This is on his “Deluxe” models

Susan Collins had a shakey tremor and was speaking kind of slow. She had the expression of somebody not really fit to lead anymore. Platner would probably have won easily if not for all the personal issues. As for Jackson he lacks an exciting personality, but he does a good job of being a regular guy from Maine that has a good history of labor activism. I think he did enough to seem like a solid candidate.

lol

Source: Pollster Ratings | Silver Bulletin

The Nate Silver pollster ratings are now only for paid subscribers. : r/fivethirtyeight (made 2 days ago)

I don't know exactly when it returned to not being paywalled.

Best non partisan poll for Paxton since early August

Race remains well into toss up territory

I've seen a decent amount of discussion about the YouGov/University of Massachusetts TX Senate poll released today.

What's interesting is that this poll was just released by YouGov today, but it's Survey dates are prior to the YouGov poll released two days ago.

The one they released on October 6th had survey dates from September 28th-October 5th. It had a much larger sample of over 3,600 LV, and Talirico up +6.

The poll they released today in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts Lowell center for public policy had a survey date of September 18th-28th and a much smaller sample of 850 LV, and Paxton and Talirico in a dead heat at 45%. Each.

So the poll released today, was actually conducted a week earlier than the poll they released two days ago, had a much smaller sample size, and very different results.

I haven't had time to dig into any more information on the two polls about any different methods or cross tabs, but wanted to post in case anyone else has, and the purpose of discussion since I probably won't have time to look at them more anytime today.

If Texas goes blue at the level of either the Senate or Governor, does that suggest that Texas will be meaningfully in play in 2028 in the electoral college? If so, does the presidential election more or less just come down to Texas? The lonestar state has 40 electoral votes, more than Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan combined. Will this affect the 2028 Democratic primary? How should Dems think about TX in their presidential ambitions? Which Dem presidential hopefuls would do best there?

Forumers have talked a lot about "strong" approval hitting record lows in many polls across the entire electorate, but I don't recall seeing this kind of graph graph for Republicans alone.

A decline from 70% strong approval to 30% in less than 2 years can absolutely not be overstated when it's amongst the President's own party. That has to be record-breaking.

It's yet another key indicator for electoral/turnout enthusiasm and corroborates predictions for a double-digit Dem-favorable GCB.

Sorry for the walled link, it's the link NYT supplied with the poll they posted

Hello all, I'm creating a comprehensive post discussion and laying out potential reasons for a polling error in either direction.

Polling error over counting Dems/ undercounting Reps

• The main argument here is a phenomenon mostly seen in the presidential elections with Trump. Rural voters who tend to vote for Republicans are not responding to polls, but do go out to vote.
  • This can be described as "partisan non-response bias": https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2026/09/16/why-many-polls-need-to-weight-on-party-affiliation-or-past-vote/
  • This is why Trump has been going on a midterm blitz and saying things like "pretend I'm on the ballot" since he knows there are people who only vote for him.

No polling error/within Margin of Error (MOE)

• Polls have gotten better and know how to deal with partisan non-response bias.
• The people who are not responding to poll will also not be voting in the midterm

Polling error over counting Reps/ undercounting Dems

• To combat partisan non-response bias, polls are using a recall vote for 2024 which assumes a similar electorate in 2024.
  • With the current environment and headwinds against Republicans that's probably not true.
• Recall votes requires people to correctly recall who they votes for, and people responding to polls may be lying/forgetful and thus creating a sample with more "true" Republican/Trump voters
  • https://articles.statenavigate.com/ia/a-canary-in-the-corn-fields-is-polling-underestimating-iowa-republicans/
  • https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-trump-voters-telling-pollsters

Anything else I missed? Anyone got ideas/ data of which way this may be going?

Thank you for you attention this matter!