Senate Update: It Ain’t Over Yet, Way Too Soon For Tears
At about 6 p.m. Wednesday, a collective Democratic spit-take splattered computer screens around the country (at least that’s what I imagined happened). Fox News released new polls showing Republican candidates ahead by 4 percentage points in Alaska, 6 percentage points in Colorado, 5 percentage points in Kansas and 4 percentage points in Kentucky.
The polls look like a disaster for Democrats.
They’re not.
FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast has Republican chances of taking back the Senate at 56.4 percent — basically unchanged from the 56.5 percent we showed Tuesday.
The forecast barely budged because the Senate model doesn’t take polls at face value. Fox News polls throughout this election cycle have had a fairly strong pro-Republican house effect, a measure of how a pollster’s results compare to other polls. For instance, Fox News’s generic ballot has shown Republicans up by 7 percentage points among likely voters for two polls in a row, while the average pollster has shown Republicans up by 3 points. Looking at national and state data, Fox News currently has a +3.6 percentage-point pro-Republican house effect.