2018 Midterm Elections

Friends of Election Integrity-

Well it’s once more into the breach, down a dark alley with a dying flashlight. I’ve attached spreadsheets that you may find helpful in charting patterns and anomalies tonight. There are separate sheets for US House, Senate, Gubernatorial, and Ballot Props, all updated to this morning with the latest aggregate-polling forecast.

Vets will know that there are no individual CD House exit polls (EP). Some may also know that word has been passed that the EPs are being tweaked in advance of public posting to address the over-representation of highly educated voters that was seized upon in 2016 to explain why the EPs were so “off,” when in fact, nationally they were “on,” varying from the popular vote for president by a mere 1.1% (it was in the battleground and suspected vote-padding states – necessary perhaps to keep Trump from losing the popular vote by a huge and suspect margin – that we saw “failed” EPs with large red shifts). The tweaking will shift the EPs significantly to the right (this is the insidious votecount-poll feedback loop on full display), so don’t be surprised if the is little to no red shift across the board tonight. That is why I’ve included several waves of pre-election polling (PEP) in the charts. We’ll be looking for PEP red shift and competitive-noncompetitive disparities in the red shift, all of which can be tracked using the charts provided.

So please have at it – redundancy is the least of our worries. But, as we all know by now, election forensics tends to get us pretty much nowhere with the media and poobahs. For some time now, the real value to me has been just to know (sort of) what’s likely going down; just to not be completely blind like the rest of America.

But when the dust settles – and however it settles – we would do well to ask two fundamental questions: 1) Where does our power as a public lie, given that we strongly suspect it is no longer in our votes? 2) What specific measures can we take to prevent this wretched cycle from repeating ad nauseam? I draw particular attention to the fact that, of the more than 20 ballot measures nationwide calling for changes (both good and bad) to the way we run our elections, not a single one says “Amend the state constitution to require HCPB and/or RLAs.” Just food for thought for now.

Wishing the best to all and a big thank you for your hard work – Jonathan