A Blue Wave is coming to wipe Congress clean and leave a plethora of Democrats controlling the apparatus of government. Or so they would have you believe. The reality is that their numbers are tanking, the GOP has all the energy, and voters are starting to lose enthusiasm for the “tired, old routine.”
At the beginning of the year, the Democratic Party enjoyed a 13% lead; this has gradually decreased to under 5% over the last few months. They are now sitting on a rather uninspiring 4.7% lead which is likely to decline even further.
The Greatest Indicator
While polls, pundits, and politicos provide intel regarding the 2018 midterm elections, a better policy might be to check out the real professionals: bookmakers.
In the U.K., it is not towards pollsters that the public turns to find predictions of political turmoil, nor is it the multitudinous news agencies; it is the betting shops. Legalized gambling in Great Britain allows the public to bet on pretty much any event taking place; political gambling is, in fact, the fastest growing betting market in the world.
Right now, one of the market leaders has the chance of Democrats taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives at 61.2%, but this has declined 2.3% in just the last week (and down further on earlier weeks indicating a steady loss of support).
Senate control favors the GOP with 67.1% which is up 1.3% in the last week.
It is to betting markets that we find the greatest Cassandras; when they tie in with actual polling, we see where reality is likely to lead us. With polling numbers sinking and the GOP betting odds rising, we can be pretty sure that the Blue Wave is going to crash out on the offshore rocks before anyone can call “surf’s up!”
Warnings and Warnings
California Democrat Adam Schiff has already tried to raise the alarm bells in his New York Times op-ed where he appealed to fellow Dems not to take the bait on impeachment:
“Let President Trump arouse his voters as he will while Democrats continue to focus on the economy, family and a return to basic decency. And in the meantime, all Americans should reserve judgment until the investigations have run their course.”
It appears at least one member of the Democratic Party can see the writing on the wall: the more they push the anti-Trump rhetoric, the more voters are turning away.
It is not enough for an opposition government to rely on the approval ratings of the sitting president to catapult them to power; President Trump’s ratings are increasing slowly but surely, but this is not the reason they should be worried.
Dwight Eisenhower oversaw a loss of 48 House and 23 Senate seats. Despite having a public approval rating of 58 percent in 1958.
The Real Odds
Perhaps the most fitting summary is best left to the authors Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner in their book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction when they describe the talent pool they had gathered:
“I managed to recruit 284 serious professionals, card-carrying experts whose livelihoods involved analyzing political and economic trends and events… Almost all had postgraduate training; half had PhDs…”
And the accuracy of these experts?
“… the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.”
