The Senate, where the GOP holds 53 seats, remains a toss-up, the conservative outlet says
For the first time this year, Fox News is projecting that Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.
In its latest power rankings Tuesday, the conservative outlet forecast that Democrats are favored to capture 219 seats — one more than the 218 needed for a majority. Republicans were favored in 198 races, while 18 contests remained toss-ups.
“The House is likely out of reach for the GOP this year,” according to the Fox News analysis. “The Democratic Party has enjoyed a lead in the House all year. Now, as another 20 races shift leftward, this forecast sees the Democrats taking control.”
Ignore polls, vote.
Polls create political engagement. Silly to ignore them when they juice participation.
Probably trying to rile up their viewers so they’ll go out and vote.
Don’t forget making blue voters think it’s gonna be alright, no need for them to go out and vote, everyone else already has it in hand.
More likely to have the opposite effect. Historically speaking, good poll numbers help a candidate and bad poll numbers hurt them. That’s why low quality partisan polls are always boosting their own side’s numbers and not the other guy. Republicans are already far less enthusiastic about voting in the mid terms this year. Telling them their side can’t win is only going to discourage them that much more.
Fox News is a shit hole run by lying sociopaths, but they do take their political polling seriously. It’s one of the few areas where they have any credibility at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been intentionally vague and overly cautious with their analysis of the data so that they can hide some of that potential blue wave in the big pile of toss up races. But you can only fudge things so much without looking incompetent, especially if they have to resort to more obvious methods of tipping the scales.
Honestly, the actual poll is barely even news at this point. A year and a half ago the conventional wisdom was that the Senate as safely red while the House was going to be tough fight. But for months now the House has been looking like a lost cause for the Republicans, and, especially in the last few weeks, the Senate is looking like an uphill battle for them too. What’s newsworthy here is that Fox is actually reporting it.
See, this is what confuses me about these discussions. You’re saying that it discourages people from voting if they’re told their party can’t win, and yet lots of comments on this post are reacting as if telling people their party is doing good is telling them not to bother voting. I guess we shouldn’t have polls at all, since telling people their oarty has a good chance of winning and telling them their party has a bad chance of winning are both seen as telling them not to vote
At the extremes that’s going to be true. Elections where one candidate is viewed as being unbeatable tend to have lower turnout, while turnout is highest when races are highly competitive. Keep in mind though that there’s sort of a chicken and egg situation there. High levels of enthusiasm and therefore turnout also tend to make races more competitive, while safe seats are often the result of gerrymandering and other forms of political dysfunction that suppress voter turnout and political engagement in general.
But regardless of whether a race is competitive or virtually uncontested, you typically want to be the one that’s in the lead. People are more likely to support politicians they view as popular, for much the same reason that they are more likely to pay money for movies and books that can claim to be #1 somehow. The bandwagon effect can be a powerful thing.
And voter turnout is heavily dependent on enthusiasm, and it’s a lot easier to be enthusiastic when your side doesn’t look like it’s losing. And that’s just the voting, there’s also donations, volunteers, media coverage, etc. all of which can be significantly affected by how people perceive the race to be going.
The idea that good poll numbers are somehow bad for that candidate’s voter turnout is largely a product of the 2016 election. Right up to election day the polls almost all said Hillary would win. And then Trump won. There’s a number of reasons for that, but one of the ones that gets mentioned a lot is that Democrats stayed home because the polls all said they wouldn’t need to vote.
The context is very important though. Hillary was deeply unpopular even before the DNC helped her snatch the nomination away from Bernie Sanders. A lot of people would have preferred that Trump lose, but really, really didn’t want to vote for Hillary. Those people might have been more likely to hold their nose and vote for her if they weren’t under the impression that she was practically guaranteed to win.
I mean, who is watching FOX religiously and not voting, at this point? It’s the channel of, by, and for conservative GOTV ops.
I think a better question might be “Who is still watching this channel?” And you’re talking about 2M viewers during the Prime Time peak.
That’s a rounding error, nationally. And out of a pool that’s already heavily engaged.
The attemot of voter mobilisation I assume?
Yup
I hate that politics is like fucking sports. Just dumb stats and predictions to fill airspace. And the best part is people who think they’re too smart for sports eat it up.
“Horse race” political coverage has been an issue for decades. Talking heads going on and on about poll numbers, who’s ahead, who’s behind, etc, etc, while very pointedly not talking about the actual issues at stake in the election.
Partly that’s because numbers are easier to talk about. Partly it’s because actually talking about the issues would bring up issues that media oligarchs don’t want to talk about and don’t want to give airtime to.
And partly because they’ve got 24 hours to fill and not much actually happens in a given day.
And partly because really good journalism is slow, methodical, boring, and nerdy and it doesn’t sell ad space.
Fuck this world.
To make us complacent so we won’t vote.
To motivate the fox viewers to prove those polls wrong.
If they said the exact opposite, you’d also be taking that as discouraging you to vote
I don’t believe it.
These same stories come out every election cycle, especially from right-wing news sources. “The left are going to take the senate” “The dems are going to have a landslide victory”
It’s propaganda with two goals:
- to fire up their base and encourage them to vote against the enemy that is somehow lesser, but also a threat.
- To create placidity in Democrat voters. If it’s in the bag, then I don’t have to skip out on a day of minimum wage work to cast my vote. The landslide will sort it out.
Hit the nail on the head. Same reason I keep seeing polls about how all these places are going to vote blue. Their trying everything they can to keep blue voters at home and or invalidate their mail in votes, don’t be fooled go out and vote!!
If this actually happens and Republicans lose the House by a handful of seats, please don’t call it a “blue wave”…
Don’t worry, it will likely just be the ratchet locking into place, based on what I heard about the 100 days plan.
I don’t believe anything Fox news reports. People still need to vote.
Vote vote vote vote vote!
But only once! Don’t worry, Republicans are the only ones that attempt to do it multiple times.
I mean I am a bit worried about that to be fair.
Me too
For everyone -
I’m all for Dem wins. My prediction is they won’t be able to do much, and get blamed for too much time on hearings, maga will ignore subpoenas and otherwise drag it all out. Dems get blamed for not fixing all the damage, since people ignore that they don’t have the presidency, or enough majority in senate. Some people imply by comments in various places, that they think they can vote for president this election. If that’s the lack of civic comprehension the voting public has, it’s no wonder they flippantly swing back and forth and keep regressing with maga.
As usual. “fix everything in 24 months or we throw the bums back in”.
Democrats actually have to do things.
Yep. And the Murc’s Law Media gives a great big democracy-crushing assist with their bOtHsIdeS bullshit.
Republicans run the place, leave everything broken, in the ditch, and covered it all the poo they flung.
Democrats get back in, have a lot of backstabbers and feet-draggers, but don’t have much of an edge anyway, and if they don’t fix everything in mere months, the “liberal media” starts the drumbeat of how voters are having vibes about the economy being bad or whatever…
Once they take the house and the senate, they can stop all that negative legislation that’s been passing, like…
uhhh…
ummmm…
…don’t get me wrong… everyone should absolutely still vote, but even a massive victory is going to fix fuck all, and we should all be prepared for that.
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Don’t do that, don’t give me hope…
Thank you for this contribution. I can assure you that it has been filed for future reference.
We’d better be damn ready to fight to keep it.
Better be ready to fight if we don’t get it.
Without the Senate majority no impeachment will go through.
