Matthew Dowd was speaking contrary to a media that was obsessed with telling their audience that Democrats would receive a shellacking.
Matthew Dowd nails it
I got tired of hearing that there would be a blood bath for Democrats. Every pundit, including pollsters, was out there scaring Democrats and Progressives. It was as if they wanted to will the Republican-manufactured narrative.
Even a record early vote with a distinct Democratic slant was insufficient to check the parrots from repeating each other’s doomsday narrative. Finally, they allowed Michael Moore some time to give his take. After all, unlike pundits, he is very close to the grassroots.
Before the polls closed or the exit polls were in, Matthew Dowd nailed it.
“I have a theory that what happened this year is the same thing that happened in 2016, but the opposite,” Matthew Dowd said. “And in 2016, all the models and forecasters overestimated Democrats’ support and underestimated Republican support. I think the reverse has happened today, in which they’ve underestimated Democratic support and overestimated Republican support. Already today, even in the polls, the objective ones, Democrats are already overperforming because traditionally, the out party that doesn’t hold the presidency loses in the first midterm by an average of seven or eight points. It’s happened in every single midterm starting in 1982, with the exception of Bush’s, when he had astronomic approval ratings in 2002. Democrats aren’t going to lose this race by seven or eight points in the course of this. That’s the norm. So they’re already overperforming. And so I’m very interested in the early returns and what it gives us a sign of, because what I think it’s going to give it’s a sign up is all those Republican polls that flooded the zone in the last week were wrong, and we’re way overestimating Republican support. And then we’re in for not only a long night, we’re probably in for a long week.”
And it is exactly what we are seeing now.