National Polling, Fine... We Need Accurate District Polls In Swing Districts

This morning we took a look at the lay of the land nationally (and in two bellweather Midwestern states, Minnesota and Iowa). Unless they're the kind of worthless polls the NY Times is doing now, I prefer district polling to get a better idea of what's going to happen in November. Polling in battleground districts is predictive-- and CBS News did just that Sunday: House control edges toward Democrats - CBS News poll. Their operation has its drawbacks as well, but not as overwhelmingly as the NY Times' silliness. Kabir Khanna and Anthony Salvanto reported that "Democrats remain in a stronger position than Republicans to win the House of Representatives, with their chances having gradually improved over the summer. We estimate that Democrats would win 224 seats if the elections were held today, which is more than the 218 needed for a majority. As we saw a month ago, CBS is extremely tepid and conservative in their polling, but their results in 61 battleground districts is still worth looking at.

The Democratic estimate has slowly but steadily increased over the past three months. It's two seats higher than one month ago and five seats higher than in June. One reason for the Democratic lead is a pattern we have consistently seen: people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are more unified in their support for Democratic congressional candidates than Donald Trump voters are for Republicans. While few voters are crossing over in absolute terms, the difference between parties favors Democrats. Six percent of Trump voters say they are voting Democratic, while only two percent of Clinton voters say they are voting Republican now.

...Likely voters in key districts who say they are not sure about their House vote look genuinely conflicted. Though most identify as independents, they lean conservative in terms of their expressed ideology, and more voted for Mr. Trump than for Clinton. On the other hand, they give Republicans negative marks on several issues. They are more likely to say recent Republican changes to health care and trade policy have been negative than positive, and they are ambivalent about the Republican tax bill, with half saying they have not felt its effects. Six in ten say the Republican Party works for the interests of large corporations over working people. These feelings offer an opening to Democrats to win over voters currently on the fence, most of whom say their vote isn't about which party controls the chamber.

The biggest short-coming of the CBS report is that they don't break down any of their information by district. They just give us the average of these 61 districts:

At this point FiveThirtyEight.com predicts that The Republicans have a 1 in 6 chance of holding onto the majority in the House (18%) and the Democrats have a 5 in 6 chance of gaining control (82%). Let's take a look at some Republican-held districts targeted by Democrats that were looked at as long shots, starting with WA-08, where Dave Reichert is retiring and where the GOP is putting up a very well-known politician, Dino Rossi, and where the Democrats have a first-time candidate, physician Kim Schrier:

It's still rated a toss-up by the numbers. But when voters fill out their ballots, Trump will be foremost in their minds and Schrier is going to take the seat. In Omaha (NE-02), the Republican incumbent, Don Baconis having a rougher time defending his seat from a full-fledged grassroots progressive, Kara Eastman and the race went from a toss-up last month to "leans Dem" now, largely because Eastman is campaigning on issues people are interested in (like Medicare-For-All) and Bacon is a complete Trump rubber-stamp.

With Robert Hurt retiring, Virginia's 5th district is an open seat and the DCCC had exactly zero interest in helping a very outspoken and very progressive Leslie Cockburn beat Republican Denver Riggleman, one of the GOP's most flawed candidates of the cycle. And without DCCC acknowledgement...

Democrats have been fighting to take CA-10 for many years, unsuccessfully. Josh Harder isn't any better-- to put it generously-- than any other DCCC-picked candidate for the district but this is a special year and incumbent Jeff Denham appears to be... a dead man walking:

Now I want to point out a major flaw in the kind of-- by the numbers-- prognostication FiveThirtyEight does. In CA-50, drunken crooked incumbent Duncan Hunter has been indicted on dozens of charges and Ammar Campaigns-Najjar is one of the most compelling candidates the Democrats have running for Congress anywhere. One racist at the DCCC has prevented him from being endorsed and the cockroach DCCC staffer in Orange County has been working against him, despite his victory in the primary and despite endorsements from President Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. Fuck the DCCC here. FibeThirtyEight doesn't understand how to grok the race and the most recent poll shows gigantic moment for Ammar and a 46-46% dead heat. That said, this is FiveThirtyEight's boneheaded prediction: