On a Different Note and Looking Ahead...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

America seems to be in perpetual campaign mode. No sooner than things start to settle in following a mid term or presidential election than the pols start preparing for the next election and the spinning starts in earnest. Leaving one to wonder just when our elected officials are actually working on our behalf. Call me the cynic but I cannot help but believe our politicians and leaders spend more time working to create the "world of smoke and mirrors" they want us to exist in for their sake than actually representing us and taking care of crucial matters that affect our nation and each and every one of us.

So, today, I'm joining in the American Political Merry-Go- Round and predicting that Americans will once again get exactly what they (in their apathy) vote for. America, with its dismal voter turnout, low information voters, and political sound bite junkies, will pull the levers once again for those politicians with the slickest slogans or those who wrap themselves in the flag holding the Bible in one hand and their six shooter in the other. It is my prediction that few is any will actually be holding the Constitution in on hand and the Bill of Rights in the other and be advocating for what the Founding Fathers actually enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.

Having expressed my predictions I will turn to the "professional pundits view" of were we're headed for in the 2014 elections.

The battle for control of the U.S. Senate is where the action is this year in American politics. Right now all signs point to a near standoff in the U.S. House elections. Barring a major change in the political environment in the next few months, the 114th House is expected to closely resemble the 113th House with a slightly larger or slightly smaller Republican majority. In contrast, party control of the next Senate is definitely up for grabs this year.

The main reason why Democrats are at risk of losing control of the Senate in November is not because of public discontent with the Affordable Care Act, continued weakness in the economy or President Obama’s mediocre approval ratings. All of these issues may have an impact on the Senate elections. But the Democrats’ biggest problem this year is that they were so successful in the 2008 Senate elections. While Barack Obama was capturing the White House in 2008, Democrats gained eight net seats in the Senate, winning 20 of the 35 seats at stake.

Now Democrats must defend all of the seats that they won six years ago, including several in states that usually support Republicans. Of the Democratic seats up for grabs this year, seven are in states that were carried by Mitt Romney in 2012, including six that Romney won by a double-digit margin. In contrast, Republicans are only defending one seat in a state that was carried by Obama in 2012 — Sen. Susan Collins’ seat in Maine. And Collins is so popular that she isn’t a credible Democratic target.

A simple model based on a large body of political science research allows us to make fairly accurate predictions of seat swing in midterm U.S. Senate elections. This model is almost identical to one that I have used to accurately forecast seat swing in midterm House elections. The three predictors are the results of the generic congressional ballot question in national polls in early September; the difference between the number of Republican seats and the number of Democratic seats at stake in the election; and a dummy variable for the president’s party.

A simple model based on a large body of political science research allows us to make fairly accurate predictions of seat swing in midterm U.S. Senate elections. This model is almost identical to one that I have used to accurately forecast seat swing in midterm House elections. The three predictors are the results of the generic congressional ballot question in national polls in early September; the difference between the number of Republican seats and the number of Democratic seats at stake in the election; and a dummy variable for the president’s party.

The generic ballot question provides a measure of the mood of the electorate two months before the election. Even though it asks specifically about House voting intentions, the generic ballot question predicts Senate voting as well. The seat difference variable is a measure of party exposure in the election: The more seats a party has at risk relative to the opposing party, the more seats it tends to lose. Finally, the dummy variable for the party of the president reflects the tendency of the president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections even after controlling for the other predictors in the model.

Table 1: Results of regression analysis of Senate seat swing in midterm elections

Source: Data compiled by author

Table 1 above presents estimates for the effects of the three predictors on change in Republican Senate seats based on data for all 17 midterm Senate elections since World War II. The estimated coefficients for all three predictors are in the expected direction and highly statistically significant. Moreover, the model explains an impressive 75% of the variance in Senate seat swing. This is substantially less than the 90% of variance in seat swing explained by the House forecasting model. However, that is to be expected given the much smaller number of Senate seats at stake in each election and the larger proportion of competitive contests in Senate elections. There is simply more random variation in Senate seat swing because of the effects of campaigns and candidate quality. The only way to produce a more accurate forecast of the outcome in November is to factor in these seat-specific characteristics based on in-depth information from on-the-ground sources — the sort of information used by the Crystal Ball in making its exceptionally accurate final predictions.

Even at this early stage, however, estimates for two of the predictors in our model make it clear that 2014 is likely to be a difficult year for Democrats in the Senate. First, based on the fact that there are six more Democratic than Republican seats at stake this year, Democrats would be expected to lose 2.4 Senate seats compared with an election in which there were equal numbers of Democratic and Republican seats at stake. Second, the fact that there is a Democrat in the White House means that Democrats can expect to lose about four more seats than they would expect to lose in a midterm election with a Republican in the White House.

When we add together the effect of the seat exposure variable and the effect of the midterm dummy variable, and factor in the intercept of -0.9 in the regression equation, Republicans start off the 2014 campaign with an expected gain of 5.7 seats. That is very close to the six seats that Republicans need to regain control of the Senate.

My advice is twofold; 1) educate yourself on the issues and 2) be very careful of who and what you vote for.

And keep in mind there is ALWAYS the alternative party. Libertarian...give it a look-see. You just might like what you encounter.

Please read the rest BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum