Oct 11 2010

Gallup Maintains GOP Tsunami, Rasmussen Comes Back To Reality

Published by at 4:57 pm under 2010 Elections,All General Discussions

Last week was interesting because, just as Rasmussen was detecting a bizarre shift to the Democrats in his ‘likely voter’ generic congressional ballot question (down to a +3% for the GOP), Gallup finally released its ‘likely voter‘ generic poll (two actually) showing a +13-18% GOP tsunami. It was doubly interesting since Rasmussen had been showing a GOP advantage of typically around +10% for the GOP for weeks prior.

Clearly one of the pollsters had some fluke data in their sample. Dems prayed it was Gallup – but sadly for them it was not. Gallup has now come up with their second weekly ‘likely voter‘ results, and it should be no surprise the range is still a staggering 12-17% tsunami for the GOP (Dems gained a single, statistically insignificant 1%). Rasmussen, on the other hand, jumped back to a +8% GOP lead. Rasmussen’s 39D – 47R spread is now very close to Gallup’s lower estimate of 41D-53R.

It seems that it was Rasmussen who had a couple of strange samples in the mix. Finally, now RCP is using only ‘likely voter‘ polls in their composite generic ballot poll index, and we see a +8% GOP landslide at RCP as well. Sort of a, kind of, trend peaking out from the data.

In a good GOP year the generic ballot is close to equity between Dems and the GOP. No one has seen an election with these kinds of poll numbers, but I still wager a +10% GOP lead in the generic ballot going into November 2nd means the wave of anger will sweep out most D+6 seats – which would means something on the order of a 90 seat pick up as I modeled here (Reference: the D+6 subtotal row assuming 90% loss rate for the Dems):

What is driving this wave is the combination of at least two forces, creating the perfect political storm. First is the cavernous enthusiasm gap between the conservatives/GOP and Dems. It is so lopsided it ain’t funny. 2nd is the movement of the independent voters en masse to the GOP, because the policy failures of the liberal DC leaders has even the GOP looking good right now. This is made clear in this table produced by Jay Cost at the Weekly Standard:

Gallup confirms this general trend, indicating the 10+% lead in the generic models is no fluke.

But among the two groups of likely voters, the Republican margin among independents expands to 21 to 25 points.

This cannot be a fluke when you see so many polls showing 20+% shift of independents towards the GOP. Add in enthusiasm with the GOP voters, some enthusiasm in the independent voters and some defections from the Dems and it is easy to understand how the Dems could be consumed in 3 short weeks by a historic wave of voter anger.

14 responses so far

14 Responses to “Gallup Maintains GOP Tsunami, Rasmussen Comes Back To Reality”

  1. lurker9876 says:

    Seven days for me. And I’ve already made up my mind on who I will vote…straight Republican ticket!

  2. MarkN says:

    Unmitigated disaster. If you’re a Democrat.

  3. stan25 says:

    This kerfuffle with the Chamber Of Commerce is not helping matters any. Just any old way to make sure to lose an election. Of course, someone that is so stuck on himself thinks that it is going to be alright on the morning of November 3rd

  4. Mike M. says:

    That’s not a tsunami…it’s a Demo-saur Killer.

  5. Fai Mao says:

    To borrow a term from a sci-fi movie

    Ths could be an “ELE” Extinction Level Event

    Or so we can hope

  6. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Suhr Mesa, Free To Prosper. Free To Prosper said: Gallup Maintains GOP Tsunami, Rasmussen Comes Back To Reality http://bit.ly/bH7z3B :: Strata-sphere […]

  7. archtop says:

    Yes – folks are already voting early, or soon will be. So I expect the polls to start firming up somewhat over the next week.

    The Dems are nearly out of ammo if the best they can do is criticize the Chamber of Commerce for “foreign contributions”! Expect more flailing in the coming two weeks.

    Come to think of it, our government has been a Chamber of Non-Commerce for the past two years (LOL!!).

  8. lurker9876 says:

    Just breaking…the Dems are now pouring money into the Coons campaign. Not only that, they moved the campaign manager of that Carole of NH-1 to Delaware.

    Guess that’s the best one they felt that they could win it?

  9. lurker9876 says:

    Just breaking…the Dems are now pouring money into the Coons campaign. Not only that, they moved the campaign manager of that Carole of NH-1 to Delaware.

    Guess that’s the best one they felt that they could win it?

    Now isn’t that interesting?

  10. lurker9876 says:

    Sorry…dup post but here is the link:

    http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/10/11/breaking-dscc-sending-reinforcements-to-delaware-for-coons/

    Is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee a bit concerned about the potential impact of the Tea Party in Delaware or have the Democrats completely written off Carol Shea-Porter running for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District?

    I ask because the Democrats have sent the lady who was on the ground running operations for Carol Shea-Porter’s congressional bid to Delaware to be the Field Director for Chris Coons canvassing operation.

    That’s a mighty odd expenditure to be making in shifting resources around if the Democrats are so sure of Chris Coons’ victory.

    It also seems certain the Democrats are now writing off NH-1.

  11. […] It’s all over except for the counting. […]

  12. crosspatch says:

    This is the second week of early voting in California. Mail-in ballots have already been mailed in most cases. Oregon doesn’t even have an “election day”, they do all their voting by mail now and ballots there have mostly been sent, too. Washington state also has pretty close to 100% early voting.

    Much of the West Coast has already voted.

  13. oneal lane says:

    I have been warning, it’s not going to be what you think.

  14. […] by AJStrata at 9:00 am under 2010 Elections,All General Discussions The other day I looked at the PVI of races in contention and then pondered various scenarios for the November […]