Data Digest: It Makes Me Nervous When We All Agree
There's too much consensus out there in punditland about what will happen in the midterms. What could everyone be missing?
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"It's quiet. A little...too quiet."
That feeling like everything is humming along a little too smoothly? Like there's something lurking that you can't see?
That's how I feel right now with just one month to go until the midterms. Just look at the Real Clear Politics generic ballot average: Republican +1. Most of the polls there are in pretty close agreement, with the exception of Trafalgar (which basically is the Conventional Wisdom + 4 for Rs).
When I speak on panels or roundtables about the midterms, and am asked for my projections, they don't differ widely from the other big projection-makers out there. Slim but reasonably safe GOP edge in the House, Senate on a knife's edge with GOP probably getting between 50-52. Nothing too exotic or exciting there. And everyone is saying the same thing.
I'm sure there are contrarians out there, but it feels like The Takes are all herding in a particular direction. "I've got it coming down to three senate races, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. I think Republicans take Nevada. Question is what happens to the last two." Put this on repeat.
I'm not saying Republicans are going to massively sweep and pick up four in the Senate (keep your eyes on Washington State, though!). I'm not saying Democrats are going to hold everything.
I just think those possibilities have been TOO written off. Converging opinions and groupthink make me concerned we are headed into a scenario like we did in 2016 where everyone got convinced a certain outcome was coming and brushed off incoming signs that things could break a different way.
So that's why I'm nervous. Everyone is seeing the same thing and saying the same thing, to me, means there's more risk that we are missing something big.
Anyhow, on to the data...
Presidential Approval
The current Real Clear Politics averages for the President's job approval are:
Overall job approval: 42.1% approve (down 0.1 points from last week, exactly the same as September 3)
Economic job approval: 37.7% approve (down 0.6 from last week)
Speaking of "quiet...a little too quiet" this has really stabilized here in the home stretch. Mr. 42 Percent it is, I guess.
Just a reminder of where the past two presidents were on October 3rd before their first-term midterm...where their parties got wiped out of the House...
It is hard to look at a 42 percent job approval against that backdrop and see anything but total disaster staring Democrats in the face. Which is why this next datapoint is so fascinating...
2022
Because Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight calculate their "generic ballot" in different ways, I'll include each here each week for context:
RCP: Republicans + 1.0
538: Democrats +1.2
Both RCP and 538 have Biden's job approval exactly the same, to the tenths place: 42.1%. And yet their generic ballot averages look different and include a different set of polls.
RCP's last five polls in their average all show Republicans with a slight lead. Their most recent polls are Monmouth's poll from last week which had Republicans + 2 on their RV generic and Rasmussen's R+1. Meanwhile, 538 includes a ton of more recent polls, like Ipsos/Reuters (D+5 but of...adults? Which is a weird sample frame for a generic?) and YouGov/Yahoo (Also D+4, though of RVs).
It seems relatively clear that there are a lot of the big online panel pollsters (Ipsos, YouGov, Morning Consult...frankly, my firm Echelon Insights) that all see a more favorable Democratic environment in the generic than do firms like Trafalgar or live-phone polls by folks like Monmouth. It won't necessarily be easy to sift through who is right or wrong because a national "generic" is only really knowable via exit polls and those are fraught in different ways.
And yet everyone comes in at basically the same place on Biden's job approval.
Huh.
2024
The Hill/Emerson polling shows Trump would win Pennsylvania by +1 versus Biden in a 2024 rematch. File that under "way too early, but...."
The Economy
Here's how this week's economic picture looks:
AAA's National Average Price of a Gallon of Gas: $3.80 (up seven cents from last week)
Unemployment (August 2022): 3.7%
Inflation (August 2022): 8.3% year over year
Gas prices are ticking back up slowly. Not what your average voter wants. And for the grillionth time, the cost of living and the economy are huge drivers in this election. Is there deep anxiety about a lot of different things, like the health of our democracy or social and cultural issues or what have you? YES. But. Please see the below chart.
Source: Echelon Insights
Ahem.
Odds and Ends
"Letters to Jeb Bush" over at The New Yorker is a kind of strange, kind of sweet, kind of haunting essay about a writer who avails himself of the entirely legit jeb at jeb dot org email address to pour out his soul. And then one day, Jeb(!) responds!
My Friday Codebook was about how you can help Florida. Beautiful places like Sanibel, a spot dear to my heart with many great childhood memories, are completely destroyed. People going home and discovering that their neighbors or pets or homes simply did not make it. It's just devastating. Please support them however you can.
Margie did a focus group! Our continuing tag-team for The New York Times continues. This one is of college students. I moderated a different group and expect it'll be up soon enough...stay tuned!
(Cover photo: SDI Productions via Getty Images)
Thanks again for reading Codebook! If you have any feedback, leave it here in the comments - I read them all and value your opinions! - Kristen