Decreasing robustness in the Republicans' path to victory

We use the word "robust" to describe things that still perform very well even when some of the basic assumptions behind it are violated. For example (and the word generally isn't used to describe them), cockroaches are pretty robust with regard to the environment, if the well-touted factoid that cockroaches can survive a thermonuclear blast carries any weight. No matter what environment we put them in, they're incredibly hardy survivalists.

With that in mind, we now say that the Republican path to control of the Senate is considerably less robust than it was a couple months ago. 

YouGov is back, and (probably) better

Usually I don't devote a lot of attention to a single pollster. That's almost as bad news organizations calling the New Hampshire Senate race a toss-up because one poll showed Scott Brown within the margin of error of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (well, actually two polls--and I was quite ashamed of my native Dartmouth College for reporting the race as such). Or the pundits who suggested that Oregon's Senate race was a toss-up because Monica Wehby led Sen. Jeff Merkley in one poll conducted by a Republican firm. Or the--you get the idea. But as I've said before, I'm paying a lot of attention to this YouGov survey because it's just so ambitious, and just crazy enough to work. Maybe.

To reiterate, I flagged the YouGov survey for a closer look because 1) it was longitudinal, meaning that it would try to track the same panelists in the months leading up to the election, and 2) it was an attempt to poll every race in every state. Even in a state like Utah, where neither Gov. Gary Herbert nor Senators Orrin Hatch or Mike Lee are up for re-election, YouGov assembled a panel of 1087 voters just to ask them the generic House ballot question. I found the sheer scope and ambition of the survey pretty cool.

Unfortunately, as I also wrote, it also sorta fell flat. Too many things--suspicious results, distorted weights, a distinct lack of Asians--seemed off for me to consider any of the results in our average. So I didn't, but I did decide to wait for the next iteration of the poll to come out before passing judgment on YouGov as a whole.

Candidate tiers of experience for the 2014 elections

Just really quickly while we're on the subject of candidate experience, I've been asked to publish a cheat-sheet for how I've coded this year's crop of candidates. Just click "read on" to view the tables.

Candidate quality and the forecast

With Alaska Republicans having finally nominated Daniel S. Sullivan as their choice for the Senate seat there--and with my vacation having finally ended--candidate-choosing time has pretty much wrapped up. In pretty much all races where primaries have yet to be held, the results are foregone conclusions--New Hampshire's Senate is going to be Jeanne Shaheen vs. Scott Brown, etc. (The exception is Rhode Island's Democratic primary for the governorship, which is still basically tied and probably won't be settled until September 9.) As a result, it's probably time to start talking about candidate quality.

"Candidate quality" is about as nebulous as political jargon gets. That's largely because it's a composite of a number of qualities that are just as nebulous as "candidate quality", if not more so: name recognition, political experience, etc. However, that doesn't mean we can't quantify it. Some, like FiveThirtyEight's recently published model, compute candidate quality as a function of the highest political office the candidate has ever held. Depending on what we're trying to calculate here, political experience appears to be the single best metric of candidate quality among all other possible variables, even better than favorability ratings (although those still probably play a role). But for us, candidate quality is all about trying to figure out how undecided voters will break once it actually comes time to put a name down on the ballot.

While (probably) not the same as others have done, I've very crudely measured candidate experience by putting candidates into "tiers" based on the candidate's political career to that point. Specifically:

Ratings Update: September 1, 2014

Just in time for the Labor Day campaign season kickoff, here's some ratings changes:

The last big Senate primary of 2014

By "big" I of course mean a competitive primary in a competitive state. (This is as opposed to something like Hawaii's Democratic Senate primary, which was a competitive primary in a non-competitive state.) That state is, of course, Alaska, where Republicans still haven't settled for sure who their challenger to incumbent Sen. Mark Begich will be.

According to polling, it's true, former Attorney General Daniel S. Sullivan has a comfortable lead--as he has in all polling conducted since the beginning of 2014. In the average he leads Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell by 10 points, 37-27, and 2010 nominee Joe Miller by 19. Sullivan has also raised more twice the amount of money raised by Lt. Gov. Treadwell and Miller combined. While he's been outspent slightly by Lt. Gov. Treadwell, I've written before that the size of the campaign war chest is an indicator of the candidate's strength not so much because of the money he spends, but largely because it indicates broader (or at least deeper) support.

The one thing Lt. Gov. Treadwell (and, to a lesser extent, Miller) may have going for him is Sullivan's potential perception as an "outsider": Treadwell has lived in Alaska since 1978, while Sullivan lived up and down the East Coast most of his life until 2009, when Gov. Sarah Palin tapped him to become Attorney General. In aggregate it may be a minor concern, but for some citizens it may be a dealbreaker. (Personally, I felt that the fact that Tom MacArthur moved down from North Jersey just to run in the NJ-3 primary was a major turn-off.) And in Alaska, with a population less than that of the Columbia, South Carolina metropolitan area, the aggregate is not very large. (Sorry, Columbia, but you were the smallest metro area that was still bigger than Alaska. Nothing personal.)

Still, that takes a backseat to polling and fundraising, which suggest that Sullivan has all the advantages. One other thing that may work in Treadwell and Miller's favor is that polling in Alaska has historically been highly inconsistent (and I'm talking standard deviations of 10+ percentage points here). In 2008, polling in the last month before the election suggested anywhere from a 1-point victory for incumbent Sen. Ted Stevens to a 22-point blowout for eventual winner Mark Begich. And in 2010, the one poll, taken less than a month before the primary election, put Sen. Lisa Murkowski 32 points ahead of the eventual winner, Joe Miller. So it could be that polls are vastly overstating Sullivan's performance and/or vastly understating Treadwell's performance. But then again, it could just as easily be the other way around.

Finally, there's also the somewhat amusing possibility that Anchorage voters will mistake Sullivan for the mayor of Anchorage, Daniel A. Sullivan, and vote accordingly. (I would laugh if this actually happened.) With 42% of Alaska's population, Anchorage is where the votes are anyway. Humor aside, though, it's Sullivan's race to lose here. LIKELY SULLIVAN

Fishiness in the YouGov longitudinal survey

First things first: Kansas's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat there came out as expected, with incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts doing a little worse than polling predicted, although still coming out on top, 7 points ahead of runner-up Milton R. Wolf. So that's done. Kansas's Senate seat therefore remains SAFE REPUBLICAN for the general election in November, despite Democratic nominee Chad Taylor's surprisingly close performance in some polls.

Then there's the recent YouGov longitudinal survey conducted for CBS News and The New York Times, which I described as a "pollgasm"--there's just a ton of data in here. Importantly, I call it a "longitudinal survey" because its ambitious intent--as if polling a panel of 100,000 registered voters nationwide wasn't ambitious enough--is to track changes in opinion from that exact panel every month until the election. Since, for example, I participated in the panel as a voter from New Jersey, my understanding is that I'll be getting an email in a few weeks to ask me the exact same questions--whether I'll be voting for Sen. Cory Booker or Republican challenger Jeff Bell; whether I'll vote for the Democrat or the Republican running for Congress in my district (Aimee Belgard and Tom MacArthur, respectively, although YouGov doesn't know that); whether I approve or disapprove of President Obama's job performance, etc. And again in September, and ostensibly in October, too.