House popular vote so far: GOP: 51.7% Dem: 46.8%

As DUer former9thward pointed out in another thread, as of now, Republicans actually lead the House popular vote by around 5 points.

(Source: https://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/house-charts/national-house-vote-tracker/2022)

It may be odd, but this is of some comfort to me. It aggravates me to no end that the GOP probably won the gerrymandering battle, but in the end, they actually did get more votes than we did, and so them winning the House isn't the most unjust thing in the world. In fact, they're on track (right now) to get about 52% of the two-party vote and fewer than 51% of the House seats. (Yes, the numbers are a little off since California isn't done counting, and there are some races where there were no Democrats or no Republicans on the ballot, but those probably aren't enough to flip this.)

By comparison, Dems won the House vote in 2020 by 3.1%, and the House vote in 2018 by 8.6%.

You can still help the Democrats win Nevada!

There are a few thousand mail-in ballots that need to be "cured" of minor errors before they can be counted. The NV Dems want volunteers to call voters who have to cure their ballots. Please join in here if you can:

https://www.mobilize.us/demvictorynv/event/542812/

NYT needle summary thread

So far, the NYT needle and associated predictions is the best one-stop source of results I've found. It has predictions of each of the races based on where the tallied votes are so far, thus hopefully accounting for any red/blue mirages.

NYT needle

At 10:13 ET/7:13 PT, this is the state of things:

Senate

This is a 50/50 tossup: Among competitive races, it has NH and AZ leaning D, and NC (very likely R), OH (likely R), and WI (leaning R) going the wrong way. GA, NV, and PA are tossups. We need two of those three.

House

They give the R's a 72% of winning the House. This is actually down from a high of 77%.

They say there are 65 competitive races, of which the Dems need 46 to keep the House (or the Repubs need 19 to take the House). Right now Dems are favored in 22, while Repubs are favored in 12.

Note to myself/ourselves: Try not to worry too much.

The end of the election is less than a week away. Pretty soon after that, we'll know the results.

Between now and then, however, I'm telling myself not to worry too much. Obviously, we should do what we can to get people to vote. But for the most part, the things that will decide the election can't really be changed at this point. The great majority of voters have already decided on their choices. The main issues aren't going to change. It's hard to imagine any new revelation or news event that will have that big an effect.

The polls and ratings are what they are. I don't think there's any conspiracy happening with them (esp. the non-partisan media polls). Cook, 538, Sabato and all the rest are making their best informed guesses. I don't think they're biased, but they might be wrong. Hopefully they are, to our benefit. (They were wrong in 2020 for House races, though in the wrong direction-- they thought Dems would do much better than they did.)

We all know by now what the conventional wisdom says: The president's party almost always loses ground in the midterms, and this year isn't going to be different. For a while maybe it looked like it would be with Roe, but now it's back to the same old pattern again. Is the conventional wisdom right? Once again, we'll find out in a week or so.

The problem is, of course, there are lots of news cycles to fill between now and then, and they will be filled, by pundits saying the same old conventional wisdom over and over again. The same few polls being trotted out over and over again. The same raters being cited over and over again. We can read each article and worry over and over again.

Anyway, I'm trying to ignore all that. I hope I can do so. Best wishes to everyone else trying to do the same.

I don't really think about the British royal family much, but...

Prince Harry's upcoming memoir has one heck of a title (and cover).
https://twitter.com/randomhouse/status/1585576424706129931

Some humor: If I Emailed My Parents Like Democrats Email Me

A lot of funny ones. Here's one example:

Flashback: Polls Show Newsom Recall Election Survival Too Close for Democrats' Comfort

From two weeks before the California governor recall:

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey welcomes President Biden on Labor Day

Want to despair at the level of critical thinking out there?

So last night, somebody posted a fake screenshot of a tweet supposedly by Jennifer Rubin. (For those of you who don't know her, she's a WaPo columnist who used to be conservative, but these days is a never-Trumper who spends most of her time criticizing the GOP. I don't think she's liberal, at least not yet.) In any case, the fake tweet says, "Biden's Philadelphia speech met the moment. Mass arrests should come next."

It's completely implausible that Rubin would post anything like that. Nonetheless, it spread like wildfire across Twitter, including among a few decently well-known conservative journalists. Naturally, when it was pointed out that it was fake, they reverted to the usual defense of "well, the fact that I believed it says a lot about Rubin."

Anyway, if you want to depress yourself about how gullible a lot of people are, you can start from this tweet and go from there.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1565717394944843777