After incorrectly forecasting victory for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the nation’s leading political pollsters and forecasters are playing it safe with this year’s midterm elections, highlighting uncertainty instead of offering bold projections.
In the run-up to Tuesday voting, conventional wisdom and published polling data hold that Democrats will narrowly retake the House of Representatives, as Republicans narrowly retain control of the Senate. But “polls aren’t always right,” Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com said in an ABC News interview Sunday.
“In the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning,” the once-acclaimed statistics wunderkind said, describing the possibility that Democrats do not flip the 23 seats needed to claim the House.
“No one should be surprised if [Democrats] only win 19 seats, and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats,” Silver said. “Those are both extremely possible, based on how accurate polls are in the real world.”
On Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball blog, meanwhile, the University of Virginia professor’s team has an “upset watch” alongside electoral race ratings. “It’s still not a done deal,” Cook Political Report House editor David Wasserman wrote in a Monday analysis article.
Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, which also focuses on likely outcomes, told the Washington Examiner that President Trump’s unexpected 2016 win “should make everyone more humble.”
“Embrace the uncertainty” Gonzales’ site declares in a recent headline. “I think it’s OK to point readers in the direction of the most likely outcomes while embracing the uncertainty that a different outcome can still happen,” Gonzales said.
“I didn’t feel the need to throw out everything after the 2016 presidential election because our 2016 House and Senate projections were pretty darn close,” he added. “Rather than trying to find a new handicapping playbook, 2016 should be a reminder that we don’t have national elections and to focus on the state-by-state and district-by-district battles.”
Although cautious, Silver also projected a measure of confidence, writing that Republicans need an unexpected repeat of 2016 analytical failures. “Republicans need a systematic polling error to win the House,” Silver wrote.
