2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Do the state of the polls (in general) seem just surreal to anyone else? [View all]quaker bill
(8,224 posts)But I have been seeing numbers in the range of a turn of 37 to 49 seats, moving fairly independent of the top line. The dynamic in the Senate with the primaries picking far right candidates actually played far bigger in the House races, but mostly undercover because the MSM does not follow it. In quite a number of cases the dem ran unopposed and spent a few bucks before the R primary calling the tea party wackaloon they wanted to run against "too conservative" compared to his/her opponent. (basically a back handed campaign ad for them). In many cases it worked, and the dems got the opponent they wanted.
You can see the independence of movement here in the Senate analysis on 538 and elsewhere. Polls have tightened around the Presidential race while at the same time widening for the Senate.
The proposition I am making here is that just perhaps, at the critical moment, they intentionaly allowed the Presidential race to seem a bit closer than it ever really was, to keep the money focused on the top of the ticket, where they can spend an easy 100 million on negative ads and not move the polls because there is no concious person who has not heard a negative message about BHO perhaps 100 times already and kicking it up to 110 times will make no difference. On the other hand, busting that 100 million up into 2 million dollar slices could turn a number of House seats around. I think they think like that, I could be wrong.