Nate Silver: GOP Now Favored to Win Control of Senate

The Republicans are now rated a slight favorite to win control of the Senate in November:

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Our new forecast goes a half-step further: We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats’ position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama’s approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions.

No surprise, many of his former acolytes on the Left think Silver's lost his touch. Paul Krugman:

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But I’d argue that many of the critics are getting the problem wrong. It’s not the reliance on data; numbers can be good, and can even be revelatory. But data never tell a story on their own. They need to be viewed through the lens of some kind of model, and it’s very important to do your best to get a good model. And that usually means turning to experts in whatever field you’re addressing. Unfortunately, Silver seems to have taken the wrong lesson from his election-forecasting success. In that case, he pitted his statistical approach against campaign-narrative pundits, who turned out to know approximately nothing. What he seems to have concluded is that there are no experts anywhere, that a smart data analyst can and should ignore all that.

Balloon Juice seems to have inhaled nitrous oxide:

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Here’s what I think will change before November to move this in the Democrats’ direction. First, Obamacare is going to be progressively more popular, and with that we’ll see a rebound in Obama’s popularity, which will lift all boats. Second, Baby Jesus is going to give us the present of a wingnut candidate in Georgia to power a Nunn win. Third, I think the Montana race will go to the Democrat.

PoliticsUSA (from a liberal bent) sees a different present from Baby Jesus:

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Right now, Nate Silver is giving Mitch McConnell a 75% chance of retaining his Senate seat. These odds are much, much too high in McConnell’s favor. The problem with using a similar model as what is used to successful presidential races is that statewide races are more volatile. There is also less data available. Pollsters poll Senate races less. With less data, Silver’s modeling could become less reliable.

Seriously? McConnell's pretty close to a lock. Kentucky may be the bluegrass state, but it is not blue when it comes to politics.



The Cook Political Report explains that the fundamentals heavily skew in the Republican's favor:

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There’s a lot that we have known about the Senate landscape since the start of the cycle. We have known that Republicans would need to score a net gain of six seats to win the majority; that Democrats would be defending 21 seats to just 15 for Republicans; and that the party holding the White House tends to lose large numbers of seats in the Senate, the House or more often both in second-term, mid-term elections. Moreover, we have known since the start of the cycle that Democrats would be defending seven seats in states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 while just one GOP-held seat is in a state that President Obama carried. In fact, Democrats are defending four seats that Mitt Romney won by 17 points or more, plus two more that the Republican carried by 14 points.

Let the wailing about how Nate Silver's methods no longer apply because (insert wishful thought here) begin!

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