Nate Silver: Latest preelection polling shows ‘blue tsunami’ on horizon

Political analyst Nate Silver predicted Sunday that a “blue tsunami” is on the horizon.

Silver, a political forecaster and statistician, reacted to the newest slate of polling from The New York Times and Siena University showing Democrats leading their GOP opponents in key Senate contests.

“NYT/Siena released their presumably final set of polls this evening, and they showed what can only be described as fantastic numbers for Democrats, putting them ahead — sometimes narrowly, sometimes not — in basically every Senate battleground and in the associated governor’s races, including in Texas,” Silver wrote in his newsletter , noting that much of the polling is in line with his modeling.

The final round of polls released by The Times on Sunday showed Democrats leading in many of the key Senate battlegrounds, including in Michigan by 11 percentage points, in Texas by 7, Kansas by 5 and Alaska by 1. Silver said the poll’s results were close but not within his model’s “weird” territory, adding that the data suggests Democrats are likely to take the Senate.

“Democrats could actually absorb a modest-sized polling error and perhaps still prevail given the latest round of surveys,” Silver wrote.

With less than a day before Election Day, Democrats hold the edge in the polls. They are poised to win or seriously compete in historically red states, including South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa.

Silver pointed out that even if Democrats lose a handful of these red state races, they won’t necessarily be complaining.

“Even if Democrats were to lose a couple of these races — and there’s actually some bad news for them here in Alaska, I think — absolutely no Democrat is going to complain if they only flip the top five races in this chart, especially if it comes along with the Texas governorship,” Silver wrote.

The forecaster said while his operation typically does not focus closely on single polls, the Times/Siena poll has pushed his model’s forecast of Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate majority into the 80 percent range. He said while the poll has produced favorable numbers for Democrats this cycle, that is taken into account.

“Although the model trusts the NYT/Siena polls a lot — they’re among our more highly-rated pollsters — it does adjust every survey firm’s numbers for house effects. In other words, it knows that NYT/Siena has tended to have good numbers for Democrats this cycle, and that’s priced into its forecasts,” Silver wrote.