For many years, SportsCar magazine has written a Solo National Championships preview article in advance of the actual event. In this article, they make predictions about who will win each class. It’s mostly lighthearted fun, especially since they are discussing an amateur autosports event with no real impact on society. They also used to hand out t-shirts to the champions at the awards banquet that said “SportsCar was RIGHT!” or “SportsCar was WRONG!” depending on whether or not the magazine had correctly predicted the winner.
Well, if we had been handing out t-shirts to the winners of the Senate races in Indiana, Florida, and Missouri last night, we would have been handing out a lot of “The Media was WRONG!” shirts.
Polling showed clear advantages for the democratic Senate candidates in each state:
- Joe Donnelly had an average lead of two points in Indiana polling. He lost by nearly ten points.
- Bill Nelson had an average lead of two and a half points in Florida polling. He lost by less than a point (yes there’s a recount pending, but it won’t change anything).
- Claire McCaskill was running even with Josh Hawley in Missouri polling. She lost by six points.
Also, Jon Tester was leading Montana polling by three points, but currently trails in actual voting by about a thousand votes as Montana wraps up their count.
But you know who DID get all of these election results right? Well, I did, when I predicted yesterday that Republicans would lose the house, but would pick up Senate seats in Indiana, Florida, and Missouri (I also predicted North Dakota, but to be fair, so did everybody else). I even offered to bet our old friend, BigTruck, a grand on the Senate, which he declined to accept.
Why was I so confident? Simple. I know Trump has broken polling for the foreseeable future. People who support Trump and his agenda often refuse to speak to pollsters, especially after the 2016 presidential election. There is also a large number of people who feel afraid to admit in public that they will vote for Trump—and with people running around in black outfits, beating MAGA-hat wearers with clubs, can you blame them? So they say they will vote Democrat in public, but secretly vote Republican behind the curtain. They also turn out in larger numbers than anybody ever predicts they will—Republicans overperformed in nearly every swing district last night in Florida, Missouri, and Indiana.
When 2020 rolls around, remember this. Be wary of any poll that shows a democrat leading by anything less than double digits. The silent Trump supporters will swing it, guaranteed.