It's the "Crime," Stupid
Last night’s TNB was Special Dark. Though Bill Kristol was in persona Sarah trying to bring some sunshine. You can watch the replay here or listen to the podcast version here.
1. Crime. Waves.
A week ago I was warning you that the election had turned. This morning Nate Silver notes that 538 thinks that its polling average is underselling expected Republican performance by about 2 points.
[O]ur Deluxe forecast already assumes the Republicans probably will beat what polls currently show. . . .
In Ohio, for instance, Democrat Tim Ryan trails by only 1.4 percentage points in our polling average, but is projected to lose by 4.5 points, which implies a 3-point polling bias against Republican J.D. Vance.
That’s on the high side for the competitive Senate races, but the Deluxe forecast does expect Republicans to somewhat overperform their polls in most of the other competitive races: by 1 to 2 points in Georgia and North Carolina, and by about 1 point in Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. It doesn’t expect much polling bias in Arizona and New Hampshire, by contrast.
Well.
So this goes both ways—538’s model tries to build in polling skews. And as Silver explains, historically the polls undercount majority support in heavily tilted states both ways. That’s why the 538 model expects NY Democrats to beat their averages and OH Republicans to beat theirs.
I guess that’s something? Except that a point or two in Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania might well be the margin in each of those races.
Last night on the show I did my “hey, the economy is pretty good” routine and Bill responded by saying that voters are also spooked by crime, which has been an even bigger part of Republican messaging in the home stretch.
Fair enough.
And this isn’t going to affect a single vote, but you do know when the spike in crime started, right?
2015.
And you know what year it really exploded, right?