Senate-wary Democrats stoke skepticism of polls as campaign strategy

Democrats worried about the state of the Senate come November have reverted to what seems a last-hour strategy to rally their base to the polls, by telling their voters to close their ears and eyes to polling that paints the Republicans on a sure-fire path of a takeover.

This is the same tactic Republicans used in 2012 to drum up GOP support in the final presidential voting stretch between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, The Hill reported.

Then, pollster Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com fielded widespread fire for reporting that Mr. Obama had a 73.6 percent chance of winning re-election. He also accurately predicted how most the states would vote in that election cycle — and now he’s back, predicting the the GOP is likely to take over the Senate in upcoming elections.

And he’s not alone. Other pollsters have predicated similarly, the Republicans are almost certain to take at least six seats in the Senate, grabbing control from Democrats.

Democrats — including former President Bill Clinton — are calling into question the accuracy of those polls.

“Polling has become politicized like everything else in the current environment,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a Boston University professor and expert in political communication, The Hill reported. “The press has become more politicized, the reporting itself has become more politicized and so it is to be expected that polling is politicized.”

Mr. Clinton, meanwhile, said to an Arkansas crowd just a few days ago that polls didn’t look encouraging for the Democratic Party — but to take heart. He suggested those findings were a bit skewed because they were banking on a low turnout from the youth crowd.

And Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said those in the Republican camp were guilty of a wave of “over-interpretation” of data that swings the Senate right, The Hill reported.

“When HuffPost Pollster says Republicans have a 51 percent chance of taking control of the Senate after this election, or fivethirtyeight.com says it has a 59 percent probability, many people interpret that as meaning, ’Republicans are going to take control of the Senate,’ ” Mr. Mellman said in a column for The Hill. “But that is not at all what these forecasts say.”

But the numbers favor Republicans in most polls. The Washington Post’s “Election Lab” gave the GOP a 95 percent chance of winning the Senate in its latest survey, while Princeton University’s “Princeton Election Consortium” only gave Democrats a 49 percent chance to keep control of the Senate. The New York Times’ blog “The Upshot” gave the GOP a 66 percent chance of taking the Senate, The Hill reported.

In response, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken to sending out fundraising emails when possible with subject lines that read: “New poll proven WRONG,” the Hill reported.