nuckles87

I'm not a big defender of public media/academic polls in general. As I've said, I largely ignore them and rely on higher quality private polls in my reporting. But there are big misconceptions growing in some quarters that I think it would be good to head off. A poll with a candidate at or near 50% is very different than a poll with the alleged leader at, say, 45%. In other words, 50% to 43% is very different than 45% to 38%. The smaller undecided is a meaningful factor. And any Republican strategist or pol with access to high-quality private polling knows that their numbers are not meaningfully different than the New York Times polls. If there is not a Blue tsunami as big as Connecticut, it will indeed be a very large polling failure across many states. But/and that will as true for private Republican polls as for the "liberal" New York Times polls. The prospect that the polls have moved here in the final week from narrow Democratic leads in many key races to larger leads is perfectly consistent with voter behavior and with the news flow and political environment. There might not be a Blue tsunami, but tonight there are more reasons to think that there will be than that there won't.