I keep pointing this out, as Nate Cohn observes:
One of the big questions of this election cycle is whether it will turn out to be a “wave” election, like the one in 2010, when an upswell of anti-Democratic sentiment carried Democrats out of the House. One of the best measures of whether there’s a wave is the “generic ballot” question. Pollsters ask: Do you want Democrats or Republicans to control Congress?
Unfortunately, generic ballot polling has been sparse so far this cycle. Last week, however, there were three national polls, by Fox News, CNN and Pew Research, asking the generic ballot question. None showed an anti-Democrat wave, like the one that brought Republicans back to power in 2010. In fact, none of the three polls showed Republicans with a lead among registered voters at all.
Look, I’ll be honest and cop to the fact that I am optimistic by nature. You can always expect me to be upbeat until I have objective reason not to be. I told you every day during 2012 not to worry about a thing because Obama was going to crush Romney, and I kept hoping we could get over that last hump and lay waste to the GOP in that cycle. I still think we came very close to getting there, and the first debate created perhaps just enough drag to prevent it from happening. At the same time, I told you all throughout 2010 to stop sniping at the president because a wave was building that was going to wash us all out into the political wilderness. I was able to make these predictions largely by looking at polling data. It’s the same way I was able to have perhaps the most accurate midterm predictions in the country in 2006 (I missed by one seat, two months out).
You can look at GDP and the president’s popularity and the unemployment rate, but the most important early indicators are still polls. And the polls are simply refusing to show a Republican wave victory. It very much looks like more people are going to vote for Democrats in November than Republicans and that the country as a whole would prefer for the Democrats to gain seats, not lose them.
Of course, that happened in 2012, too, and the Democrats didn’t win back the House. I am not predicting a positive election for the Democrats. But I see no disaster on the horizon.
