Ted Kennedy for many, many years. Your representative to the House is a Democrat. Your governor is a Democrat. Your state always votes Democrat for President. You feel compelled to vote out of patriotic duty, and you usually do. But deep down, you’re resigned to the fact that your vote won’t really make any difference, and the candidates you want to win never will. And to be honest, you’ve got a little bit of pent-up frustration about this.Then Scott Brown comes along. He’s a good candidate. The Democrat, Martha Coakley, is a not-so-good candidate. It’s a weird election, a special election, in which turnout could be low — Scott Brown could actually win!

Do you think you’re not going to be — to borrow SurveyUSA’s term — “uniquely motivated” to vote for Scott Brown? And not just that, but also to campaign for Scott Brown, to donate to Scott Brown, and to tell all your friends to vote for Scott Brown, too?

Of course you’re going to be motivated: it might be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to send a Republican to Washington.

I can offer only anecdotal evidence for this, like the performance of Mr. Brown in January, or the performance of Barack Obama in Indiana in 2008, or the performance of some Democrats who won races for the Congress in some ordinarily very Republican-leaning areas in 2006. But if a party nominates a competitive candidate in a place where it hasn’t been competitive in a long while, it might get every last one of its voters to turn out — they’ll just come out of the woodwork. Not only that, but also the other party’s voters might be complacent, and the turnout operations won’t be as sophisticated as they might be in a district where they had to run competitive elections year after year.

If Republicans knock off a few Democrats in some very Democratic-leaning areas, this could be a big part of the reason why.

The explanation practically screams the name SEAN BIELAT.  And I couldn’t agree with Nate Silver more.

Second, Nate identifies how polling likely overstates Democrat chances in most every race:

Likely voter models could be calibrated to the 2006 and 2008 elections, which were unusually good for Democrats. In addition to wrongly excluding some Republican “unlikely voters” (see Point No. 2), it’s also conceivable that some likely voter models based on past voting histories are overrating the propensity of Democrats to vote. The reason could be that some of them are based on past voting history, and a common question is whether the voter had participated in the last two elections.But the last two elections — 2006 and 2008 — were good ones for Democrats, one in which there was little if any “enthusiasm gap,” or it may even have favored Democrats. This is, in fact, quite atypical: Republicans usually do have a turnout advantage, especially in midterm elections. Their demographics are older and whiter, and whites aged 50 and up are the most reliable voters. If likely voter models are benchmarked to 2006 and 2008 patterns, therefore, they could underestimate the turnout gap, giving too much credit to Democrats who voted in 2006 or 2008 but who don’t ordinarily. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics makes a nice version of this argument.

To win races against 30-year incumbents like Barney Frank, a candidate like Sean Bielat has to catch a few breaks.  Barney provided plenty of them by showing weakness is calling out Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and even Michael Dukakis(!) to salvage his weak campaign.  But to pull off the upset, people have to turn out and vote and Sean has to stay on the airwaves.  There is only limited time left, so if you can kick in $10 or $20 bucks, now is your chance to rid Congress of one of its worst members.  Please give generously at http://www.oustbarney.com.

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