So, something interesting here. I collected data going back to August 1. The #NY19 special, which Pat Ryan won by 2.4% in a Biden +2 seat, was on August 22. Here are the generic ballot aggregates for that day.
@FiveThirtyEight: D+0.4
@RealClearNews: R+0.2
@SplitTicket_: D+3.1
@FiveThirtyEight: D+0.4
@RealClearNews: R+0.2
@SplitTicket_: D+3.1
https://twitter.com/SplitTicket_/status/1586749499350822913
@FiveThirtyEight @RealClearNews @SplitTicket_ Part of this is because 538's model is "stickier" than ours and takes partisan polls as well, which isn't inherently bad -- it's just not what we do. The delta in our averages now is only 1 point, FWIW, so they have converged.
@FiveThirtyEight @RealClearNews @SplitTicket_ But, it's worth considering that perhaps there *was* genuinely a lag that private pollsters didn't pick up on. Impact/Trafalgar/OnMessage/Rasmussen all had leads of ~R+4 around then, which kind of drowned this out.
The other thing to mention is that there *has* been a noticeable shift against Democrats from the special elections till now, as our aggregate shows; we estimate that to be around ~2.7 points in margin. So it's not like we're missing trends either. Just the baseline is different.
So if you believe that the specials pointed to a ~D+4 environment (which I actually think is not that unreasonable), then the indicators now point quite clearly to a cycle that is very close to neutral and will be tight.
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