‘Blue wave’ of Democrats unlikely in 2018 midterm elections, pollster predicts

An apparent “blue wave” of Democrats being voted into House and Senate seats during the 2018 midterms elections allowing them to retake control of Congress from the Republicans is unlikely, according to one major pollster

Anthony Salvanto, head of polling at CBS News, wrote about how he applied lessons from the 2016 presidential election to make his dire prediction for Democrats in his new book, titled Where Did You Get That Number?.

His book comes just as Donald Trump tweeted that “a Blue Wave means Crime and Open Borders. A Red Wave means Safety and Strength!” The Democrats being soft on crime and immigration is one of the president's major attacks on his opposition party.

The president said earlier in the week at a White House event: "We're going to do very well in the midterms, and this is one of the very big reasons. The fact is, people respect law and order. I think we’re going to have much more of a red wave than what you’re going to see as a phony blue wave. Blue wave means crime. It means open borders. Not good”.

After studying exit polls compiled by his network, Mr Salvanto told producers and reporters the evening of 8 November 2016: “This is a contested race”.

Hillary Clinton had been leading all day, but the tallying was far from done.

“I told them to get set for a very late night,” he told the New York Post.

He noted at that point last-minute voters were going to give Mr Trump the historic upset.

He said calling what may happen in an election is unlike forecasting who will win some other kind of competition, for instance a horse race in which “the distance already run gets your horse closer to the finish line,” he told the newspaper.

“In a campaign, everything can change tomorrow,” he noted. The 2018 primaries have already seen surprising upsets from new wave Democrats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in New York's 14th Congressional district, beat fellow party member Joe Crowley, a 20-year incumbent set to become the next Speaker of the House.

He added: “In 2016, a lot of us assumed we knew what would happen in Michigan and Wisconsin. It was a great lesson for us pollsters: Even if you think you know what will happen, poll it if you can.”

In the book, Mr Salvanto blamed that thinking on what he dubbed the “Blue Wall,” a reliable set of 18 states that had consistently voted for the Democratic candidate since 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for office.

In his estimation, pollsters and media alike had not bothered to really dig into what voters in those states were thinking at the time.

“Pre-election polling in the Midwest . . . just wasn’t there,” he said, noting if Ms Clinton had held onto Wisconsin and Michigan she would have won.

For 2018, Mr Salvanto indicated he is not relying so much on the random samples of voters participating in telephone polls and more on CBS’ ongoing tracking polls.

In a tracking poll, the pool of voters is far more, often in the thousands. Pollsters will go back to those same people repeatedly over the course of months to see how they plan to vote.

Mr Salvanto said it allows him to see what factors influence voters over time and which ones may trigger a change in candidate choice.

“It gives us a great advantage in trying to explain the meaning of the poll results,” he said, noting also the only two polls which predicted the president’s 2016 win were the same type of poll.

In this year’s CBS Battleground Tracker of nearly 5,700 voters, Mr Salvanto said he is “concentrating on the districts that we think will make a difference [switching from Republican to Democrat]. Remember, in a midterm, you have to watch each congressional seat - don’t pay attention to national numbers.”

The November election includes 51 separate elections - one for each state and District of Columbia, 435 US House seats, and roughly a third of the US Senate, so 35 seats.

He said approximately 85 per cent of House seats will remain in the incumbent’s party and Republicans currently have a majority.

He suggested the only way Democrats may prove his initial prediction wrong is if they bring in large numbers of new voters, which he noted could happen given the current animus against Mr Trump.

The book, published by Simon & Schuster, hits shelves on 22 August.