Nate Silver tells Democrats Not to Panic Just Yet

With election day a little over a month away in the 2014 mid-term elections, the pundit class is tamping up its predictions of whether or not the Republicans can win control of the U.S. Senate - a frightening prospect to anyone not driven by greed, religious extremism, and/or a white supremacy agenda - just as the political ads on television begin to dominate the air waves.  Some pundits are acting as if they are modern day Cassandra's for the Democrats while others huff and puff as GOP partisans.  Amongst all of this noise and hot air, Nate Silver, gay wonder kid (pictured above), says that the Democrats need not necessarily panic yet.  A piece in Salon looks at Silver's reasoning.  Here are excerpts:

Last week brought a spate of bad news for Democrats hoping to retain control of the U.S. Senate, with polls showing their candidates falling behind in Colorado, Alaska and Iowa. But statistics whiz Nate Silver says it’s too early for the party to panic just yet.

In his latest Senate forecast, the FiveThirtyEight founder writes that the GOP remains a slight favorite to win Senate control, pegging the party’s chances at 60 percent. According to FiveThirtyEight’s model, Democratic seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia are likely to flip Republican. With Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., forecast to lose to independent Greg Orman – whom Democrats hope caucuses with their party – that means Republicans need to pick up just one additional seat to take over the Senate. And given the extremely tight races in Iowa and Colorado, the party stands a decent chance of doing just that.

But don’t panic, Silver tells Democrats – at least not yet. The narrative that the GOP is now a lock to win the Senate, he cautions, “conceals too much of the uncertainty in the outlook.” There are still five weeks to go until Election Day – plenty of time for the conditions to change in key races.

[T]he next five weeks could witness states like Colorado and Alaska swinging back in the Democratic direction. Or, Silver warns, we could see the ground begin to shift underneath candidates like North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. Despite a barrage of Koch-backed attacks early in the 2014 cycle, Hagan has held a steady lead in recent polls. But given the narrowness of her lead – 3.5 points in RealClearPolitics’ average – it would take only a small shift to see things start to turn the other way.

In short, the GOP is much better positioned going into the home stretch – even Princeton neuroscientist and election prognosticator Sam Wang, once among the most bullish analysts on Democrats’ prospects, is starting to have his doubts – but there’s a lot we still don’t know, even this late in the midterm cycle.

For all the talk of a resurgent GOP establishment, we’re likely to see a new crop of inflammatory Tea Party types sworn in to the House in January. Today’s New York Times looks at how many House GOPers who are either retiring or seeking higher office are likely to be replaced by even more conservative Republicans – suggesting that Speaker John Boehner is unlikely to be any more successful reining in the more unruly factions of his party once the new Congress begins.

In other midterm news: