It Has All Gone Poll-itical Now

To the polls, to the polls they chant as they form a picture of the future election rapidly moving our way.

Five Thirty Eight is a polling site that had incredible 100% success in the presidential election of 2008.

But a presidential election and a congressional election are two different breeds of cat the pollsters say, making their job more difficult.

One of the solutions is:

With only 15 days to go until the election, we’re going to be upping the frequency of our forecast updates somewhat.

Today, we’ve re-run the numbers for the Senate, and they show little change in the overall likelihood of a Republican takeover. The model gives Republicans a 17 percent chance of winding up with at least 51 Senators after Nov. 2. That’s essentially unchanged from our previous update, from last Wednesday, when they were given an 18 percent chance.

(Senate Dems Favored, emphasis added). The story is different for the House according to that polling site:

FiveThirtyEight’s projection for the U.S. House shows little change from last week. Republicans are given a 73 percent chance of taking over the House, up incrementally from 72 percent last week. During an average simulation run, Republicans finished with 227 seats, up from 226 last week; this would suggest a net gain of 48 seats from the 179 they hold currently.

However, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast because of the unusually large number of House seats now in play.

(Consensus Points to 50-Seat G.O.P. Gain in House, emphasis added). So we enter the final lap of the 2010 mid-term elections with considerable uncertainty.

Seems like so many things are uncertain these days.