It was a great Tuesday night for the GOP. It was not a good night for the pollsters who keep talking “blue wave” or the newsmen who told us about those West Virginia internal polls that showed a Blankenship surge.
To their credit, 538.con raised doubts about the internal polls a day or so ago:
Internal polls — politico-speak for polls conducted by a campaign or another entity with a stake in the race — have their uses. Indeed, in this case, we don’t have any recent public polls of the race. But you should take internal polls with several grains of salt.
Frankly, I’m taking most polls these days with tons of grains of salt. I don’t know how you can poll by phone when most Americans do not answer their phones or even have landlines. I have a landline but It’s because I call overseas and work from a home office.
Again, Don Blankenship was not a factor at all. So who took those polls or leaked them to the media? Maybe the whole things was “fake news” or an effort by Democrats to help Manchin. I don’t want to talk conspiracy theories, but I did watch Senator Manchin refer to Blankenship as the only true conservative Republican in the GOP primary.
In West Virginia and Indiana, the GOP nominated great candidates who have excellent chances of flipping those two U.S. Senate seats.
The other big story was the absence of “a blue wave.”
In Ohio, both parties had very contested primaries and the GOP had a great turnout: “Republicans (827,393) drew nearly 200,000 more voters than Democrats (641,522)“.
Ohio’s results are important for two reasons: First, both parties had reason to turn out. Second, it’s a very competitive state in recent presidential elections.
We don’t want to draw huge conclusions and November is still six months away. However, I’m starting to have my doubts about the blue wave. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the only action on the Democrat side is a “Soros wave” — candidates pushing the party to the left.
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