STRATEGY FOR 2022: RED ALERT from Nanette Smith
Thank you Mercedes Jenouri for the opportunity to share this critical information!
BACKGROUND AND QUALIFICATIONS: 2016. Annus Horribilis (stolen from Queen Elizabeth). So many of my friends were pumped up about Hillary, but I had special information and was extremely worried and started looking at polling data. Some friends said, “if you say she’s not going to win, I’ll unfriend you”, so I kept it quiet but if we want to win, we need to face reality and get to work, so here it goes.
It takes just a little insight to get a feel for the polling data. They are of course variable depending on sample sizes, pollster bias, and what is going on in the country. But I found that many of the polls were quite good, when there is enough data. The numbers for 2016 tracked right on with all the attacks, right up to the end. That loss was no surprise.
After practicing at that, I expanded it and found it very useful in 2020 when I was working the phone lines for Senate races, all over the country, and for my donations, and others use it also, for either phone banking and/or donations. The 2020 outcome was just as predicted. More on that in another post.
So here we are and the House is in big trouble and I think too many people don’t realize it. This is a result of years of efforts by the GOP to implement gerrymandering in their favor. Additionally, remember that Trump stopped the Census before it was completed. The combined result is that we lost many districts. Note for the future: the state government elections are critical to the long term.
Handy summaries of the polls are found in FiveThirtyEight, 270towin, RealClear Politics, and Ballotpedia, although I always check the actual pollster names and look for outlying data before including in my summary.
SENATE
We should be ok to keep the 50 seats we have, but there is an opportunity to pick up 2 more so we don’t have interference from Manchin and Sinema. There are 3 possible seats, PA, WI, OH, although we may lose Warnock (GA), as appalling as that is given his opponent. Similar happened in 2020: in four states we ran intelligent qualified candidates against blithering idiots and lost. More on that in future posts.
HOUSE: HELP NEEDED DESPERATELY
The starting point is really scary. Guaranteed seats are 174 to 203. There are 34 toss-ups. So in the summary I counted them by who they voted for in 2020 presidential election. Which has been reasonably reliable method in the past but they are all so close. Need to get the sample size up on the polling data. But we can focus on the ones that are close and we know are possible but very close.
So starting out it looks like we need at least 5. This was already adjusted for the surprise special election wins in NY19 and AK1. Although we can’t count on that recurring in November, that is
However: with more polling data coming out, 7 that I counted for us in TOSS-UP are in danger and 3 more are a little too close for comfort. These should be a primary target for help:
Note the color coding is whoever is ahead at the moment. Also, 3 point lead tends to be pretty good, if there is a large enough sample size.
Therefore, we are down somewhere between 5 and 16 (likely 13 or less) seats that we need to steal from those though to go Republican. It is possible, with Biden’s successes, covid down, gas prices down, inflation getting under control and we’ve seen it already in flipping NY19 and AK1. The following list are those counted Republican but are possible “steals” . T means a trump-backed candidate so with him going downhill, this could help us.
And then there are lean republicans, some seats (name in blue) have flipped at least temporarily so pay particular attention to the names in blue:
IN SUM:
We are looking good to get the 5 we need for those known needed, because of early flips from the LEAN REP. The issue will be hanging on to the BLUE DANGER or replacing them with the RED LEAN that have not flipped already, or TOSS-UP voted TRUMP. These numbers will change, so I’ll update weekly or more; polling is still early and small in number, and I will be looking at key candidates more closely next task.
You’ve got to know how important this is. It’s not just a matter of getting more good things done; if we lose the House the Jan6 Investigations will stop and it could allow a return of Trump in 2024. I never ask people to donate money but I just ask that you do whatever you can. Phone banking done correctly (next post) can be very effective, and then of course helping get people to the polls when that time comes, remember that we are up against reduced voting rights laws now.
Thank you for your service!!!
nanette
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