RED WAVE ON THE HORIZON

Surf’s Up!

According to most published polls, Democrats have a 50-50 (or better) chance to win control of the House of Representatives, while Republican gains in the Senate likely will be minimal.

The signs on the ground, electoral history, and logic say something very different.

Thanks to early voting (walk-in and absentee), 35 to 40 percent of all votes in most states will be cast before election day.

According to polls, Senate races in Florida, Arizona, Indiana and Montana are nail biters. But Republicans are crushing Democrats in early voting in Florida, Arizona and (especially) in Indiana and Montana.

This is yuge, because in every election before this, Democrats “won” early voting, typically by large margins.

Democrats lead in early voting in only two battleground states, Nevada and Iowa, by much smaller margins than in 2016 or 2014.

The other big sign is the phenomenon of the Trump rally. There has never been anything like this. The president is drawing enormous, enthusiastic crowds wherever he goes.  People who line up eight hours or more before a rally are highly likely to vote.

Zero, by contrast, can’t fill high school gyms in deep blue territory.

This figures to be a base mobilization election. Thanks to Trump and indignation over the smear of Judge Kavanaugh, ours is more motivated than theirs.

Republicans are more unified now than at any time since Reagan in 1984. Among Democrats, there is more discord than at any time since McGovern in 1972.

Democrats are likely to vote in higher numbers than is typical for a midterm election. But the most motivated Democrats aren’t the ones Democrats need the most.

Last week two labor unions in Minnesota endorsed GOP Rep. Jason Lewis, said to be one of the most endangered Republicans.

The carpenters and local 49 of the International Union of Operating Engineers praised Lewis for supporting good jobs for blue collar workers.

If Democrat Angie Craig wins, she’d be “the first lesbian mom in Congress,” leftist media gush.

Upper middle class white women who care about such things, who loathe Donald Trump because he denied them their “first woman president,” who hyperventilate over abortion are the most fervent part of the Democrat base.

Scolds who wear pussy hats will vote. But more numerous elements of the Democrat base – Millennials, Blacks, Hispanics – exhibit signs of their customary midterm lassitude.

In Florida, there have been more voters 85 and older than voters aged 18-29.

Democrats are pouring money into races they ought to have locked up months ago. The Lying Swine already offer excuses – voter suppression, gerrymandering – for why the “blue wave” didn’t materialize.

Why do polls differ so from the facts on the ground?

A political “horserace” poll is considered accurate if it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent at a “confidence level” of 95 percent. That is, if the survey were conducted 100 times, the result would be within 3 percent 95 times.

Polls are conducted by telephone. Pollsters make calls until they’ve received responses from enough people who fit their turnout model to bring the MOE within 3 percent.

Many MSM polls use badly flawed turnout models, Bill Mitchell notes. They assume only 25 percent of midterm voters will be Republicans, 33 percent Democrats, 42 percent independents/other.

That’s ridiculous. Republicans comprised 32 percent of the electorate in 2016, Democrats 38 percent, independents/other 30 percent. There are more of us now than there were then.

Polls are expensive. Pollsters want to make as few calls as is possible to have enough responses to have an accurate poll. There are big differences between polls of adults, or of registered voters, or of likely voters. The tighter the likely voter screen, the more calls the pollster must make to get the roughly 350 responses needed to get the MOE within 3 percent.

Pollsters have to make more calls to get those 350 responses, because more voters than ever refuse to talk to pollsters. The response rate declined from 36 percent in 1997 to just 9 percent in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

Out of every person pollsters called in 2012, 38 percent could not be reached, 53 percent were contacted, but refused to talk to the pollster. Just 9 percent answered the polling questions.

In 2012, Republicans were roughly twice as likely as Democrats to refuse to answer a pollster’s questions. The refusal rate is closely tied to distrust of the news media, which has grown substantially since 2012. Odds are both the refusal rate, and the proportion of Republicans among the refuseniks, have grown substantially since then.

There is, of course, another reason why polls overstate support for Democrats.

Polls are conducted to (a) find out what people think, or (b) to influence what people think. Most public polls are conducted for reason (b). Their purpose is to gaslight, to keep moonbat spirits up, to discourage Trump supporters from voting. Take them all with pounds of salt.

Based on early voting to date, and 2016 results, Republicans figure to pick up at least 3 Senate seats, net, possibly as many as 9. There are two ways of looking at that:

Given the large number of Dems up for re-election in red states, a gain of 3 would be disappointing, 4 blah, 5 or 6 good and very good, 7 or more sensational.

But as far as what the next Congress may do, a gain of just 3 or 4 would be very significant. No more nail-biting votes dependent on GOP squishes.  And note, there will be fewer squishes, with execrables like Jeff Flake, Bob Corkers, and John McCain gone.

Senate gains won’t matter much if Democrats take the House. But I’ve a better chance of winning the lottery than Nancy Pelosi does of becoming Speaker.

To gain the 23 seats they need, Democrats would have to win virtually every close race, even though – in polls that overstate support for Dems – they trail in most of them.

Democrats almost certainly will gain seats, perhaps as many as 15 or 16. But what matters is keeping the Speaker’s gavel out of Pelosi’s hands.

It would be bad if Democrats flip the House. But not the catastrophe some conservatives imagine.

If Dems eke out a bare majority, they won’t have enough votes to impeach the president, who – no matter what happens Nov. 6 – will still be Donald Trump.

The Senate would continue to confirm conservative judges.

Things can change in a week. But thanks to our indefatigable president, and Democrat overreach, we have the momentum. The Dems’ message has been reduced to Orange man bad, and gun control. Enough for pussy hat wearing harridans, but not for most others.

We assume this will be a base turnout election. But it may be more than that.

Some Republicans will vote for Democrats. But likely many more Democrats will vote for Republicans. We saw in Washington D.C. last weekend with the young black leaders conference and the #Walkaway march disaffection from Democrats.

In 2016, independents broke for Trump, 46 percent to 42 percent.  The GOP should get a larger share of the independent vote this year. It isn’t just Republicans who prefer jobs to mobs, oppose open borders, like free speech and the presumption of innocence.

My stomach will churn until the results are known. But my head tells me that a week from today moonbats will be screeching louder than ever.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement last year, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.